In reviewing the history and manners of the Hindus he repeatedly expresses his sympathy, more or less directly, with their aversion from the coarser living of the West:--
“The Hindus, in embracing the doctrine of the _Metémpsychosis_, had one restraint the more. The dread of killing a father or mother, in killing men and other animals, inspired in them a terror of murder and every other violence, which became with them a second nature. Thus all the peoples of India, whose families are not allied either to the Arabs or to the Tartars, are still at this day the mildest of all men. Their religion and the temperature of their climate made these peoples entirely resemble those peaceful animals whom we bring up in our sheep pens and our dove cotes for the purpose of cutting their throats at our good will and pleasure....
“The Christian religion, which these _primitives_ [the Quakers] alone follow out to the letter, is as great an enemy to bloodshed as the Pythagorean. But the Christian peoples have never practised _their_ religion, and the ancient Hindu castes have always practised theirs. It is because Pythagoreanism is the only religion in the world which has been able to educe a religious feeling from the horror of murder and slaughter....
“Some have supposed the cradle of our race to be Hindustan, alleging that the feeblest of all animals must have been born in the softest climate, and in a land which produces without culture the _most nourishing and most healthful fruits_, like dates and cocoa nuts. The latter especially easily affords men the means of existence, of clothing and of housing themselves--and of what besides has the inhabitant of that Peninsula need?... Our Houses of Carnage, which they call Butcher-Shops [_boucheries_], where they sell so many carcases to feed our own, would import the plague into the climate of India.
“These peoples need and desire pure and refreshing foods. Nature has lavished upon them forests of citron trees, orange trees, fig trees, palm trees, cocoa-nut trees, and plains covered with rice. The strongest man can need to spend but one or two sous a day for his subsistence.[162] Our workmen spend more in one day than a Malabar native in a month....
