It seems as if there were a certain justification for this belief. It is undoubtedly true that gluttony has never been confined to the beasts. In Taine's "History of English Literature," for instance, we find the following vivid picture of the voraciousness of our own ancestors, the Saxons:

"Huge, white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish flaxen hair; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese, heated by strong drinks; of a cold temperament, slow to love, homestayers, prone to brutal drunkenness. . . .

"They are more gluttonous, carving their hogs, filling themselves with flesh, swallowing down deep draughts of mead, ale, spiced wines, all the strong coarse drinks which they can procure, and so they are cheered and stimulated. . . .

"The ancient historians tell us that they had a great and coarse appetite. . . . Henry of Huntingdon, in the twelfth century, lamenting the ancient hospitality, says that the Norman kings provided their courtiers with only one meal a day, while the Saxon kings provided four. To shout, to drink, to caper about, to feel their veins heated and swollen with wine, to hear and see around them the riot of the orgy, this was the first need of the barbarians. The heavy human brute gluts himself with sensations and with noises."2

But after all, is it the workings of natural appetite that we see pictured here? Is it not rather greed - man's passionate desire to get, reinforced by his love of pleasure - manifesting itself in a wild celebration of its emancipation from the checks originally imposed upon it by nature?

It must be remembered that food was available to primitive man only in an extremely inacessible form, or at the expense of hard work. The berries, nuts, roots, grains, and saps upon which he was forced to subsist for long periods of time were often scarce, and furthermore, the nutriment had to be extracted from them by-means of a jaw treatment before which even a Fletcherite would quail. Animal food was even more difficult to obtain because of the inadequacy of the primitive weapons of the chase. The primitive man was restrained perforce from eating before the physical sensation of appetite had asserted itself, because, in the case of vegetable food, he never could get enough, and in the case of animal food, a feast was won only at the expense of exertion that in itself was sufficient to create an appetite. The perpetual scarcity of food implanted in the race those powerful impulses to eat as much as possible that we see surviving to-day in civilized man. When man's increasing power over nature gave him access to increasingly large quantities of food, it was inevitable that this old instinct, born of the time when he could never get enough and nourished by his desire for pleasure, should assert itself and lead him into excess.

2 H. A. Taine: "History of English Literature." Henry Holt and Company, New York.

However, the unbridled gratification of this impulse brought its own punishment.

Centuries of excess in eating imposed upon mankind, not only disease and premature old age, but the curse of satiety. When man fell into the practice of eating for pleasure alone, he found that his pleasure was gone. Now, therefore, he is beginning to learn that he can win back the old primitive delight in eating only by waiting for the old physical need for food. For the natural checks imposed upon the savage, he is beginning to substitute the checks of reason and intelligence. He has realized at last that he must ignore the promptings of greed and direct his attention solely to satisfying the physical sensations of true appetite. In doing this he has developed a new instinct, which, for want of a better name, may be called the instinct for physiological economy, since it manifests itself in a keen desire to save the body from the labor of taking care of unnecessary quantities of food.

In acquiring this instinct he has been helped greatly by the sense of taste. As natural appetite is man's surest guide as to when to eat, taste is his guide as to what and how much to eat. Taste, asserts Mr. Fletcher, is the infallible sign by which we may know that the body needs and can use the food we are sending into it. When food has no taste the body does not need it and cannot use it. When food tastes bad, it is bad.

"There is now no doubt," says Mr. Fletcher, "but that taste is evidence of a chemical process going on that should not be interrupted or transferred to the interior of the body.

"Taste is evidence of nutrition.

"Whatever does not taste, such as glass or stone, is not nutritious. "Taste is excited by the dissolving of food in the mouth, and while it lasts a neces-sary process of preparation for digestion is going on.

"The juices of the mouth have the power to transform any food that excites taste into a substance suitable for the body.

"Nothing that is tasteless, except water, should be taken into the stomach.

"If we swallow only the food which excites the appetite and is pleasing to the sense of taste, and swallow it only after the taste has been extracted from it, removing from the mouth the tasteless residue, complete and easy digestion will be assured and perfect health maintained.3

"Taste," he adds, "is the faithful servant of appetite; the sentinel of the stomach, of the intestines, of the tissues and of the brain, whose guidance and warning, if heeded, will give heretofore unknown enjoyment of eating, and at the same time perfect health and a maximum of strength.4

"How many men," asks Mr. Fletcher, "can honestly say that they taste their food? As a matter of fact, they taste the sauce and bolt their meat; they taste the butter and swallow their bread whole; they taste the sugar and their pie goes down at a gulp; as for liquids, it may be safely said that the average man never achieves so much as a speaking acquaintance with his drinks - his coffee, his tea, his high-balls, his cocktails, his wine and his beer. If he did - and this is no theory, but a well-authenticated fact - he would have no such thing as a tea or coffee habit, and he not only never would be, but never could be a drunkard. In order to give the monitor of the mouth a chance to do its work, the solid foods must be divided into small particles by the teeth, and both solids and liquids must pass slowly and in small quantities over the taste-buds on the tongue and both must be thoroughly saturated with saliva. This means mastication - not the 'thorough chewing' of parental command and medical advice - but mastication to a point of such completeness that the food is literally tasted out of existence and taken into the stomach by an involuntary swallowing impulse." 5

3 Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," pp. 109-110.

4 Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," pp. 152.

5 Frances Maule Björkman: The Scrap Book, New York, November, 1907.