Animal Rights History » J. Todd Ferrier

» On Behalf of the Creatures, "The Records of History"

Rev. J. Todd Ferrier, On Behalf of the Creatures; A Plea Historical, Scientific, Economic, Dynamic, Humane and Religious ([First published as Letters to the Press and Concerning Human Carnavorism, London, 1903] London: Order of the Cross, 1926); Online at Animal Rights History, 2006.

THE RECORDS OF HISTORY

ARISTOPHAGY has a long and honourable history, both sacred and profane. To every serious student of philosophy, ecclesiastical history, and the general literature of the world, such a statement will require no "proofs"; but as it may be doubted or denied by many that the finest intellects of the world were humane dietists and fruitarians, it may be well to listen to what they themselves have written or said.

And in doing so it is not unlikely that we shall discover that most of them possessed a wisdom higher far than that which passes for wisdom in our present day civilisation. They had also the courage of their convictions, and showed it by applying them to life. Their humaneness was practical; their precepts became deeds. They were not simply against vivisection for scientific purposes, but the vivisection of a living creature for "food" was equally abhorrent. Their "league of pity" was full-rounded. It did not stop outside of the slaughter-house, but entered it, and sought to put an end to killing for food purposes. Their doctrine of a humane attitude to the lower races was not content to formulate "societies" for the protection of cruelty to animals, like so many of the inconsistent and soulless things that go by that name in these days, but it sought a most practical outlet in the habit of abstinence from all flesh-foods. And even where the Humanitarian motive did not prevail, men abstained from flesh for the sake of personal purity; for they recognised [12] how impossible it was to attain the highest life and, at the same time, minister to the lower and grosser tastes, and appetites of the body

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Let us look at the evidence afforded by the teaching and practices of the early Christian Fathers. Theologians and others admire them, and often make use of their writings for other purposes. It were well if we their successors followed them a little more closely in noble living. They taught that in a healthy community the standard of conduct ought to be "constantly rising," and the humane instinct "constantly growing." Especially was this the case with Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom.

Tertullian, the most learned of all the Latin theologians, was bold enough to proclaim his convictions. The second century in which he lived needed it. It is not to be wondered at that the orthodox party of his time separated from him. His trenchant words which have come down to us are required by this Age also. The customs of the western Christian Churches have been a blot on the teaching of the Master and the Fathers. Westernised Christianity, in seeking to conquer the east, has too often only materialised the faith. And the failure of missionaries to win over the cultured of the east is through our gross western habits in living. For the man whose religion teaches him to hold all life sacred, is not [13] likely to be converted to a faith that deems no life sacred but man's.

These things Tertullian taught—that flesh-eating was not conducive to the highest life, that it violated the written and unwritten moral law, that it debased man in intellect and heart, and that it closed the doors of the Inner Temple of his Intuition.

In his work, "De Jejuniis: Adversus Psychios," he treats his contemporaries to the following scathing description of the life which they were living:—

"Nature herself will plainly tell us with what qualities she is ever wont to find us endowed when she sets us [before taking gross foods and drinks], with our saliva still in a virgin state, to the transaction of matters by the sense, especially whereby things divine are handled; whether it be not with a mind much more vigorous, with a heart much more alive, than when that whole habitation of our interior man, stuffed with meats, inundated with wines fermenting for the purpose of excremental secretion, is already being turned into a dung-heap [a cesspool of corruption], all savouring of lasciviousness."(Ch. vi.)

And again,

"How unworthily do you press the example of Christ as having come 'eating and drinking' into the service of your lusts! I think that He who pronounced not the full but the hungry and thirsty Blessed, 'who professed His work to be the completion of His Father's will, I think that He was wont to abstain, instructing them to labour for that 'Meat' which lasts to eternal life, and [14] enjoining in their common prayers petition, not for rich and gross food, but for bread only." (Ch. xv.)

It is quite evident Tertullian had the same arguments to meet from the lovers of flesh-meats as we have to-day. And the fact that they tried to place Christ amongst the flesh-eaters and wine-bibbers in order to find an excuse for gratifying their own low tastes, shows that the guilty ones were men and women in the churches, and that they had not been won over to the life of absolute consecration.

"Your belly is your God, your liver is your temple, your paunch is your altar, the cook is your priest, and the fat steam is your Holy Spirit ; the seasonings and the sauces are your chrisms, and your eructations are your prophesyings." (Ch. xvi.)

