Parts of the Lecture: Some Aspects of the Vegetarian Question (1)
Anna Kingsford
(…) Do we not find, as a matter of fact, that the more earnest and the more advanced a man is in the study and practice of wisdom, the simpler and the more frugal become his habits of diet? Cast your eye back on the biographical records of former times, whether biblical or secular, and you will find that the prophets, the seers, the miracle-workers, the saints, the students, the teachers, the philosophers whose great names make the glory of the Past, were men of exceeding temperance, often ascetics in regard to appetite.
Some persons will tell you that the Divine Founder of the Christian Church was a flesh-eater. The utmost they can show from gospel narrative is that He ate fish, and the obvious inference from several passages is against the supposition that He partook of meat in any grosser form. When hungry in the wilderness, it was with the suggestion of bread, and not of flesh, that the demon attempted to beguile His pure desires; when famished with long abstinence and travel, it was with the fruit of the fig-tree that He sought to satisfy His appetite.
But the closing act of His life was one of such deep significance and interest to Vegetarians that I cannot avoid noticing it here. Surely it is at least remarkable that the memorial and type of His mission to the world should have been bequeathed under the emblems of unleavened bread and wine mingled with water. We know that the Jews were accustomed to celebrating the Passover by eating the flesh of a lamb, and this lamb has always been regarded as the type of the Messiah.
It might, therefore, have been naturally expected that this same Messiah, celebrating this identical paschal feast, would have chosen the lamb before Him on the table as the type of Himself in time to come, and thus have perpetuated the use of the ancient symbol in the Church which was about to be instituted.
But instead, we find Him consecrating a cake of unfermented meal as his sacramental representative. But instead of this innocent victim, Jesus of Nazareth lays His hand upon a loaf of unleavened grain, and on a cup of unfermented wine, and these He gives to His apostles as the regenerating and bloodless food of the future Church – His legacy to the new-born brotherhood – fittest token and symbol of the gentle morality He advocated, and of the pure and simple aspirations He taught. “This,” says He, “is My Body, and this My Blood. These are the untainted elements from whence I draw my perfect Being, my wondrous power and vitality. This is the mysterious meat of which ye knew not; these the aliments on which ye also ought to support your lives. Henceforward eat and drink these in memory of your Master.”
Thus His last act is to restore to the world a pure dietary, and, dismissing the barbarisms of the past, to assure His disciples that the age of slain victims and of paschal lambs should yield in the wiser hereafter to a more spiritual dispensation. “Who so eateth this bread and drinketh of this cup for his sustenance shall never see death.” There is, rightly, a far more literal meaning in these words of Christ’s than theologians are apt to fancy.
Passing from religious to economic considerations, we may notice, first, a very general objection raised with regard to Vegetarianism which we may represent by the query: “What will become of us if we do not kill and eat other creatures? Shall we not be ourselves eaten by them?” In the first place I reply: “The animals at present used for human food are artificially bred. Cease to breed them.” And in the second place I would observe that there are many creatures which are not used for food which, nevertheless, do not increase to any appreciable, still less to any injurious, extent. Do we think we run any risk of being devoured by badgers, beavers, squirrels, dogs, weasels, hedgehogs, cats, or horses? Or of being pecked to death by robins, wrens, or titmice? Have we not even great difficulty in obtaining horses and other beasts of burden at reasonable prices, although these creatures are never killed for food, save by a few fanatics in Paris? It seems, indeed, that nature is so regulated as to prevent the undue multiplication of any one kind of animal, and that only a fixed and limited number of each species is permitted to exist.
Again, it is not in the least probable that the whole world, or even the members of one nation, or the population of one city, will be converted to Vegetarianism simultaneously. The adoption of a purer system of diet will be a gradual process among us. Therefore, those creatures which are now reared artificially will have ample time to decrease gradually in number as the demand for their flesh gradually lessens and ceases.
Most of these animals too, let us recollect, are not indigenous to our climate, but have been at a remote period imported from distant parts of the globe: the ox probably from Oriental countries, the sheep from Africa. That stupidity and docility of manner which we must all have noticed as peculiar to these beasts, and which is frequently remarked upon as a proof that they were created to be our prey, result from the circumstances of their unnatural and domesticated state, and is by no means characteristic of their tribe.
