Headlong Hall | Page 4

the inn; where his two supporters deposited him
safely in a large arm-chair, with his wounded leg comfortably stretched
out on another. The morning being extremely cold, he contrived to be
seated as near the fire as was consistent with his other object of having
a perfect command of the table and its apparatus; which consisted not
only of the ordinary comforts of tea and toast, but of a delicious supply
of new-laid eggs, and a magnificent round of beef; against which Mr
Escot immediately pointed all the artillery of his eloquence, declaring

the use of animal food, conjointly with that of fire, to be one of the
principal causes of the present degeneracy of mankind. "The natural
and original man," said he, "lived in the woods: the roots and fruits of
the earth supplied his simple nutriment: he had few desires, and no
diseases. But, when he began to sacrifice victims on the altar of
superstition, to pursue the goat and the deer, and, by the pernicious
invention of fire, to pervert their flesh into food, luxury, disease, and
premature death, were let loose upon the world. Such is clearly the
correct interpretation of the fable of Prometheus, which is the
symbolical portraiture of that disastrous epoch, when man first applied
fire to culinary purposes, and thereby surrendered his liver to the
vulture of disease. From that period the stature of mankind has been in
a state of gradual diminution, and I have not the least doubt that it will
continue to grow small by degrees, and lamentably less, till the whole
race will vanish imperceptibly from the face of the earth."
"I cannot agree," said Mr Foster, "in the consequences being so very
disastrous. I admit, that in some respects the use of animal food retards,
though it cannot materially inhibit, the perfectibility of the species. But
the use of fire was indispensably necessary, as AEschylus and Virgil
expressly assert, to give being to the various arts of life, which, in their
rapid and interminable progress, will finally conduct every individual
of the race to the philosophic pinnacle of pure and perfect felicity."
"In the controversy concerning animal and vegetable food," said Mr
Jenkison, "there is much to be said on both sides; and, the question
being in equipoise, I content myself with a mixed diet, and make a
point of eating whatever is placed before me, provided it be good in its
kind."
In this opinion his two brother philosophers practically coincided,
though they both ran down the theory as highly detrimental to the best
interests of man.
"I am really astonished," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, gracefully
picking off the supernal fragments of an egg he had just cracked, and
clearing away a space at the top for the reception of a small piece of
butter--"I am really astonished, gentlemen, at the very heterodox

opinions I have heard you deliver: since nothing can be more obvious
than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of
man."
"Even the tiger that devours him?" said Mr Escot.
"Certainly," said Doctor Gaster.
"How do you prove it?" said Mr Escot.
"It requires no proof," said Doctor Gaster: "it is a point of doctrine. It is
written, therefore it is so."
"Nothing can be more logical," said Mr Jenkison. "It has been said,"
continued he, "that the ox was expressly made to be eaten by man: it
may be said, by a parity of reasoning, that man was expressly made to
be eaten by the tiger: but as wild oxen exist where there are no men,
and men where there are no tigers, it would seem that in these instances
they do not properly answer the ends of their creation."
"It is a mystery," said Doctor Gaster.
"Not to launch into the question of final causes," said Mr Escot, helping
himself at the same time to a slice of beef, "concerning which I will
candidly acknowledge I am as profoundly ignorant as the most
dogmatical theologian possibly can be, I just wish to observe, that the
pure and peaceful manners which Homer ascribes to the Lotophagi, and
which at this day characterise many nations (the Hindoos, for example,
who subsist exclusively on the fruits of the earth), depose very strongly
in favour of a vegetable regimen."
"It may be said, on the contrary," said Mr Foster, "that animal food acts
on the mind as manure does on flowers, forcing them into a degree of
expansion they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine a
philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical meditation on
its original and natural nutriment, till it should work itself up into a
profound abomination of bullock's blood, sugar-baker's scum, and other
unnatural ingredients of that rich composition of soil which had

brought