Certain foods, then, are generally abjured, not merely because they excite disgust, or as the case may be, because they have a disagreeable taste, but also from utilitarian considerations. To the instances just mentioned may be added the custom prevalent among the Tonga Islanders of setting a temporary prohibition or taboo on certain eatables in order to prevent them from growing scarce.109 But the most important prudential motive underlying the general restrictions in diet is no doubt fear lest the food should have an injurious effect upon him who partakes of it. The harm caused by it may only be imaginary; indeed, forbidden food is commonly regarded as unwholesome, whatever be the original ground on which it was prohibited.110 The Negroes of the Loango Coast say that they abstain from goat-flesh because otherwise their skin would scale off, and from fowl so as not to lose their hair.111 Some tribes of the Malay Peninsula refuse to eat the flesh of elephants under the pretext that it would occasion sickness.112 The tribes inhabiting the hills of Assam think that “the penalty for eating the flesh of a cat is loss of speech, while those who infringe a special rule forbidding the flesh of a dog are believed to die of boils.”113 The worshippers of the Syrian goddess maintained that the eating of sprats or anchovies would fill the body with ulcers and wither up the liver.114 In Russia veal is considered by many to be very unwholesome food, and is entirely rejected by pious people.115 It is not probable that these ideas are in the first instance derived from experience; but there can be no doubt that fear of evil consequences is in many cases a primary motive for the abstinence from a certain kind of food. Mr. Im Thurn supposes that the Guiana Indian avoids eating the flesh of various animals because he thinks they are particularly malignant.116 Animals that present some unusual or uncanny peculiarity are rejected because they are objects of superstitious fear. The Egyptian priests, we are told, did not eat oxen which were twins or which were speckled, nor animals that had only one eye.117 The North American Indians of the South-Eastern States abstained from all birds of night, believing that if they ate them they would fall ill.118 Another cause of rejecting the flesh of certain animals is the idea that anybody who partook of it would at the same time acquire some undesirable quality inherent in the animal.119 The Záparo Indians of Ecuador “will, unless from necessity, in most cases not eat any heavy meats such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, &c., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them also unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility and unfitting them for the chase.”120 For a similar reason the ancient Caribs are said to have refrained from turtles;121 and some North American Indians state that in former days their greatest chieftains “seldom ate of any animal of gross quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a dullness through the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves with proper vigour in their martial, civil, and religious duties.”122 The Namaquas of South Africa, again, pretend not to eat the flesh of the hare, because they think it would make them as faint-hearted as that animal.123 Among the Kafirs only children may eat hares, whereas the men partake of the flesh of the leopard in order to get its strength.124 Among some other peoples the hare is forbidden food,125 possibly owing to a similar superstition. The blood of an animal is avoided because it is believed to contain its life or soul. We meet with this custom in several North American tribes,126 as well as in the Old Testament;127 and from the Jews it passed into early Christianity.128