Every art which tends to make the poor cow and sheep more helpless and useless to themselves has been adopted by man; and if we are to look for these creatures in their natural condition, we must seek them in the wilds of Tartary, or in the deserts of Africa. Among the captive descendants of the wild kine there have been so many changes wrought by civilisation as strangely to disguise their true nature. Those enfeebled and indolent animals which we see in our fields and streets are a degenerate race, trained by the hand of man, and propagated merely to pamper his vitiated appetites. Nature shows nothing so stupid, so inert, so defenceless.
Stand awhile in any one of our pasture-meadows and observe the sheep. He is a large mass of flesh, supported on four small straight legs, ill-fitted for carrying such a burden. His movements are awkward, he is easily fatigued, and frequently sinks under the weight of his own corpulence. And, in proportion as these marks of human transformation become more numerous and observable, the creature becomes more helpless and stupid. Oxen and sheep which batten upon very fertile lands become fat and entirely feeble, those that lack horns being the most dull and heavy, while those whose fleeces are longest and finest are most subject to disease. In short, whatever changes have been wrought upon these unfortunate brutes by man, are entirely calculated for imagined human advantage and not for that of the creatures themselves. It would require a succession of ages to restore the ox or the sheep to its primitive condition of strength and activity so as to match in point of perfection its compeers of wild or forest.
Sometimes, again, we are told by our opponents that if the whole nation, or any considerable portion of it, were to become Vegetarian, we should not, in our latitude, be able to produce fruits and vegetables in sufficient quantity to meet the demand for food. But imagine all the miles of English pasture and sheep-runs converted into orchards, gardens, and grain fields; imagine the pig-styes, cattle sheds, and pens giving place to fragrant vineyards and fruit-houses! Will anyone be hardy enough to say we should not then have enough to eat and to spare?
Mr. W.R. Greg, in a paper upon population and the prospects of the world in view of the ever-rapidly increasing tide of human life on the earth, observes:
It is obvious that, in view of the adoption of vegetable diet, there lies the indication of a vast possible increase in the population sustainable on a given area.”
Once more: there is a favourite argument brought against us on the score of the human teeth. People like to assume that they have carnivorous teeth – the teeth of the lion, the wolf, or the tiger. Well, if our opponents have such teeth, it is because they have developed them by habit through successive generations, just as many other abnormal characteristics of body have been developed in all manner of creatures by means of long-continued custom.
It really happens, however, that the human cuspids (or canine teeth, as they are erroneously called) do not bear the slightest resemblance to those of the carnivorous animals, and it is on the shape and formation of these cuspids that the whole argument of the advocates of flesh-eating depends. In the human jaw there is no space between the opposite teeth for receiving the cuspids, as in the jaws of all carnivorous animals. And in the jaws of the horse, camel, and other individuals of the herbivorous tribes, the canines are considerably longer in proportion to the other teeth than they are in the human jaw; therefore, these creatures must be held, if we are to be logical in our deductions, far more carnivorous than man.
Again, the teeth of the orang-outang, which is frugivorous in its habits, bear a much greater likeness to those of the flesh-eating animals than the teeth of man; so that it is evident our race is farther removed by nature from the carnivora than is the race of apes, which more nearly resembles us. Let anyone who is still troubled with doubts on this subject examine the jaws of his dog and compare them honestly with his own. He will not find in his mouth the uneven, sharp-pointed incisors, or the projecting tusks of his dumb favourite; but, on the contrary, he will observe that his teeth are short, broad, and blunt, closely adjoining one another like those of the deer and kine.
Thomas Bell, in a work entitled The Anatomy, Physiology, and Diseases of the Teeth, remarks that the formation of the human jaw and teeth, as well as the character of all the organs and limbs of man, class him indubitably among the frugivorous animals. Such also is the opinion of Roget, Broussonet, Ray, Sir E. Home, Baron Cuvier, Linnaeus, Gassendi, Sylvester Graham, Professor Lawrence, and other eminent and learned physiologists and natural philosophers.
But, again, we have the witness of instinct on our side. We hear a vast deal about the infallible and sacred character of instinct. Theologians appeal to the natural instinct of man as a proof that he is a religious animal; and, apart from Revelation, it is on human instinct that they rely as the chief assurance of immortality. Let us inquire, then, in what direction instinct leads us with regard to our choice of food.
