Did We Eat One Another?
There is no doubt of it. The unwelcome truth
has long been suppressed by interested parties who
find their account in playing sycophant to that self-satisfied
tyrant Modern Man; but to the impartial
philosopher it is as plain as the nose upon an
elephant's face that our ancestors ate one
another. The custom of the Fiji Islanders,
which is their only stock-in-trade, their only
claim to notoriety, is a relic of barbarism; but
it is a relic of our barbarism.
Man is naturally a carnivorous animal. This
none but greengrocers will dispute. That he was
formerly less vegetarian in his diet than at present,
is clear from the fact that market-gardening
increases in the ratio of civilization. So we
may safely assume that at some remote period Man
subsisted upon an exclusively flesh diet. Our
uniform vanity has given us the human mind as
the ne plus ultra of intelligence, the human face
and figure as the standard of beauty. Of course
we cannot deny to human fat and lean an equal
superiority over beef, mutton, and pork. It is
plain that our meat-eating ancestors would think
in this way, and, being unrestrained by the mawkish
sentiment attendant upon high civilization, would
act habitually upon the obvious suggestion.
À priori,
therefore, it is clear that we ate ourselves.
Philology is about the only thread which connects
us with the prehistoric past. By picking up and
piecing out the scattered remnants of language, we
form a patchwork of wondrous design. Oblige us
by considering the derivation of the word “sarcophagus,”
and see if it be not suggestive of potted
meats. Observe the significance of the phrase
“sweet sixteen.” What a world of meaning lurks
in the expression “she is sweet as a peach,” and
how suggestive of luncheon are the words “tender
youth.” A kiss itself is but a modified bite, and
when a young girl insists upon making a “strawberry
mark” upon the back of your hand, she only
gives way to an instinct she has not yet learned to
control. The fond mother, when she says her babe
is almost “good enough to eat,” merely shows that
she herself is only a trifle too good to eat it.
These evidences might be multiplied ad infinitum;
but if enough has been said to induce one human
being to revert to the diet of his ancestors, the
object of this essay is accomplished.
