(2) Separately, however, he forbade the most contemplative of philosophers, and who have arrived at the summit of philosophic attainments, the use of superfluous and unjust food, and ordered them never to eat any thing animated, nor in short, to drink wine, nor to sacrifice animals to the Gods, nor by any means to injure animals, but to preserve most solicitously justice towards them. And he himself lived after this manner, abstaining from animal food, and adoring altars undefiled with blood. He was likewise careful in preventing others from destroying animals that are of a kindred nature with us, and rather corrected and instructed savage animals through words and deeds, than injured them through punishment. And farther still, he also injoined those politicians that were legislators to abstain from animals.

For as they wished to act in the highest degree justly, it is certainly necessary that they should not injure any kindred animal. Since, how could they persuade others to act justly, if they themselves were detected in indulging an insatiable avidity by partaking of animals that are allied to us? For through the communion of life and the same elements, and the mixture subsisting from these, they are as it were conjoined to us by a fraternal alliance. He permitted, however, others whose life was not entirely purified, sacred and philosophic, to eat of certain animals; and for these he appointed a definite time of abstinence. These therefore, he ordered not to eat the heart , nor the brain ; and from the eating of these he entirely prohibited all the Pythagoreans.

For these parts are of a ruling nature, and are as it were certain ladders and seats of wisdom and life. But other things were considered by him as sacred on account of the nature of a divine reason. Thus he exhorted his disciples to abstain from mallows , because this plant is the first messenger and signal of the sympathy of celestial with terrestrial natures. Thus, too, he ordered them to abstain from the fish melanurus ; for it is sacred to the terrestrial Gods. And also not to receive the fish erythinus , through other such like causes. He likewise exhorted them to abstain from beans , on account of many sacred and physical causes, and also such causes as pertain to the soul. And he established as laws other precepts similar to these, beginning through nutriment to lead men to virtue.

(1) Since, however, nutriment greatly contributes to the best discipline, when it is properly used, and in an orderly manner, let us consider what Pythagoras also instituted as a law about this. Universally, therefore, he rejected all such food as is flatulent, and the cause of perturbation, but he approved of the nutriment contrary to this, and ordered it to be used, viz. such food as composes and compresses the habit of the body. Hence, likewise, he thought that millet was a plant adapted to nutrition. But he altogether rejected such food as is foreign to the Gods; because it withdraws us from familiarity with the Gods. Again, according to another mode also, he ordered his disciples to abstain from such food as is reckoned sacred, as being worthy of honor, and not to be appropriated to common and human utility. He likewise exhorted them to abstain from such things as are an impediment to prophesy, or to the purity and chastity of the soul, or to the habit of temperance, or of virtue. And lastly, he rejected all such things as are adverse to sanctity, and which obscure and disturb the other purities of the soul, and the phantasms which occur in sleep. These things therefore he instituted as laws in common about nutriment.

(9) With respect to what is called desire, these men are said to have asserted as follows: That desire indeed, itself, is a certain tendency, impulse, and appetite of the soul, in order to be filled with something, or to enjoy something present, or to be disposed according to some sensitive energy ; but that there is also a desire of the contraries to these, and this is a desire of the evacuation and absence, and of having no sensible perception of certain things. That this passion likewise is various, and is nearly the most multifarious of all those that pertain to man. But that many human desires are adscititious, and procured by men themselves. Hence this passion requires the greatest attention, and no casual care and corporeal exercise.

For that the body when empty should desire food, is natural: and again, it is also natural, that when filled, it should desire an appropriate evacuation. But to desire superfluous nutriment, or superfluous and luxurious garments or coverlids, or habitations, is adscititious. They also reasoned in the same manner concerning furniture, vessels, servants, and cattle subservient to food. And universally, with respect to human passions, they are nearly things of such a kind, as to be nowhere permanent, but to proceed to infinity. Hence attention should be paid to youth from the earliest period, in order that they may aspire after such things as are proper, may avoid vain and superfluous desires, and thus be undisturbed by, and purified from, such-like appetites, and may despise those who are objects of contempt, because they are bound to [all-various] desires.

But it must be especially observed, that vain, noxious, superfluous, and insolent desires subsist with those who have the greatest power. For there is not any thing so absurd, which the soul of such boys, men, and women, does not incite them to perform. In short, the variety of food which is assumed, is most manifold. For there are an infinite number of fruits, and an infinite multitude of roots, which the human race uses for food. It likewise uses all-various kinds of flesh; and it is difficult to find any terrestrial, aerial, or aquatic animal, which it does not taste. It also employs all-various contrivances in the preparation of these, and manifold mixtures of juices. Hence it properly follows that the human tribe is insane and multiform, according to the motion of the soul, for each kind of food that is introduced into the body, becomes the cause of a certain peculiar disposition.

(3) Man's bodily needs are simple, being comprised under three heads: food, clothing, and a dwelling place; but the bodily desires which were implanted in him with a view to procuring these are apt to rebel against reason, which is of later growth than they. Accordingly, as we saw above, they require to be curbed and restrained by the divine laws promulgated by the prophets.

(30) And there is a great Matter for us to see in the several Meats which God forbid them, especially Swine's Flesh, whose Source [Quality or Property] will not subsist in the Fire, but affords only a Stink; and so it does also in the Fire of the Soul, which reaches [or stirs] the Originality of the first Principle; from whence the first Principle (in the Soul) stinks [or makes and it makes the Gates of the Breaking-through [into the Light] swelled, [thick, misty, fumy,] and dark: For the Soul is also a Fire, which burns; and if it receives such a P Source, [Quality, or Property,] then that darkens it the more, and burns in the Vapor, like a Flash [of Lightening,] as may be seen in the Fat of Swine; for which Cause God did forbid it them.

(79) Or if by tasting it should fall into a desire and longing to eat that which is not of the quality of the body, or is none of its own; as mother Eve in Paradise fell a longing to eat of the devil's crabapples, and did eat thereof; such stirring in lust the council also rejecteth.

(2) Before ere man sinned was the Sensuality so obedient unto the Will, unto the which it is as it were servant, that it ministered never unto it any unordained liking or grumbling in any bodily creature, or any ghostly feigning of liking or misliking made by any ghostly enemy in the bodily wits. But now it is not so: for unless it be ruled by grace in the Will, for to suffer meekly and in measure the pain of the original sin, the which it feeleth in absence of needful comforts and in presence of speedful discomforts, and thereto also for to restrain it from lust in presence of needful comforts, and from lusty plesaunce in the absence of speedful discomforts: else will it wretchedly and wantonly welter, as a swine in the mire, in the wealths of this world and the foul flesh so much that all our living shall be more beastly and fleshly, than either manly or ghostly.

(15) In this very way we exist in this world, like fish. The adversary spies on us, lying in wait for us like a fisherman, wishing to seize us, rejoicing that he might swallow us. For he places many foods before our eyes (things) which belong to this world. He wishes to make us desire one of them and to taste only a little, so that he may seize us with his hidden poison and bring us out of freedom and take us into slavery. For whenever he catches us with a single food, it is indeed necessary for us to desire the rest. Finally, then, such things become the food of death.