Man under his noblest aspects is compassionate, gentle, unselfish, benign; he has a horror of injustice and of bloodshed; he abhors cruelty. If he sees any creature in pain or distress, he instantly conceives it is his duty to assist and relieve it. His spirit is moved to indignation at the sight of oppression or tyranny. He feels that war is a lamentable barbarism, and endeavours, accordingly, to settle international disputes by means of arbitration. Carnage and the odour of death occasion him the deepest repugnance. He is a peacemaker, and he believes that title constitutes his highest claim to be called a child of God.
How absurd and inconsistent to suppose that such a being as this ought to feed like a beast of prey! How ridiculous to invest him with the sanguinary desires of the tiger or the vulture! If the appetite for flesh were a true instinct in man, he would share the savage disposition of the carnivora; it would be a pleasure to him to kill and tear his victim, and the sight of blood would be an agreeable titillation to his hunger.
The carnivorous tribes delight in slaughter because slaughter is normal to their nature. But civilised man, on the contrary, has so great an aversion to bloodshed and to the sight of death, that he is apt to shudder on passing a butcher’s stall, to quicken his steps, and to thank Heaven that he does not belong to so repulsive a trade. He employs other people of coarser organisation than himself, men who are the helots of modern times, to slaughter victims for his use; and when, finally, their limbs are brought to his table, prepared by the art of cookery, he further disguises the taste and appearance of them with unwholesome sauces, fiery condiments, poisonous seasonings, and fantastic garnishes.
How I should like to compel all flesh-eating men and women to kill their own meat! Conceive the delicate lady of the period going out, knife in hand, to slaughter her victims for the next day’s dinner! Imagine the clergyman, whose mission it is to preach mercy and benevolence, taking his poleaxe from the shelf and sallying forth to his cattle-shed intent on taking innocent life! What a vulgar picture! What a coarse and indelicate conception! Quite so! But this is just what would be natural enough if human instincts were really carnivorous.
Observe the little child, – for in childhood you have the nature of man in its purest and most uncorrupted state. I lately saw a little girl weep bitterly for hours and refuse all consolation because a favourite rabbit had been killed for the mid-day meal. Let such training continue, and by and by that child will become hardened by habit, depraved by contact with a world which lives amiss, and be no longer moved by the sweet impulses of pity.
(…) Every flesh-eater is guilty, not only of shedding innocent blood at the hands of his helot, but is guilty also of causing the degradation and pollution of a human soul. The depravity and insensibility of the butcher rest upon the purchaser, who is morally responsible for retaining in a debased condition the intellect of a fellowman.
I confess, indeed, that I cannot perceive what logical basis for the support of the flesh-eating doctrine is left to those who affirm the wisdom of the Creator or who desire the progress of civilisation. For it follows, if the consumption of flesh be natural and necessary to man, that God must have intended his bodily appetite to do continual violence to his spiritual instincts, since he must, at the same time, have implanted in the human heart a love of gentleness and an aspiration after purity and divine benevolence, while obliging the human organisation to subsist by deeds of carnage.
Such a supposition is, in the last degree, derogatory to the wisdom of God, since it maintains Him to have perpetrated a stupidity and inconsistency which the most simple of us can readily perceive. And because civilisation, with its concomitants of education, refinement, and morality, must certainly tend to increase the benignity of the human race, the opponents of Vegetarianism ought reasonably to advocate our return to a state of barbarism, so the growing aversion to bloodshed might diminish among us, and the old ardour for battle and rapine return to the heart of mankind.
Not unfrequently, too, we are fated to hear the beautiful argument – “Animals must have been intended for the food of man; else, why were they created at all?” It really is very preposterous that man should imagine everything he beholds has been designed solely for his consumption! Are there not scores and scores of creatures which live, and move, and die around us, of which we cannot make, and have never attempted to make, any use as food? Are there not innumerable mineral and vegetable poisons throughout nature which we do not conceive ourselves in any way bound to consume? Is no creature to have a right to life for life’s sake except ourselves? Nothing to exist but for our gratification?