Thus he reproaches those who defended gross living, comparing them to Esau, the merely animal man; and that like him too they would even sell their birth-right for a mess of pottage, sacrificing their souls for the life of the flesh. And then we have this scathing indictment—

"It is in the cooking pots that your love is inflamed—it is in the kitchen that your faith grows fervid—it is in the flesh dishes that all your hope lies hid. … Who is held in so much esteem with you as the frequent giver of dinners, as the sumptuous entertainer ? … Consistently do you men of flesh reject the things of the Spirit. But if your prophets are complacent toward such persons, they are not my prophets." (Ch. xvii.)

This eloquent declaration against the social customs of his time might have been penned for these later days. [15] In eating and drinking, so many find their highest delight; and society most honours those who are best able and prepared to gratify these grovelling propensities.

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Think of such a voice sounding through all the Churches of the world, and of such a message falling upon the ears of the people of this land who pride themselves on their advanced Christian civilisation! Would any Government appoint Tertullian to be a Bishop? Would the worshippers tolerate him in any sanctuary? Nay, verily. To the world he would be a crank; and to the Church-goers an arch-heretic! Men and women whose minds are enslaved by the things of the flesh would say he was "mad." The like people in the time of the Lord said He had a "devil." So blind in all ages are the sensuous and sensual to the things of the Spirit! So rebellious are they when that Spirit insists upon those things which make for purer habits and humaner laws!

Then in speaking of past historical experiences and the lessons to be drawn from them, especially in the case of the Israelitish nation, Tertullian says —

"And if there be One who prefers … a spirit exercised by abstinence, it is surely that God to whom neither a gluttonous people nor priest was acceptable—monuments of whose concupiscence remain to this day, where lies buried a people greedy and clamorous for flesh-meats, gorging quails even to the point of inducing jaundice." (Ch. xvi.)

This is an interpretation of the experiences of the [16] Israelites which history has confirmed, and which has been repeated in many other nations. And we might here remark, that the testimony of Tertullian has been the testimony of the best thinkers of the ages. Would it were laid to heart! For, were it taken to heart, it would soon effect a revolution in our national habits. But even nations of culture are slow to learn righteousness, mercy, and purity, when the learning interferes with their animal appetites.

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In the early days of Christianity there was a record which was valued very much, in which the Jewish and the pure Christian ideas on this subject were debated. I refer to the interesting Clementine Homilies, which date back to the middle of the second century. This record was founded on the preaching of Peter and in it we have these words—

"The unnatural eating of flesh-meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its impure feasts, through participation in which a man becomes a fellow-eater with devils." (Homily xii.)

And in a later Homily we have the Jewish and Hellenistic conceptions of Christian obligations and interpretations of life. The questions of human suffering, physical and moral evils, the mystery of wickedness, all come up for discussion, and are referred to the false attitude of the mind to Divine things, the impure manner of living and nurturing of the body and mind. (Homily xix., 22.) In the early Christian communities it was firmly believed that evil was inherent in matter, though [17] in latter days this came to be regarded as heresy. But the most spiritually cultured knew then, as they have always known, and must always know, that the more the soul is in captivity to matter the heavier it becomes, and the more evils are attendant upon it.

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At this time there also appeared the famous work of Marcion, the first and most distinguished Apostle of the Higher Spiritualism of the Early Church,—a man of singular purity and uprightness of life, and acknowledged to be so by even his most bitter opponents. In his "Antitheses" he upheld the doctrine of abstinence from flesh-meats upon humane, moral, and spiritual grounds. Indeed, he anticipated all that is best in the results of the Higher Criticism. Most of the leading Gnostics followed his teaching and example.

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What Tertullian was for the west, Clement of Alexandria became for the east. The founder of the famous school of thought at Alexandria, he himself was the most cultured philosopher of his time. In his "Instructor" he says on the subject of "Eating," that—

"Those who use the most frugal fare are the strongest, the healthiest and the noblest. … We must guard against those sorts of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. For is there not, within a temperate simplicity, a wholesome variety of eatables—vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits and all kinds of dry food: … For of sorts of food, these are the most proper which are fit [18] for immediate use without fire, since they are readiest: and second to those which are the simplest (though they have to be cooked).

"But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which I shall venture to call the demon of the belly: the worst and most vile of demons. It is far better to be happy than to have a devil dwelling in us; and happiness is found only in the practice of virtue. Accordingly the Apostle Matthew lived upon seeds and nuts, hard-shelled fruits and vegetables, without the use of flesh." (Pædagogus i.)

My readers will here note how Clement emphasises the abstinence of the Apostles, the simplicity and purity of their living, which has been repeated by the historians, Hegesippus and Eusebius, and quoted by Augustine. To the name of Matthew may be added James, Thomas, and Peter.(See Bible Article.)