The general abstinence from certain kinds of food has thus sprung from a great variety of causes. Of these I have been able to point out only some of the more general and obvious. As Sir J. G. Frazer justly remarks, to explain the ultimate reason why any particular food is prohibited to a whole tribe or to certain of its members would commonly require a far more intimate knowledge of the history and beliefs of the tribe than we possess.129 Even explanations given by the natives themselves may be misleading, since the original motive for a custom may have been forgotten, while the custom itself is still preserved. But I think that, broadly speaking, the general avoidance of a certain food may be traced to one or several of the following sources: its disagreeable taste; disgust caused, in the case of animal food, either by the external appearance of the animal, or by its unclean habits, or by sympathy, or by associations of some kind or other, or even by the mere fact that it is commonly abstained from; the disinclination to kill an animal for food, or, generally, to reduce the supply of a certain kind of victuals; the idea, whether correct or false, that the food would injure him who partook of it. From what has been said in previous chapters it is obvious that any of these factors, if influencing the manners of a whole community and especially when supported by the force of habit, may lead not only to actual abstinence but to prohibitory rules the transgression of which is apt to call forth moral disapproval. This is particularly the case at the earlier stages of culture, where a people’s tastes and habits are most uniform, where the sway of custom is most powerful, where instinctive aversion most readily develops into moral indignation, and where man in almost every branch of action thinks he has to be on his guard against supernatural dangers. And in this, as in other cases of moral concern, the prohibition may easily be sanctioned by religion, especially when the abstinence is due to fear of some mysterious force or quality in the thing avoided. The religious aspect assumed particular prominence in Hebrewism and Brahmanism. It is said in the ‘Institutes of Vishnu’ that the eating of pure food is more essential than all external means of purification; “he who eats pure food only is truly pure, not he who is only purified with earth and water.”130 The Koran forbids the eating of “what is dead, and blood, and flesh of swine, and whatsoever has been consecrated to other than God.”131 Mediæval Christianity prohibited the eating of various animals, especially horses, which were not used as food in the South of Europe, but which the pagan Teutons sacrificed and ate at their religious feasts.132 The idea that it is “unchristian” to eat horseflesh has survived even to the present day, and has, together with the aversion to feeding on a pet animal, been responsible for the loss of enormous quantities of nourishing food. Among ourselves the only eatable thing the partaking of which is generally condemned as immoral is human flesh. But there are a considerable number of people who think that we ought to abstain from all animal meat, not only for sanitary reasons, but because man is held to have no right to subject any living being to suffering and death for the purpose of gratifying his appetite.

On similar grounds vegetarianism has been advocated as a moral duty among Eastern races, as also in classical antiquity. The regard for life in general, which is characteristic of Taouism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism,133 led to the condemnation of the use of animals as food. It is a very common feeling among the Chinese of all classes that the eating of flesh is sensual and sinful, or at least quite incompatible with the highest degree of sincerity and purity.134 In Japan many persons abstain from meat, owing to Buddhistic influence.135 In India animal food was not avoided in early times; the epic characters shoot deer and eat cows.136 Even in the sacred law-books the eating of meat is permitted in certain circumstances:—“On offering the honey-mixture to a guest, at a sacrifice and at the rites in honour of the manes, but on these occasions only, may an animal be slain.”137 Nay, some particular animals are expressly declared eatable.138 The total abstinence from meat is in fact represented as something meritorious rather than as a strict duty;139 it is said that “by avoiding the use of flesh one gains a greater reward than by subsisting on pure fruit and roots, and by eating food fit for ascetics in the forest.”140 But on the other hand we also read that “there is no greater sinner than that man who, though not worshipping the gods or the manes, seeks to increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings.”141 As a matter of fact, meat is nowadays commonly, though by no means universally, abstained from by high caste Hindus, whereas most low caste natives are only vegetarian when flesh food is not within their reach;142 and we are told that the views which many Hindus entertain of people who indulge in such food are not very unlike the opinions which Europeans have about cannibals.143 The immediate origin of these restrictions seems obvious enough. They were not introduced—as has been supposed—either as mere sumptuary measures,144 or because meat was found to be an aliment too rich and heavy in a warm climate,145 but they were the natural outcome of a system which enjoins regard for life in general and kindness towards all living beings. In the ‘Laws of Manu’ it is expressly said that the use of meat should be shunned for the reason that “meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss.”146 That the prohibition of eating animals resulted from the prohibition of killing them is also suggested by other facts. If Hindu Pariahs eat the flesh of animals which have died naturally, it “is not visited upon them as a crime, but they are considered to be wretches as filthy and disgusting as their food is revolting.”147 Buddhism allows the eating of fish and meat if it is pure in three respects, to wit—if one has not seen, nor heard, nor suspected that it has been procured for the purpose;148 and among the Buddhists of Burma even the most strictly religious have no scruples in eating the flesh of an animal killed by another person, “as then, they consider, the sin of its destruction does not rest upon them, but on the person who actually caused it.”149

