If we seek the historical origin of anti-kreophagist philosophy, it is to the Pythagorean School, in the later development of the Platonic philosophy especially, that the western world is indebted for the first systematic enunciation of the principle, and inculcation of the practice, of anti-materialistic living--the first historical protest against the _practical_ materialism of every-day eating and drinking. How Christianity, which, in its first origin, owes so much to, and was so deeply imbued with, on the one hand, Essenian, and, on the other, Platonic principles, to the incalculable loss of all the succeeding ages, has failed to propagate and develope this true and vital spiritualism--in spite, too, of the convictions of some of its earliest and best exponents, an Origen or Clemens, seems to be explained, in the first instance, by the hostility of the triumphant and orthodox Church to the “Gnostic” element which, in its various shapes, long predominated in the Christian Faith, and which at one time seemed destined to be the ruling sentiment in the Church; and, secondly, by the natural growth of materialistic principles and practice in proportion to the growth of ecclesiastical wealth and power; for, although the virtues of “asceticism,” derived from Essenism and Platonism, obtained a high reputation in the orthodox Church, they were relegated and appropriated to the ecclesiastical order (theoretically at least), or rather to certain departments of it.
Such was what may be termed the sectarian cause of this fatal abandonment of the more spiritual elements of the new Faith, operating in conjunction with the corrupting influences of wealth and power. As regards the _humanitarian_ reason of anti-materialistic living, the failure and seeming incapacity of Christianity to recognise this, the most significant of all the underlying principles of reformation in Diet--the cause is not far to seek. It lay, essentially, in the (theoretical) depreciation of, and contempt for, _present_ as compared with _future_ existence. All the fatal consequence of this theoretical teaching (which yet has had no extensive influence, even in the way it might have been supposed to act beneficially), in regard to the status and rights of the non-human species, has been well indicated by a distinguished authority. “It should seem,” writes Dr. Arnold, “as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life, and placing the lower beings out of the pale of hope [of extended existence], placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of [other] animals in the light of our fellow-beings. Their definition of _Virtue_ was the same as that of Paley--that it was good performed for the sake of ensuring everlasting happiness; which, of course, excluded all the [so-called] brute creatures.”[1] Hence it comes about that Humanitarianism and, in particular, Humane Dietetics, finds no place whatever in the religionism or pseudo-philosophy of the whole of the ages distinguished as the _Mediæval_--that is to say, from about the fifth or sixth to the sixteenth century--and, in fact, there existed not only a negative indifferentism, but even a positive tendency towards the still further depreciation and debasement of the extra-human races, of which the great doctor of mediæval theology, St. Thomas Aquinas (in his famous _Summa Totius Theologiæ_--the standard text book of the orthodox church), is especially the exponent. After the revival of reason and learning in the sixteenth century, to Montaigne, who, following Plutarch and Porphyry, reasserted the rights of the non-human species in general; and to Gassendi, who reasserted the right of innocent beings to life, in particular, among philosophers, belongs the supreme merit of being the first to dispel the long-dominant prejudices, ignorance, and selfishness of the common-place teachers of Morals and Religion. For orthodox Protestantism, in spite of its high-sounding name, so far at least as its theology is concerned, has done little in _protesting_ against the infringement of the moral rights of the most helpless and the most harmless of all the members of the great commonwealth of Living Beings.