And then in his "Miscellanies" he points out the moral and spiritual value of abstinence from flesh foods.

"If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational motive. How Xenokrates, treating of 'Food derived from Animals,' and Polemon in his work 'On Life according to Nature,' seem clearly to affirm that animal food is unwholesome! … Some eat them as being useless, others as destructive of fruits, and others do not eat them because they are said to have a strong propensity to sexual vice." (Stromata "On Sacrifices," Book vii.)

Here we have the whole question of social and moral [19] economies raised—the very thing that we as an "Order" affirm, which in another place I hope to deal with. Most heartily do I endorse the judgment pronounced by K. 0. Muller in his "History of the Literature of Ancient Greece" when he writes thus of Clement's teaching and influence—

"It would have been well for Christianity if the principles, which he set forth with such an array of profound scholarship and ingenious reasoning, had been adopted more generally by those who came after him.…If anyone, even in a Protestant community, were to assert the liberal and comprehensive principles of the great Father of Alexandria, he would be told that he wished to compromise the distinctive claims of Theology, and that he was little better than a heathen and a publican." (Vol. iii., p. 58.)

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And once more I would have Clement speak, remembering that to him and his cultured pupil, Origen, we owe the preservation and able exposition of the divine doctrine of the Logos in relation to the Christ and ourselves, and that they kept alive, in an evil and material age, the most spiritual form of Christian truth. These men having lived so near the time of those who were in closest contact with the Master, have a claim upon us whch we are too tardy in acknowledging. If we were influenced less by the modern paganism which passes for Christianity, and gave more attention to the claims of that true and pure Spiritualism which was nurtured in the bosom of the Inner Communion of the Early Church, we should then [20] come to realise our divine childhood more fully, and regain the power of the ancient wisdom which we have lost ; and the Christian Church would become a truer representative of the faith and life of her Master, and a more potent factor for the regeneration of the world.

But what, think you, would the Christian Church say to its leaders to-day if they taught the doctrine enunciated by Clement concerning sacrifices in relation to this burning question?—

"The very ancient altar of Delos was celebrated for its purity, to which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter and death; they say that Pythagoras would permit approach. And they will 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." (Stromata "On Sacrifices," Book vii.)

Think what would happen in this land of ours if the heads of all the Churches, the leading thinkers and preachers, heralded such a message to their age, as bold and true, as did the cultured Bishop of Alexandria towards the close of the second century of our era!

The Churches would be turned upside down and inside out; their altars would be purified in the laver of regeneration; their sacrifices would no longer be tainted with inhumanity and gross thoughts of living; they would be the embodiment rather of Paul's purest ideal "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living Sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable worship."

[21] The holiest place would not be that shut in by stones, but would find itself in the temple of the heart. The worshippers might be fewer, but they would be purer ; in numbers the Church might be less and poorer, but in vision and spiritual power it would be mightier far.

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It is not necessary for me to quote at length from many of the Fathers, though the temptation to do so is very great. We know, from his works, that Origen carried out the teaching of his Master. However, to John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople at the close of the fourth century, the most eloquent and zealous of the Fathers, it might be well to make reference.

Trained for the law, he gave up everything when he embraced the new faith, went into The Solitude for four years, and lived the life of the strictest asceticism. Then he came forth to enter the Church and climb to the Episcopal Seat of Constantinople, where, in eloquent candour, he poured forth his soul upon rich and poor alike.

Speaking of those who had consecrated themselves to the highest ideals, he says—

"No streams of blood are among them; no butchering and cutting up of flesh; no dainty cookery; no heaviness of head. Nor are there horrible smells of flesh-meats among them, or disagreeable fumes from the kitchen. No tumult or disturbance and wearisome clamours, but bread and water. … If, however, they may desire to feast more sumptuously, the sumptuousness consists in fruits, and their pleasure in these is [22] greater than at royal tables." (Homily lxxix., ch. 3, on St. Matt., xxii., 1-14.)

Then in the same Homily, pronouncing against the flesh-eating habits of his time, he writes—

"We follow the ways of wolves, the habits of tigers: or, rather, we are worse even than they. To them nature has assigned that they should be thus fed, while God has honoured us with rational speech and a sense of equity. And yet we are become worse than the wild beast." (Homily lxix., ch. 4.)

