Selected quad for the lemma: life_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
life_n	eat_v	flesh_n	meat_n	7,845	5	9.0841	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35532	Selēnarhia, or, The government of the world in the moon a comical history / written by that famous wit and caveleer of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac ; and done into English by Tho. St Serf, Gent.; Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune. English	Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619-1655.; St. Serfe, Thomas, Sir, fl. 1668.	1659 (1659)	Wing C7719; ESTC R18714	59,111	189

another time be contented with what 's their own I know that by this Apology I have choak'd all the old fathers but let them remember they vvere children before they vvere fathers and that it is impossible but that I have spoke extreamly to their advantage since they were not found under a Cabbage But in fine whatsoever happens and though my Enemies should range themselves in battalia against my friends it can be but well for me for I have obliged all men and have disobliged but the half At these vvords he held his tongue and our Landlords son began in this manner Permit me said he since by your care I am instructed in the Original History Customes and Philosophy of the World of this little man to add something to what you said and that I may prove that children are not obliged to their fathers for their Generation because that they were obliged in Conscience to get them The most strict Philosophy of their World confesses that it is more advantageous to die since to die you must have liv'd then to have had no being then not to give a being to that Nothing were worse then giving death I am more faulty in not peoducing it then in killing it if it were produced Yet my little man thou wouldst beleeve it an unpardonable parricide to strangle thy son really it would be enormous but it is much more execrable not to give a being to what can receive it For that child thou deprivest of light for ever would have had the satisfaction of enjoying it some while Nay and we know that it is deprived but for some ages but those poor forty Nothings of which thou mayest have made forty good Souldiers for thy King thou maliciously deprivest of life and suffer'st them to corrupt in thy reins with the hazard of an Apoplexy which will be thy death But this did not at all satisfie me which I witnessed with three or four shakes of my head But our Teacher held his tongue for our supper was ready to fly away We did then stretch our selves upon soft quilts covered with great carpets and a young serving-man having taken the oldest of our Philosophers did conduct him into a little parlour apart from whence my Spirit begg'd him to come assoon as he had ended his meal This fancy of eating apart inspired me with the curiosity of demanding the cause he will neither accept the smell of meat nor herbs if they doe not die of themselves beleeving them sensible of pain I do not so much wonder said I that he abstains from flesh and all things that have a sensitive life for in our World the Pythagoreans nay and some holy Anchorites use this rule but for example not to dare to cut a Cabbage for fear of hurting it seems very ridiculous to me But I answered my Spirit finde a great deal of Reason in this opinion For that Cabbage which you spoke of had it not as well as you an existent being in Nature And is she not mother to you both Nay and it seems she hath more necessarily provided for the vegetable then the rational since she hath remitted the Generation of a man to the capriciousness of his father and can according to his pleasure get him or not get him a rigor with which she hath not treated the Cabbage for instead of remitting it to the will of the father to generate the son as if she had more feared the loss of the Cabbages species then that of man she constrains them whether they will or no to give a being to one another and not like men who do fantastically generate when the freak takes them and who in their life-time surpass not the number of above twenty whereas each Cabbage can produce forty thousand And yet we tickle our selves with the imagination that nature is more affected to Mankinde then to this Cabbage being incapable of passion she can neither love nor hate any thing but if she were susceptible of love she would rather affect this Cabbage which you know cannot offend her then man who would destroy her if he could to which you may add that man cannot be born guiltless being a member of the first Criminal but we know that the first Cabbage did not offend his Maker Now if you will say that we were formed ad Imaginem Dei which the Cabbage is not which grant it be true we have blotted out that likeness in our Souls wherein we resemble him since there is nothing so contrary to God as sin Now if our Soul be no longer his Image we are not more like him in our hands feet mouth forehead and ears then the Cabbage is in its leaves flowers stalk pith or head Doe not you really beleeve that if that poor Plant could speak it would say Man my dear Brother what have I done to thee to merit death I onely grow in gardens nor am I ever found in desert places where I may live in security I disdain all other societies but thine and I am scarce in thy garden when to shew thee my complacency I blow I stretch out my arms to thee and I offer thee my children in grace and for the requital of my courtesie thou makest my head to be cut off These are the discourses a Cabbage would hold if it could express its meaning What and because he cannot complain may we justly doe him all the wrong he cannot resist If I find a miserable man bound may I kill him because he cannot defend himself Quite contrary his weakness would aggravate my cruelty and though this poor Creature be disrobed of all our advantages yet it deserves not death and of all the gifts of being it hath but that of increase which we cruelly deprive it of the sin of massacring a man is not so great because one day he must revive as that of cutting a Cabbage who can never hope another life You annihilate the Cabbage in cutting of it and in killing a man you doe but change his mansion Nay I 'le say more since God doth equally cherish all his works and that he hath equally divided his favours between us and Plants we ought to have an equal esteem for them as our selves It is true we were first born but in Gods family there is no birth-right and if the Cabbage share not with us in the blessing of immortality it hath certainly something else to recompense the shortness of it being may be it is an Universal Intellect or a perfect knowledge of all things in their Causes For which cause the Wise Director of all things hath not given them Organs like ours who have but a simple reasoning weak and often deceitful But others more ingeniously framed stronger and more numerous which serve for the operation of their speculative entertainments May be you will ask me when they ever communicated to us any of those high thoughts But then tell me who ever taught us certain Essences which we admit

