"It is true, there is scarce a possibility of preventing the destroying of animal life, as things are now constituted, since insects breed and nestle in the very vegetables themselves; and we scarcely ever devour a plant or root, wherein we do not destroy innumerable animalculæ. But, besides what I have said of nature's being quite altered and changed from what was originally intended, there is a great difference between destroying and extinguishing animal life by choice and election, to gratify our appetites, and indulge concupiscence, and the casual and unavoidable crushing of those who, perhaps, otherwise would die within the day, or at most the year, and who obtain but an inferior kind of existence and life, at the best. "Whatever there may be, in this conjecture, it is evident to those who understand the animal economy of the frame of human bodies, together with the history, both of those who have lived abstemiously, and of those who have lived freely, that indulging in flesh meat and strong liquors, inflames the passions and shortens life, begets chronical distempers and a decrepit age. "For remedying the distempers of the body, to make a man live as long as his original frame was designed to last, with the least pain and fewest diseases, and without the loss of his senses, I think Pythagoras and Cornaro by far the two greatest men that ever were:--the first, by vegetable food and unfermented liquors; the latter, by the lightest and least of animal food, and naturally fermented liquors. Both lived to a great age. But, what is chiefly to be regarded in their conduct and example, both preserved their senses, cheerfulness, and serenity to the last; and, which is still more to be regarded, both, at least the last, dissolved without pain or struggle; the first having lost his life in a tumult, as it is said by some, after a great age of perfect health.