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A VINDICATION OF NATURAL DIET.

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

A NEW EDITION.

     "Our simple life wants little, and true taste
     Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
     The scene it would adorn, and therefore still
     Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill."

     _Epipsychidion._

LONDON: F. PITMAN, 20, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MANCHESTER: JOHN HEYWOOD, RIDGEFIELD; AND OFFICES
OF THE VEGETARIAN SOCIETY, 75, PRINCESS STREET.
1884.




PREFATORY NOTICE.


Shelley's "Vindication of Natural Diet" was first written as part of the
notes to "Queen Mab," which was privately issued in 1813. Later in the
same year the "Vindication" was separately published as a pamphlet, and
it is from this later publication that the present reprint is made. The
original pamphlet is now exceedingly scarce, but it is said to have been
reprinted in 1835, as an appendix to an American medical work, the
"Manual on Health," by Dr. Turnbull, of New York. Two copies only are
known to have been preserved of this excessively rare pamphlet, though
possibly others may be hidden in unfrequented libraries and out of the
way country houses. One copy is in the British Museum, and the other is
in the possession of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, who has reprinted it in his
great edition of Shelley, where it forms the opening part of the second
volume of the "Prose Works."

The main object of Shelley's pamphlet was to show that a vegetable diet
is the most _natural_, and therefore the best for mankind. It is not an
appeal to humanitarian sentiment, but an argument based on individual
experience, concerning the intimate connection of health and morality
with food. It has no claim to originality in the arguments adduced; its
materials being avowedly drawn from the works of Dr. Lambe and Mr.
Newton, of whom an account may be read in Mr. Howard Williams' "Catena,"
but the style is Shelley's own, and the pamphlet is in many ways one of
the most interesting and characteristic of his prose works. Perhaps its
most remarkable feature is to be found in the very pertinent remarks as
to the bearing of Vegetarianism on those questions of economy and social
reform, which are now forcing themselves more and more on the attention
of the English people.[1]


At the time of writing his "Vindication of Natural Diet," Shelley had
himself, for some months past, adopted a Vegetarian diet, chiefly, no
doubt, through his intimacy with the Newton family. There seems no
reason to doubt that he continued to practise Vegetarianism during the
rest of his stay in England, that is from 1813 to the spring of 1818.
Leigh Hunt's account of his life at Marlow, in 1817, is as
follows:--"This was the round of his daily life. He was up early,
breakfasted sparingly, wrote this 'Revolt of Islam' all the morning;
went out in his boat, or in the woods, with some Greek author or the
Bible in his hands; came home to a dinner of vegetables (for he took
neither meat nor wine); visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless,
whom others gave Bibles to and no help; wrote or studied again, or read
to his wife and friends the whole evening; took a crust of bread or a
glass of whey for his supper, and went early to bed."

In 1818, he left England for Italy, and during his last four years, the
most dreamy and speculative period of his life, he seems to have been
less strict in his observance of Vegetarian practice. It is not true
however, as has sometimes been asserted, that Shelley lost faith in the
principles of Vegetarianism; for his change in diet was owing partly to
his well-known carelessness about his food, which became more marked at
this time, and partly to a desire to avoid giving trouble to the other
members of his household, which, as we see from a line in his letter to
Maria Gisborne, written in 1820, "Though we eat little flesh and drink
no wine" was not entirely a Vegetarian one. Yet, even at this period of
his life, he himself was practically, if not systematically, a
Vegetarian, for all his biographers agree in informing us that bread was
literally his "staff of life." We cannot doubt that if he had lived in
the present time he would have taken a leading part in the movement
towards Food Reform. As it is, he has left us an invaluable legacy in
his "Vindication of Natural Diet," perhaps the most powerful and
eloquent plea ever put forward in favour of the Vegetarian cause.

He found in this the presage of his ideal future. To his enthusiastic
faith in the transforming effect of the Vegetarian principle, we owe
some of the finest passages in his poetry. In the close of the eighth
canto of "Queen Mab," we have a picture of a time when man no more


     Slays the lamb that looks him in the face.


It is the same ideal of bloodless innocence as that of Israel's
prophet-poet, who declares that in the Holy Mountain they shall not hurt
nor destroy. Never did sage or singer, prophet or priest, or poet, see a
brighter vision of the future than that which is imaged in the
description of a glorified earth, from which cruelty, bloodshed, and
tyranny, have been banished.


     "My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing
     Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing
     O'er the ripe corn. The birds and beasts are dreaming.
       Never again may blood of bird or beast
       Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,

     To the pure skies in accusation steaming;
       Avenging poisons shall have ceased
         To feed disease and fear and madness;
           The dwellers of the earth and air
         Shall throng around our steps in gladness,
           Seeking their food or refuge there.
     Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,
     To make this earth, our home, more beautiful;
     And Science, and her sister Poesy,
     Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!"

            *       *       *       *       *

     Over the plain the throngs were scattered then
       In groups around the fires, which from the sea
     Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen
       Blazed wide and far. The banquet of the free
       Was spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree;
     Beneath whose spires which swayed in the red flame
       Reclining as they ate, of liberty,
     And hope, and justice, and Laone's name,
     Earth's children did a woof of happy converse frame.

     Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,
       Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles
     In the embrace of Autumn. To each other
       As when some parent fondly reconciles
       Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles
     With her own sustenance; they relenting weep:--
       Such was this festival, which, from their isles
     And continents and winds and oceans deep,
     All shapes might throng to share that fly or walk or creep.


That this was no mere poetic sentiment is proved by this pamphlet, which
is an earnest vindication of Vegetarianism.

H. S. S.
W. E. A. A.


[ORIGINAL TITLE PAGE.]


A VINDICATION OF NATURAL DIET.

BEING ONE IN A SERIES OF NOTES TO QUEEN MAB

(A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM).

[Greek: Iapetionide, panton peri medea eidos,
Chaireis pur klepsas, kai emas phrenas eperopeusas;
Soit' auto mega pema kai andrasin essomenoisi.
Toisd'ego anti puros doso kakon, o ken apantes
Terpontai kata thumon, eon kakon amphagapontes.]

[Greek: ESIOD.] Op. et Dies. 1, 54.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. CALLOW, MEDICAL BOOKSELLER, CROWN COURT,
PRINCE'S STREET, SOHO,
BY SMITH & DAVY, QUEEN STREET, SEVEN DIALS.
1813.

_PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE._




A VINDICATION OF NATURAL DIET.


I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man
originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that
of the universe of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable
mystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The
weight of evidence in favour of each of these suppositions seems
tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument
which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of
nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some distant period man
forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of
his being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have
also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with
which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve
eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath
of God, and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation
than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton
was so well aware of this, that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam
the consequence of his disobedience:--


                    ... Immediately a place
     Before his eyes appeared: sad, noisome, dark:
     A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid
     Numbers of all diseased: all maladies
     Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
     Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
     Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs;
     Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs,
     Daemoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
     And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
     Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
     Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.


And how many thousands more might not be added to this frightful
catalogue!

The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally
admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained.
Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to
Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that
grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says, that, before the time of
Prometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a
vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like
sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general was this opinion,
that Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes:--


     Audax omnia perpeti,
     Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas,
     Audax Iapeti genus
     Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit,
     Post ignem aetherea domo
     Subductum, macies et nova febrium
     Terris incub