Jessemin he told me when he saw that I wondered at this magnificence that those were the Beds of that Country In fine we coucht each of us in his Cabin and assoon as I was stretcht upon my flowers I perceived by the light of about 30 Glow-worms which were inclosed in a Cristal Charon makes use of no other candles those 3 or 4 boys who had disrobed me for supper one of which began to tickle my feet th' other my thighs another my flanks the other my arms and all with such delicate wantonness that in a moment sleep had mastered me The morning beams had not wakened me before they propitiously had lighted my guide to my chamber who entring said I will keep my promise with you of treating you more solidly at your Break-fast then last night At these words I rose and he conducted me by the hand by the garden of the house where one of the children waited our coming with an Engine in his hand much like our fowling-peeces he ask'd my guide if I would have a dozen of Larks because Baboons whereof he beleeved me one nourisht themselves with that sort of meat I had scarce answered Yes when our Fowler discharged his peece and twenty or thirty Larks ready rosted fell at our feet Slife there is a Proverb with us cryed I straight of a Countrey where Larks fall ready rosted sure the author came from hence Well Sir doe you eat these people have the wit to mingle with their shot and powder a certain composition which kills plumes ready rosted seasons the foul I gathered some with which upon his word I made bold and really in all my life time I never eat any thing more delicious After this Break-fast we prepared for our journey and with a thousand mops and mews which they use when they would testifie any great affection our Landlord received a peece of paper from my Guide I askt him if it were an obligation for the payment of our reckoning he answered me No for he owed him nothing and that those were verses How verses said I are the Inn-keepers here very curious of Rhymes Sir said he it is the money of this countrey and the expence that we made here amounted to a Stanza of six verses which I now paid him I did not fear over-shooting our selves in the reckoning for though we should here Epicurize a week together we could not spend a Sonnet and I have four about me with two Epigrams 2 Odes and an Eclogue I wish to God said I it were so in our Countrey I know many an honest Poet that is ready to starve and would make good chear if they might pay the treat in this money I then askt him if those verses would always serve if they were transcribed he answered me No and continued in this manner The author having composed them goes to the Mint where the sworn Poets of the Kingdom hold their places there these versifying officers put the compositions to the proof and if they be judged good Metal they tax them not according to their prizes that is a Sonnet is not always worth a Sonnet but according to the merit of the piece so that when any one starves it is a sign he is a block-head for people of wit make good chear I admired in an extrasie the judicious policy of that countrey and he proceeded in this sort There are others that keep taverns at anothergessrate then there for when one is going from them they demand according to the proportion of the expences an acquittance for the next World which when one hath given them they write in a great Register which they call the accounts of the great day in this manner Item the value of so many verses delivered such a day to such a one who is at the sight of this acquittance to pay me out of the first cash he hath and when they finde themselves in danger of death they chop these Registers into pieces and so swallow them for they beleeve if they were not thus digested they would be of no use to them This entertainment put no obstacle to our making way my guide going on all four and I bestriding him I will no more particularize the adventures of our Journey but in fine we arrived at the Town where the King makes his residence I was no sooner arrived but I was conducted to the Court where the Grandees receiv'd me with more moderate admirations then the people had done as I past in the streets but they as well as the people concluded that I was the female of the Queens little Animal which my guide interpreted to me and yet he himself did not understand this AEnigma and knew not what that little Animal of the Queens might be But we were both quickly satisfied for the King after having a while considered me commanded it to be brought forth and half an hour after I perceived amongst a troop of Monkeys and Apes who handed his Ruffe Cloak and Breeches a little man entring almost like to my self for he went upon two leggs as soon as he beheld me he accosted me with a Criado de Vuestra Merced and I retorted his salute almost in the same terms But alas they no sooner saw us tattle together but beleeved they had guest right and it was impossible this conjecture should have a better success for he of the Spectators that made the most favourable construction of us protested that our conversation was a grumbling which our natural instant meeting together made us mutter This little man told me he was an European native of Old-Castile and that he had found a means by Birds to arrive at the Moon where we then were and being fallen into the Queens hands she had taken him for an Ape for as Fortune would have it they cloath their Apes in that Countrey in Spanish cloathes and finding him at his arrival in that habit she doubted not but that he was of the same kind You may even as well say answered I that having try'd all fashion'd cloaths upon them they found none so ridiculous as those and for that reason they accoutre them in this sort since these Animals are entertained but for divertisement This shews said he that you know not our Nation in favour of which the Universe produceth men to afford us slaves and for whom Nature cannot engender any thing but subjects of laughter After which he entreated me to tell him how I durst adventure to scale the Moon with the Engine I had told him of I answered him that it was because he had prevented my journey with the Birds I intended to use he gravely smil'd at this Rallery and the King about a quarter of an hour after commanded the Ape-keepers to lead us back again with an express order to make the Spaniard and me lie together that we might multiply our species in his Kingdom They exactly executed his Majesties commands of which I was very joyful that I