Vegetarianism is, further, said to have been practised by the first and most learned class of the Persian Magi, who, according to Eubulus, neither slew nor ate anything animated;150 and many of the Egyptian priests are reported to have abstained entirely from animal food.151 In ancient legends we are told that the earliest men, who were pure and free from sin, killed no animal but lived exclusively on the fruits of the earth.152 In Greece the Pythagoreans opposed the killing and eating of animals, “as having a right to live in common with mankind,”153 or in consequence of their theory that the souls of men after death transmigrate into animals.154 According to Porphyry, a fleshless diet not only contributes to the health of the body and to the preservation of the power and purity of the mind, but is required by justice. Animals, he said, are allied to men, and he must be considered an impious person who does not abstain from acting unjustly towards his kindred.155

There still remains a group of restrictions in diet which call for our consideration, namely, such as refer to the use of intoxicating drinks, either only prohibiting immoderation or also demanding total abstinence.

Among a large number of peoples drunkenness is so common that it can hardly be looked upon as a vice by the community; on the contrary, it is sometimes an object of pride, or is regarded almost as a religious duty. An old traveller on the West African Gold Coast says that the natives teach their children drunkenness at the age of three or four years, “as if it were a virtue.”156 The Negroes of Accra, according to Monrad, take a pride in getting drunk, and praise the happiness of a person who is so intoxicated that he can hardly walk.157 In ancient Yucatan he who dropped down senseless from drink in a banquet was allowed to remain where he fell, and was regarded by his companions with feelings of envy.158 Among the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, who are otherwise a sober people, drunkenness forms a part of their religious festivals.159 So also in the hill tribes of the Central Provinces of India a large quantity of liquor is an essential element in their religious rites, and their acts of worship invariably end in intoxication.160 Of the Ainu in Japan we are told that “to drink for the god” is their chief act of worship; the more saké they drink the more devout they are, whereas the gods will be angry with a person who abstains from the intoxicating drink.161 The ancient Scandinavians regularly concluded their religious ceremonies with filling and emptying stoops in honour of their gods; and even after their conversion to Christianity they were allowed to continue this practice at the end of their services, with the difference that they were now required in their toast-drinking to substitute for the names of their false deities those of the true God and his saints.162 Of the Germans Tacitus states that “to pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one”;163 and this habit of intoxication the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, where it was nourished by a damp climate and a marshy soil. In the seventh and eighth centuries some efforts were made to check drunkenness on the initiative of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and Egbert, archbishop of York, and these exertions were supported by the kings from a political desire to prevent riots and bloodshed.164 The Penitentials tell us the tale of universal intemperance more effectively than any description of it could do. A bishop who was so drunk as to vomit while administering the holy sacrament was condemned to eighty or ninety days penance, a presbyter to seventy, a deacon or monk to sixty, a clerk to forty;165 and if a person was so intoxicated that, pending the rite, he dropped the sacred elements into the fire or into a river, he was required to chant a hundred psalms.166 A bishop or priest who persevered in the habit of drunkenness was to be degraded from his office;167 whilst single cases of intoxication, if accompanied by vomiting, incurred penance for a certain number of days—forty for a presbyter or deacon,168 thirty for a monk,169 fifteen for a layman.170 However, these rules admitted of exceptions: if anybody in joy and glory of our Saviour’s natal day, or of Easter, or in honour of any saint, vomited through being drunk, and in so doing had taken no more than he was ordered by his elders, it mattered nothing; and if a bishop had commanded him to be drunk he was likewise innocent, unless indeed the bishop was in the same state himself.171 If these attempts to encourage soberness produced any change for the better, it could only have been temporary; for some time afterwards intemperance was carried to its greatest excess through the practice and example of the Danes.172 Under the influence of the Normans, who were a more temperate race, drunkenness, for a time decreased in England; but after a few reigns the Saxons seem rather to have corrupted their conquerors than to have been benefited by their example.173 As late as the eighteenth century drunkenness was universal among all classes in England. It was then as uncommon for a party to separate while any member of it remained sober as it is now for any one in such a party to degrade himself through intoxication. No loss of character was incurred by habitual excess. Men in the position of gentlemen congratulated each other upon the number of bottles emptied; and it would have been considered a very frivolous objection to a citizen who aspired to the dignity of Alderman or Mayor that he was an habitual drunkard.174