And in his Homily on the teaching of the Epistle to the Corinthians, where he is calling his people to the highest life, to the most simple and pure habits, and to the most consecrated service, he says—

"No one debars thee from these, nor forbids thee thy daily food. I say 'food,' not 'feasting'; 'raiment' not 'ornament.'… For consider, who should we say more truly feasted—he whose diet is herbs, and who is, in sound health and suffered no uneasiness, or he who has the table of a Sybarite and is full of a thousand disorders? Certainly the former. Therefore let us seek nothing more than these, if we would at once live luxuriously and healthfully. And let him who can be satisfied with pulse, and can keep in good health, seek for nothing more. But let him who is weaker, and needs to be dieted with other vegetable fruits, not be debarred from them." (Homily xix., ch. 3, on 2 Cor. ix.)

And yet once more in his xiii. Homily on Timothy, we have a description of the sensualising effects of carnivorous living upon the mind, heart, and spirit of man— [23] a description of the persistent violation of the Divine Laws of Being, which all history has proved to be true, and which might have been penned for the times in which we live—

"A man who lives in selfish luxury is dead while he lives, for he lives only to his stomach. In other senses he lives not. He sees not what he ought to see; he hears not what he ought to hear; he speaks not what he ought to speak. Nor does he perform the actions of the living. But as he who is stretched upon a bed with his eyes closed and his eyelids fast, perceives nothing that is passing; so is it with this man, or rather not so, but worse. For the one is equally insensible to things good and evil, while the other is sensible to things evil only, but as insensible as the former to things good.

"Thus he is dead. For nothing relating to the life to come moves or affects him. For intemperance taking him into her own bosom as into some dark and dismal cavern full of all uncleanness, causes him to dwell altogether in darkness, like the dead. For, when all his time is spent between feasting and drunkenness, is he not dead, and buried in darkness?

"Who can describe, the storm that comes of luxury, that assails the soul and body ? For, as a sky continually clouded admits not the sunbeams to shine through, so the fumes of luxury … envelope his brain … and casting over it a thick mist, suffers not reason to exert itself.

"If it were possible to bring the Soul into view and [24] to behold it with our bodily eyes—it would seem depressed, mournful, miserable, and wasted with leanness ; for the more the body grows sleek and gross, the more lean and weakly is the Soul. The more the one is pampered, the more the other is hampered" (literally "buried").(Homily xiii., Chapters 3 and 4.)

Thus far I have only referred to Christian Thinkers and Apologists, and the space is all too brief to deal with the Greek and Latin and Indian philosophers and historians who exercised great influence upon the thought and character of their time. The teaching of many of these magnificent thinkers was Christian in all but name. Indeed, it was superior by far to the practices of Judaism and Jewish Christianity; and it was permeated with the Humane Spirit to a degree that would put our western interpretation of Christianity to shame.

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Whilst Isaiah was striving to evangelise Israel and win the nation to more humane ideals and to purer habits, in the Isle of Greece, Hesiod was singing and working to win his countrymen to ideals almost as high. He be longed to the Orphic Society—supposed to have been founded by Orpheus—who was said by Horatius to have introduced the reformation in diet among his country men. In his song of the Golden Age found in his "Works and Days," he pictures the declension of the race. In the nobler and humaner days men lived like Gods, free from those cares and woes which are the natural accompaniments of gross thinking and living. Not even deathhad any terror for them, for even Hesiod knew eight [25] hundred years before Paul that the sting of death is the creation of sin.

"Soon as the deathless Gods were born, and man,
A mortal race, with voice endowed, began,
The heavenly powers from high their work behold,
And the first age they style the Age of Gold.
Men spent a life like Gods in Saturn's reign,
Nor felt their mind a care, nor body pain:
The fields, as yet untilled, their fruits afford,
And fill a sumptuous and unenvyed board.
From labour free they all delights enjoy,
Nor could the Ills of Time their peace destroy
They die, or rather seem to die; they seem
From hence to be transported in a pleasing dream.
Thus crowned with Happiness their every day,
Serene and joyful passed their lives away."

(Book I., Lines 150 to 164.)

The next race, which the Gods named the "Silver Age," was somewhat lower in spiritual attainment, though still pure and simple in habits, but they paved the way for the introduction of the "Brazen Age" in which the Divine Humanity of mankind was almost lost.

"And now a third, a Brazen people rise,
Unlike the former, men of monstrous size.

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"On the crude flesh of beasts, they feed, alone,
Savage their nature, and their hearts of stone."

(Book I. Lines 191 to 201.)

And so the race continued its descent into matter and the corrupt conditions generated by the unfeeling and brutal spirit, till suffering and pain blazed away like Gehenna-fires. Yet even out of these awful conditions [26] Souls were made purer, and redeemed. And those Souls who did attain to the Olympian heights, fed on the "Ambrosia of the Gods"—the symbol of purity in diet, and the consecration of all the powers of life to Deity.

