In the earlier portion of his book he reviews the dietetic habits and practices of the various peoples of the younger world, and notices the various philosophic and other writers who have left any record of their opinions upon flesh-eating. He next treats of modern authorities, and, after quoting a large number of anti-kreophagistic testimonies, in his fifth Discourse he applies himself to answer the sophisms of the chief opponents, and particularly of its arch-enemy--his countryman, Buffon, in his well-known _Histoire Naturelle_--and he may be said effectually to have disposed of his astonishing fallacies.[226] “What most strikes the observer when he throws an attentive glance over the earth, is the _relative_ inferiority of man, considered as what he is, in regard to what he ought to be: it is the feebleness of the work compared with the aptitude of the workman. All his inspirations are good, and all his actions bad; and it is to this singular fact that must be attributed, without doubt, the universal contempt that man exhibits towards his fellows.... We must remount to the source, and see if there is not in man’s existence some essential act which, reflecting itself on all the rest, would communicate to them its fatal influence. Let us consider, above everything, the _distinctive_ quality of man--that which raises him above all other beings. It is clear that it is Pity,[227] source of that intelligence which has placed him at the head of that fine moral order, invincible in the midst of the catastrophes of Nature. His utter failure to exhibit this feeling of pity towards his humble fellow-beings, as well as to his own kind, engages us to inquire what is the _permanent_ cause of such failure; and we find it, at first, in that unhappy facility with which man receives his _impressions_ of the beings by whom he is surrounded. These impressions, transmitted with life and cemented by habit, have formed a creation apart and separate from himself, which is consequently beyond the domain of his conscience, or, if you prefer it, of the ordinary jurisprudence of men. Thus men continue to accuse themselves of being unjust, violent, cruel, and treacherous to one another, but they do not accuse themselves of cutting the throats of other animals and of feeding upon their mangled limbs, which, nevertheless, is the single cause of that injustice, of that violence, of that cruelty, and of that treachery. “Although all have not these vices to the same degree, and it is exactly this fact which aids the self-deception, I shall clearly prove that all have the _germs_ of them; and that, if they are not equally developed, we must thank the circumstances only which have failed them.