“Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth and, plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the streaming blood. When fresh from this deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instinct of nature that would rise in judgment against it and say, ‘Nature formed me for such work as this.’ Then, and then only would he be consistent. “Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons. “The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the order and in the number of his teeth. The orang-outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of whom are strictly frugivorous. There is no other species of animals, which live on different food, in which this analogy exists.[237] In many frugivorous animals the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct than those of man. The resemblance also of the human stomach to that of the orang-outang is greater than to that of any other animal. “The structure of the human frame, then, is that of one fitted to a pure vegetable diet in every essential particular. It is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds as to be scarcely overcome. But this is far from bringing any argument in its favour. A Lamb, who was fed for some time on flesh by a ship’s crew, refused her natural diet at the end of the voyage. There are numerous instances of Horses, Sheep, Oxen, and even Wood-Pigeons having been taught to live upon flesh until they have loathed their natural aliment. Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and other fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, by the gradual depravation of the digestive organs, the free use of vegetables has, for a time, produced serious inconveniences--_for a time_, I say, since there never was an instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and animal food to vegetables and pure water has failed ultimately to invigorate the body by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to restore to the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity which not one in fifty possesses on the present system. A love of strong liquors also is with difficulty taught infants. Almost every one remembers the wry faces which the first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariably unerring, but to decide on the fitness of animal food from the _perverted_ appetites which its continued adoption produces, is to make the criminal a judge of his own cause. It is even worse, for it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a question of the salubrity of brandy.