We have already observed that those creatures which men are accustomed to eating are not by any means such as God created them: man has degenerated and enfeebled them for his own ends. Obviously, therefore, the wild ox was no more created to be eaten by man than the rhinoceros or the river-horse. It would be much more logical to assert that the human races were created to be the prey of lions, bears, panthers, tigers, or wolves, which are certainly carnivorous animals, than to presume that sheep and oxen were designed to be victims for us, who are furnished with teeth and internal organs suitable for vegetable diet.
(…) There are persons found, usually among the ranks of ordinary medical practitioners, who may be heard to declare, with much assurance, that the principles of nutrition found in vegetables differ in character from the fibrin, albumen, and casein of animal food, and that only animal food imparts muscle and strength to the human body.
But the experiments of Liebig, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Boussingault, and other distinguished chemists have established, beyond possibility of doubt, the fact that animal and vegetable substances are identical in fibrin, albumen, and casein, and that both contain precisely the same amount of azotised principle.
Moreover, vegetable diet is incontestably superior to flesh-tissue in point of purity, for the latter is often tainted or diseased in consequence of the unnatural state in which creatures bred for slaughter are habitually kept, the cramped, confined, and ill-ventilated spaces allowed them for exercise, and the unwholesome aliments on which they are fed in order to induce that abnormal deposit of fat which, though deemed a delicacy, is really a diseased condition of body.
All of us are familiar enough, for example, with the sight and smell of a pig-stye. Many breeders of pigs feed their beasts upon every filthy substance that comes to hand – old sour wash, slops, the entrails of oxen and other offal. The flesh of hogs thus raised is sold for healthy pork. But even if pigs are cleanly fed and reared more expensively, it would still be better not to rear them at all. It is a very great wrong that a quantity of precious grain, which would be wholesome and nutritious as food for man, should annually be converted into poisonous hog-grease, which contains no nourishing element, and which corrupts the blood, vitiates the mind, and disorders the system of the consumer.
Apart from these considerations, it is obvious that all cattle driven to market, and conveyed thither by rail or steamship, must be more or less disordered. The terror, the blows, the foul air, the fatigue, the maddening thirst these poor, animals experience during their transit, all tend to set up an abnormal and feverish condition of body; the blood becomes inflamed, the secretions disturbed, the system suffers exhaustion and irritation, and the result is febrility and diseased tissue. Indeed, nothing less could be expected.
But while on the subject of animal disorders, I should like to draw your attention to a few significant particulars connected with it. Did you ever reflect how strange a thing it is that man, the master of creation, appears, more than any other creature, to be the prey of disease and premature death?
Wild animals rarely suffer from disease; they die of old age, or by accident. Oxen and sheep and other domesticated beasts are more frequently disordered, but the proportion and variety of even their complaints is not to be compared to those of man. For the truth is, as I once heard a preacher say, that every creature, except man, and those unfortunate animals whom man has seduced, obeys the will of God and fulfils its nature. Man suffers disease because he has sinned. “God made him upright,” says a wise writer, “but men have sought out many inventions.” And it is one of Nature’s most remarkable laws that the children must bear the iniquity of the fathers.
Nothing is able to save a man from the transgressions of his ancestors. Ages ago, our progenitors forsook the course of diet prescribed for them by Nature, and forgot that original command of Divine wisdom, “Behold, I give you every herb which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis 1:29)
How impious to assert that the food which Divine appointment selected for man is inadequate for his sustenance, unsuited to his organisation! Yet this is the foolish and irreverent idea which man conceived, and upon which he acted. And Nature, who forgives nothing, has visited the crime upon every successive generation. The predisposition to such diseases as gout, consumption, or heart complaint, is usually an inheritance from parents or ancestors who have violated the most obvious conditions of hygiene.
Nevertheless we go on, year after year, in the same vicious excesses, indulging our palates with improper food, and compelling our innocent babes to partake of the same nauseous diet, till they, too, learn to like and to crave for it. Thus our whole systems have become vitiated, easily disturbed, the prey of all manner of maladies; and recent years have added incalculably to the mischief by building up, upon this basis of flesh-diet, a culinary code of luxurious living which will, by and by, be the ruin of England, as it was in old times the ruin of the Roman Empire.
All simplicity, all healthfulness, have disappeared from our mode of cooking; every viand of which we partake is disguised alike in name and appearance, and the very praise and glory of kitchen art seems to consist in making the taste and the look of any particular dish as unlike its original component elements as possible.
