“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable _régime_. The peoples living upon vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by his virtues; Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquility of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.[193] “I have seen an instance of it in a young Englishman aged fifteen, and who did not appear to be twelve years of age. He was of a most interesting figure, of the most robust health, and of the most sweet disposition. He was accustomed to take very long walks. He was never put out of temper by any annoyance that might happen. His father, Mr. Pigott, told me that he had brought him up entirely upon the Pythagorean regimen, the good effects of which he had known by his own experience. He had formed the project of employing a part of his fortune, which was considerable, in establishing in English America a society of dietary reformers who should be engaged in educating, under the same regimen, the children of the colonists in all the arts which bear upon agriculture. Would that this educational scheme, worthy of the best and happiest times of Antiquity, might succeed! Physically, it suits a warlike people no less than an agricultural one. The Persian children, of the time of Cyrus, and by his orders, were nourished upon bread, water, and vegetables.... It was with these children, become men, that Cyrus made the conquest of Asia. I observe that Lycurgus introduced a great part of the physical and moral regimen of the Persian children into the education of those of the Lacedemonians.” (_Etudes._)[194] * * * * *