“If,” he justly adds, “the deity need nothing, what need has he of food? Now, if nourishing matters taken in by the nostrils are diviner than those taken in by the mouth, yet they imply respiration. What then do they say of God? Does He _exhale_, like the oaks, or does he only _inhale_, like the aquatic animals by the dilatation of the gills, or does he breathe all around like the insects?” The only innocent altar he asserts to be the one allowed by Pythagoras:-- “The very ancient altar in Delos was celebrated for its purity, to which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter and death, they say that Pythagoras would permit approach. And will they not believe us when we say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar? But I believe that sacrifices were invented by men _to be a pretext for eating flesh_, and yet, without such idolatry, they might have partaken of it.” He next glances at the _popular_ reason for the Pythagorean abstinence, and declares:-- “If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational motive, not, as Pythagoras and his followers dream, of the transmigration of the soul. Now Xenokrates, treating of ‘Food derived from Animals,’[72] and Polemon in his work ‘On Life according to Nature,’[72] seem clearly to affirm that animal food is unwholesome. If it be said that the lower animals were assigned to man--and we partly admit it--yet it was not entirely for food; nor were all animals, but _such as do not work_. And so the comic poet, Plato, says not badly in the drama of _The Feasts_:-- ‘For of the quadrupeds we should not slay In future aught but swine. For they have flesh Most delicate: and about the swine is nought For us: excepting bristles, dirt, and noise.’ Some eat them as being useless, others as destructive of fruits, and others do not eat them because they are said to have strong propensity to coition. It is alleged that the greatest amount of fatty substance is produced by swine’s flesh: it may, then, be appropriate for those whose ambition is for the body; it is not so for those who cultivate the soul, by reason of the dulling of the faculties resulting from eating of flesh. The Gnostic, perhaps, too, will abstain for the sake of training, and that the body may not grow wanton in amorousness. ‘For wine,’ says Andokides, ‘and gluttonous feeds of flesh make the body strong, but the soul more sluggish.’ Accordingly such food, in order to a clear understanding, is to be rejected.”[73]