"The whole of human science is comprised in one question: How can the advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life? How can we take the benefits and reject the evils of the system, which is now interwoven with our being? I believe that _abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors would, in a great measure, capacitate us for the solution of this important question_. "It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical processes: the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants; all these, and innumerable other causes, contribute their mite to the mass of human evil. "Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugiverous animals in every thing, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long, would probably find them, alone, inefficient to hold even a hare. It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparations that it is rendered susceptible of mastication and digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices does not excite intolerable loathing, horror, and disgust. 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 steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts 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.