Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages: Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

a period in the world's history, when all will be comparatively well formed and beautiful. Beauty is exceedingly influential, as every one must have observed who has been long in the world; at least, if he has had his eyes open. And it is probably right that it should be so. Our beauty is almost as much within our control, as a race, as our conduct. A vegetable diet, moreover, promotes and preserves a clearness and a generally healthful state of the mental faculties. I believe that much of the moral as well as intellectual error in the world, arises from a state of mind which is produced by the introduction of improper liquids and solids into the stomach, or, at least, by their application to the nervous system. Be this as it may, however, there is nothing better for the brain than a temperate diet of well-selected vegetables, with water for drink. This Sir Isaac Newton and hundreds of others could abundantly attest. It also favors an evenness and tranquillity of temper, which is of almost infinite value. The most fiery and vindictive have been enabled, by this means, when all other means had failed, to transform themselves into rational beings, and to become, in this very respect, patterns to those around them. If this were its only advantage, in a physiological point of view, it would be of more value than worlds. It favors, too, simplicity of character. It makes us, in the language of the Bible, to remain, or to become, as little children, and it preserves our juvenile character and habits through life, and gives us a green old age. Finally and lastly, it gives us an independence of external things and circumstances, that can never be attained without it. In vain may we resort to early discipline and correct education--in vain to moral and religious training--in vain, I had almost said, to the promises and threatenings of heaven itself, so long as we continue the use of food so unnatural to man as the flesh of animals, with the condiments and sauces, and improper drinks