PART II.
NATURAL FOOD OF MAN
CHAPTER I.
EVIDENCE AFFORDED BY COMPARATIVE ANATOMY.
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas;
Quos rami fructus, quos ipsa volentia rura
Sponte tulere suâ, carpsit.—Virgil.
46. I have previously stated, that the intellectual faculties of man have afforded him the power to resist, and greatly to modify, his instinctive suggestions. His inventive powers enable him to substitute the discoveries of art for the simple and more wholesome provisions of nature. Daily use and pleasing associations render him capable of enjoying, with the greatest gust and delight, substances which were originally distasteful, or even repulsive to his palate; (138;) and those articles of diet which, to an unvitiated taste, yielded the greatest enjoyment, become tasteless and indifferent.6 Thus are the natural wants supplanted by numerous artificial ones, which, becoming associated with the former, are not to be distinguished from them; and thus is man, by the refinements of luxury, the requirements of fashion, the habits of modern society, the influence of example, and the force of habit, plunged headlong into an abyss of artificial pleasures, and disqualified for relishing the simple aliments which nature had adapted to his original instincts, and to the highest development of his physical and moral powers.
[Note 6. A cow has been taught to love "kitchen-slops" strongly impregnated with refuse and putrefied animal matters, in preference to her natural food; and a sheep has been feasted on beefsteak and coffee until it refused to touch the greenest grass or the most delicious clover. So, man