Glancing over a fashionable cookery-book the other day, I lighted on a string of “ménus” for family dinners. I could not recognise in the catalogue of soups, meats, and puddings furnished a single English name, not could I form the least notion of the appearance or taste of a single article! Fortunes are expended in these days over the preparation of a lunch, a breakfast, or a supper, not to mention the fabulous sums lavished on civic or on royal dinners. The entertainment lately given to the Shah of Persia, at the Guildhall, is estimated to have cost forty thousand pounds. With such statistics as this before us, what can we hope for the health prospects of the rising generation?
Luxury and gluttony have their record in every newspaper we take up, in every fashionable chronicle or advertisement that comes to hand. English men and women cannot meet in committee, nor assist a charity, nor join in a religious service, without supplementing the act with inordinate eating and drinking. In old times, even in the age of our grandparents, flesh-meat once a day used to be considered sufficient. But the people of our generation, in the same class of life, accustom themselves to hot meat breakfasts, and to the same diet at lunch and dinner. Thus the history of the world repeats itself, and the rebuke which Horace applied to the Romans of his time is verified of us also: “The age of our fathers hath produced us still more wicked, hereafter to leave a posterity more vicious still.”
(…) A young lady with whom I am acquainted recently engaged herself to a struggling lieutenant with scanty means. All her friends exclaimed against the absurdity and folly of the proceeding. “How are the butcher’s bills to be paid with two hundred a year,” they cried, “and meat a shilling a pound?” But a Vegetarian brother of mine observed very gravely, “If only they knew how to live, two hundred a year would amply suffice them.”
But we shall be told, perhaps, that in cold climates like our own, flesh-meat is necessary to sustain the heat of our organisation. Chemistry will inform you that vegetable diet is, at least, quite as rich in heat-forming principle as animal food, and for proof the querist may be referred to the evidence afforded by the contrasted habits of the Finns and Lapps dwelling in the same bleak latitude. The former live upon grain, the latter on flesh. And as a result the Finns are strong, vigorous, well-grown men, while the Lapps, on the contrary, are stunted and diminutive.
(…) Only a few weeks ago I had a short conversation with a clever and well-informed clergyman of the English Church, who is also a classical master at one of our chief public schools. He told me that he had just been preaching a sermon at the school-chapel upon the Christian duty of kindness to animals. He gave me his sermon, in manuscript, and we commented on it together. I remarked: “As far as it goes, I think the advice you give most excellent; but in my opinion it does not reach far enough.” “No,” returned he, with great honesty; “I admit your logic. When I had finished my sermon I felt that, to carry my argument to its true conclusions, I ought to have recommended abstinence from flesh as food. It sounds foolish and inconsistent to warn boys of the wickedness of teasing or robbing a few wild birds and animals, while tacitly admitting the propriety of shedding the blood of any number of creatures daily in order to gratify a selfish appetite. I know I have been illogical, but everybody else is the same. It would never do to preach Vegetarianism in the pulpit: I should have my bishop down on me!”
(…) St John the Baptist was a notable example of Vegetarianism; the locust-plant of the East and the honey of the wild bee supplying all his needs. And after St Paul, or almost contemporary with him, lived St Matthew the Evangelist, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Antony, Hilarion, Martin of Tours, Ambrose of Milan, Benedict, Francis Xavier, Catherine of Sienna, Dominic, Theresa, Bernard the Great, Gregory, Aphratus, Serapion, Genevieve, Columba, Charles Borromeo, Philip Neri, Alphonsus, Ignatius, all of them rigid abstainers from flesh, besides an army of hermits, Fathers of the Desert, and principals of ecclesiastical orders.
And, in more modern times, we count among the ranks of Vegetarians such men as Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Richard Phillips, Dr. Lambe, Ritson, Haller, Howard, Swedenborg, and the reformer Wesley; while among the wise thinkers and teachers of heathen times, Pythagoras, the philosopher, was eminent in condemning the use of flesh as food, and his practice and opinions were also those of Zeno, Diogenes, Plato, Plutarch, Proclus, Apollonius of Tyana (a seer and a worker of miracles); Porphyry, Plautus, and many others.
