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Episode 5 - Greater Strength · Vegetarianism and Occultism

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  Section five greater strength. Fourth, because men are stronger and better on a
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  vegetarian diet. I know that people say you will be so weak if you
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  do not eat dead flesh. As a matter of fact, this is untrue.
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  I do not know whether there may be any people who find themselves weaker
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  on a diet of vegetables. But I do know this that in many athletic
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  contests recently, the vegetarians have proved themselves the strongest and the most enduring,
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  as for example, in the recent cycling races in Germany, where all those
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  who took high places in the race were vegetarian. There have been many such
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  trials, and they show that other things being equal, the man who takes
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  pure food succeeds better. We have to face facts, and in this case
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  the facts are all ranged on one side, as against foolish prejudices and loathsome
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  lust on the other. The reason was plainly given by doctor J. D.
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  Craig, who writes, vigor of the body is often boasted by flesh
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  eaters, particularly if they live mostly in the open air. But there is
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  peculiarity about them, and they have not the endurance of vegetarians. The reason
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  of this is that flesh meat is already on the downward path of retrograde change,
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  and as a consequence, its presence in the tissues is of short duration.
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  The impetus given to it in the body of the animal from which it
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  was taken is reinforced by another impulse in the second one, and for these
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  reasons what energy it does contain is soon given out, and there are urgent
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  demands for more to take its place. The flesh eater then may do a
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  large amount of work in a short time. If well fed, he soon
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  gets hungry, however, and when so becomes weak. On the other hand,
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  vegetable products are of slow digestion. They contain all of the original store
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  of energy and no poisons. Their retrograde change is less rapid than meat having
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  just commenced, and therefore their forces release more slowly with less loss, and
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  the person nourished by them can work for a long time without food, if
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  necessary, and without discomfort. The people in Europe who abstain from flesh are
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  of the better and more intelligent class, and the subject of endurance has been
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  approached and thoroughly investigated by them. In Germany and England, a number of
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  notable athletic contests that required endurance have been made between flesh eaters and vegetarians,
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  with the result that the vegetarian has invariably come off victorious. We shall find,
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  if we investigate, that this fact has been innown for a long time,
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  for even in ancient history we find traces of it. It will be
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  recollected that of all the tribes of Greeks, the strongest and the most enduring,
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  by universal admission and reputation, were the Spartans, and the simplicity of
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  their vegetable diet is a matter of common knowledge. Think two of the Greek
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  athletes, those who prepared themselves with such care for participation in the Olympian and
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  Ismian Games. If you will read the classics, you will find that these
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  men, who in their own lines surpassed all the rest of the world,
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  lived upon figs, nuts, cheese, and maize. Then there were the
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  Roman gladiators, men on whose strength depended their life and fame. And yet
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  we find that their diet consisted exclusively of barley, cakes and oil. They
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  knew well that this was the most strengthening food. All these examples show us
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  that the common and persistent fallacy that one must eat flesh in order to be
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  strong, has no foundation. In fact, indeed, the exact contrary is
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  true. Charles Darwin remarked in one of his letters, the most extraordinary workers
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  I ever saw. The laborers in the mines of Chili live exclusively on vegetable
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  food, including many seeds of laguminous plants. Of the same miners, Sir
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  Francis Head writes, it is usual for the copper miners of central Chili to
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  carry loads of ore of two hundred pounds weight up eighty perpendicular yards twelve times
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  a day, and their diet is entirely vegetarian. A breakfast of figs and
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  small loaves of bread, a dinner of boiled beans, and a supper of
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  roasted wheat. Mister F. T Wood, in his discoveries at Ephesus Rites,
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  the Turkish porters in Smyrna often carry from four hundred to six hundred pounds
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  weigh on their backs, and the captain one day pointed out to me one
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  of his men who had carried an enormous bale of merchandise weighing eight hundred pounds
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  up and incline into an upper warehouse, so that with this frugal diet,
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  their strength was unusually great. Of these same Turks, Sir William Fairbaron has
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  said, the Turk can live and fight where soldiers of any other nationality would
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  starve. His simple habits, His abstinence from intoxicating liquors and his normal vegetarian
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  diet enable him to suffer the greatest hardships and to exist on the scantiest and
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  simplest of foods. I myself can bear witness to the enormous strength displayed by
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  the vegetarian Tamil Cooley's of the South of India. For I have frequently seen
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  them carry loads which astonished me. I remember, in one case, standing
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  upon the deck of a steamer and watching one of these coolies take a huge
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  case upon his back and walked slowly but steadily down a plank to the shore
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  with it and deposited in a shed. The captain standing by me remarked with
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  surprise why it took four English laborers to get that case on board in the
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  docks at London. I have also seen another of these coolies, after having
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  had a great piano put on his back, carry it unaided for a considerable
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  distance. Yet these men are entirely vegetarian, for they live chiefly upon rice
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  and water, with perhaps occasionally a little tamarind for flavoring. On the same
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  subject, doctor Alexander Haig, whom we have already quoted, writes, the
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  effect of getting free from uric acid has been to make my bodily powers quite
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  as great as they were fifteen years ago. I scarcely believe that even fifteen
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  years ago I could have undertaken the exercise in which I now indulge with absolute
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  impunity, with freedom from fatigue and distress at the time, and from stiffness
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  next day. Indeed, I often say that it is impossible now to tire
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  me, and relatively I believe this is true. This distinguished physician became a
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  vegetarian because from his study of the diseases caused by the presence of uric acid
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  in the system, he discovered that flesh eating was the chief source of this
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  deadly poison. Another interesting point which he mentions is that his change of diet
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  brought about in him a distinct change of disposition, that whereas he found himself
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  constantly nervous and irritable, he now became much steadier and calmer, and less
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  angry. He fully realized that this is due to the change in his food.
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  If we require any further evidence, we have it close to our hand
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  in the animal kingdom. We shall observe that there the carnivora are not the
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  strongest, but that all the work of the world is done by the herbivora,
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  by horses, mules, oxen, elephants, and camels. We do
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  not find that men can utilize the lion or the tiger, or that the
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  strength of these savage flesh eaters is at all equal to that of those who
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  assimilate directly from the vegetable kingdom. End of Section five.