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But space fails me here to tell of the historic records which we have of Pythagoras and Siddartha, of Philolaus and Socrates, Plato, and Empedokles, of Asoka and Ovid, of Diogenes, Porphyry and Iamblicus, of Seneca, Plutarch, and Musonius—all Master Spirits, men of giant intellects and divine souls, who sang and laboured to redeem their people from inhumane feeding and living, and lift them on to the plane of Celestial Being. Theirs was an inspiration worthy of the Christian teaching and ideal. In another place we will note some of them.

And in addition to these great names there were many others to whom we cannot even make the slightest reference—a great army of Theologians, Philosophers, Historians, and Poets who have for physical, humane or moral reasons been abstainers from flesh foods. And if the writers quoted seem in the dim past of history, we have nearer our own times such notable thinkers and writers as Thomson, John Milton, Pope, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, Swedenborg, Goldsmith, Paley, Shelley, and his friend Frank Newton, John Wesley, Locke, Voltaire, Gleizes, Michelet, Struve, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Newman. These are but a few of the many familiar names of men who were constrained to consider the rights of the subhuman races, and to abstain from having killed for food.

[27] And I might go on to speak of earlier times and later times, of how the Egyptian Dynasty came to grief, and in later days proud, boastful Israel; how nations early and late have died out as the result of the closing of the Intuition through gross habits of life and inhumane conduct; how Greece and Rome in the height of their glory were practically frugivorous; how the finest intellects throve on simple earth-fare, and Caesar's armies conquered the western world on maize and oil; and also, how the decline and fall of Greece and. Rome may be traced back to the gross life that grew up as the result of voluptuous living.

There is no limit to the testimony of history on the physical, moral and religious advantages of non-flesh diet. Whether we listen to Greece or to Rome, to Egypt or to Israel, to the Historian, the Philosopher, or to the Theologian, the message is the same.

They have all discovered in every land that Higher Law of God written in the human heart and in nature, disobedience to which brings physical pain and corruption, moral dullness and inertia, spiritual blindness and impotence—the very things which now lie upon society like a nightmare.

And having discovered that law in themselves, and recognising the solidarity of the whole world of life, they lived and toiled to better the Earth by saving men from degrading habits, and redeeming them unto a life of full-rounded virtue, in which tenderness and compassion, mercy and fellow-feeling should not be wanting even towards the sub-human creatures.

[28] This very thing we aim at who are members of the sacred "Order of the Cross."

We are moved by the same great Law, by the consciousness of the same Eternal God, by the like humane pulses of the divinely-inspired soul, believing as we do that flesh-eating is injurious to the health, that it is abhorrent to the best moral consciousness, that it is derogatory to our divine childhood, that it is absolutely inconsistent with humaneness to our fellow-animals.

We believe that our "dominion" over them is that of the true patriarch and king, not that of the despot, the tyrant, the sacrificial priest!

In concluding this paper, I would recall to my readers' minds the teaching of the great prophet of India, Gautama Buddha, teaching worthy of a place in every Christian creed. I quote from "The Light of Asia," by Sir Edwin Arnold.

Having come upon some Brahmin priests offering sacrifice in the presence of the King, he remonstrated with them to grand effect —

"But Buddha softly said.
'Let him not strike, great King! 'and therewith loosed
The victim's bonds, none staying him, so great
His presence was. Then, craving leave he spake
Of life which all can take but none can give.
Life which all creatures love and strive to keep,
Wonderful, dear, and pleasant unto each,
Given to the meanest ; yea, a boon to all
Where pity is ; for pity makes the world
Soft to the weak and noble for the strong—
Unto the dumb lips of his flock he lent
Sad, pleading words, showing how man, who prays
For mercy to the Gods, is merciless,
[29] Being as God to these: albeit all Life
Is linked and kin; and what we slay have given
Meek tribute of the milk and wool, and set
Fast trust upon the hands that murder them.

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While still our Lord went on, teaching how fair
This earth were, if all living things be linked
In friendliness and common use of foods,
Bloodless and pure—the golden grain, bright fruits,
Sweet herbs, which grow for all, the waters wan,
Sufficient drinks and meats—which when these heard,
The might of gentleness so conquered them,
The priests themselves scattered their altar-flames
And flung away the steel of sacrifice ;
And through the land next day passed a decree
Proclaimed by criers, and in this wise graved
On rock and column. Thus the King's will is:
'There hath been slaughter for the sacrifice,
And slaying for the meat, but henceforth none
Shall spill the blood of life, nor taste of flesh:
Seeing that knowledge grows, and life is one,
And mercy cometh to the merciful.'"

(Book V., Lines 398 to 454.)