Surely we cannot suppose that all these Christian saints and famous philosophers erred throughout their lives; or that a solitary expression of apostolic opinion in one Epistle is to be taken as outweighing and condemning the belief and practice of so many good and wise persons; to say nothing of the direct contradiction which the passage in question offers to many other texts throughout the Scriptures of much higher and Diviner authority.
I shall, therefore, beg you to reflect that, although it is right to regard sacred writings with every reverence, they ought not, by any means, to be understood as containing all that God has to say to the world and to our souls. God has not ceased to exist, nor is His voice silenced. As in old times He spoke to our race by the lips of men of poetic or prophetic genius, so also He yet speaks in the wonderful language of Science.
Every truth which comes to light is God’s truth, and to nothing but error can it be dangerous. Little by little, as the world is able to bear it, God uncovers the splendour of His divine face. Every new discovery in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, geology, or any other branch of learning, is a word of God, as truly and as powerfully as though it were the utterance of a Daniel or of a St John. “I have many things to say unto you,” quoth the Messiah, “but ye cannot bear them now. But when the Spirit of Truth cometh, He shall lead you into all truth.” (John, 16:12-28)
Yes, the world must be led towards the light, step after step, and by slow degrees. Does not the very word “lead” convey to our apprehension the sense of gradual approach? Therefore, to those wise and philosophic minds who stand before their brothers in the great army of advancing humanity, does the Divine Mind reveal, continually, more and more of itself; inspiring them with the burning desire to enlighten others, and, so doing, to rise into still closer union with the pure spirituality they covet. For the God of the Holy Scriptures is also the God of Nature; and, since it is impossible for God to contradict Himself, these two must agree, and must be equally divine.
Whatever, therefore, we find to be the teaching of science, we must accept with perfect and entire reverence as being the true Word of God. Science is the Apocalypse of To-Day, the revelation vouchsafed to the present age. Not alone in the leaves of a printed volume, the text of which has undergone many vicissitudes and translations, many losses, additions, and interpolations, and the intentions of which often lie hid in obscure orientalisms, parables, and enigmas – not alone in the pages of our Jewish and Christian Scriptures, does the Voice of God address us, but far more clearly, majestically, and forcibly in the living Nature around us.
His Word is written on star, and plant, and stone. He speaks to us in the thousand voices of the earth, bidding us aspire ever upward towards the perfect day; bidding us rise through sphere after sphere, hating and casting from our ascending spirits the garment spotted by the flesh. He bids us to abstain from the pollution of blood, and revert to the original purity in which we were created, for thus only can we hope again to make our world a Paradise. Then the dream of Isaiah will be realised, and the Kingdom of God shall come in its fulness:
“The wolf shall dwell with the kid, and the leopard shall lie down with the lamb; and the calf, and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall lead them. They shall not hurt, nor shall they kill in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea.” (Isaiah, 11:6-9)
Vainly, to-day, we dream of universal peace – vainly we talk about abolishing war among nations, while we are still content to live like brutes of prey. As long as men feed like tigers, they will retain the tiger’s nature. Universal peace will be impossible until man abjures the diet of blood.
Thus, I regard Vegetarianism as the ultimate and the only means of the world’s redemption. Even the commonest and most popular conception of the condition of things which will obtain under the immediate reign of Christ precludes the anticipation of bloodshed. Then, as Isaiah says in another of his prophecies:
“He that killeth an ox shall be, in the sight of the Lord, as if he slew a man.” (Isaiah, 66:3)
Therefore, let us rid ourselves as soon as we may of the absurd fancy that science and the instincts of humanity are less holy or less venerable than the text of Scripture. We shall yet see the day when no imaginary distinction will be drawn between so-called sacred and so-called secular knowledge. All knowledge is equally sacred. Nature can unfold nothing to us but God.
Whatever theory, whatever aspiration receives the sanction of science, and the approval of virtue, is, undoubtedly, the inspiration of the Father of Spirits, demanding our ready and perfect obedience to its dictates.
And I know that at some distant day, now, indeed, perhaps very remote, the message we preach in a corner will become the religion of great nations. To us, meanwhile, it belongs to inaugurate the Golden Age with words of entreaty and appeal, whose spirit and whose burden shall be these:
(Poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
NOTE
A lecture given by Anna Kingsford, reprinted from The Ideal in Diet: Selections from the Writings of Anna Bonus Kingsford.