It Is True, Before The Dawn Of The Arts Among Them, Before The Invention Of Nets, And Before The Cultivation Of Potatoes, The Means Of Subsistence May Have Been More Difficult, But Then The Number Of Inhabitants Must Likewise Have Been Infinitely Smaller.

Single instances are not conclusive in this case, though they prove how far the wants cf the body may stimulate mankind to extraordinary actions.

In 1772, during a famine which happened throughout all Germany, a herdsman was taken on the manor of Baron Boineburg, in Hessia, who had been urged by hunger to kill and devour a boy, and afterwards to make a practice of it for several months. From his confession, it appeared, that he looked upon the flesh of young children as a very delicious food; and the gestures of the New Zealanders indicated exactly the same thing. An old woman, in the province of Matogrosso, in Brazil, declared to the Portuguese governor, M. de Pinto, afterwards ambassador at the British court, that she had eaten human flesh several times, liked it very much, and should be very glad to feast upon it again, especially if it was part of a little boy. But it would be absurd to suppose from such circumstances, that killing men for the sake of feasting upon them, has ever been the spirit of a whole nation; because it is utterly incompatible with the existence of society. Slight causes have ever produced the most remarkable events among mankind, and the most trifling quarrels have fired their minds with incredible inveteracy against each other. Revenge has always been a strong passion among barbarians, who are less subject to the sway of reason, than civilized people, and has stimulated them to a degree of madness, which is capable of all kinds of excesses. The people who first consumed the body of their enemies, seem to have been bent upon exterminating their very inanimate remains, from an excess of passion; but, by degrees, finding the meat wholesome and palatable, it is not to be wondered at that they should make a practice of eating their enemies as often as they killed any, since the action of eating human flesh, whatever our education may teach us to the contrary, is certainly neither unnatural nor criminal in itself. It can only become dangerous as far as it steels the mind against that compassionate fellow-feeling, which is the great basis of society; and for this reason, we find it naturally banished from every people as soon as civilization has made any progress among them. But though we are too much polished to be cannibals, we do not find it unnaturally and savagely cruel to take the field, and to cut one another's throats by thousands, without a single motive, besides the ambition of a prince, or the caprice of his mistress! Is it not from prejudice that we are disgusted with the idea of eating a dead man, when we feel no remorse in depriving him of life?

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 219 of 461
Words from 113353 to 113855 of 239428