every tender influence, and is painfully jarred by that which is coarse.
To such, fruits and delicately flavoured and easily digested foods are
doubtless best and conducive to purity and clearness of thought. A
coarse-grained, badly poised, roughly working body and spirit, is
non-responsive except to loud or coarse impulses; and such a one's
appetite is gratified, not by simple but by coarsely seasoned foods.

A person who is accustomed to a stimulating dietary of flesh-foods,
especially if well-seasoned, finds a simple diet unsatisfying. Should such
persons dine off simple vegetarian food, there is a tendency to
over-eating. The less stimulating food fails to rouse the digestive organs
and to appease the appetite; although an ample supply of nourishment be
consumed. This is the reason why so many imagine that it is necessary to
eat a larger quantity of food if it be vegetable. Should a distressing
fulness and flatulence result from their over-feeding, they lay the blame
to the vegetarian dietary instead of to themselves. Most persons, on
changing to a vegetarian dietary, commence by imitating flesh dishes in
appearance and flavour and even in the names. There is the additional
inducement that the food may be attractive and palatable to friends who
lack sympathy with the aesthetic and humane principles of the diet. After
a while many of them incline to simpler flavoured foods. They revert to
the unperverted taste of childhood, for children love sweets, fruits, and
mild-flavoured foods rather than savouries. One who loves savouries, as a
rule, cares much less for fruits. By compounding and cooking, a very great
variety of foods can be prepared, but the differences in taste are much
less than is usually, supposed. The effect of seasoning instead of
increasing the range, diminishes it, by dulling the finer perception of
flavours. The predominating seasoning also obscures everything else. The
mixture of foods produces a conglomeration of tastes in which any
particular or distinct flavours are obscured, resulting in a general