You are What You Eat

In 1747, the French physician and philosophe Julien Offray de la Mettrie published a book entitled Man: A Machine  (L'Homme Machine). It is little known today, but in it La Mettrie proposed an idea we are very familiar with nearly 300 years later: You are what you eat. He argued human beings (and all living things) were machines, fueled by the digestion of food: 

"The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. It is the living image of perpetual movement. Nourishment keeps up the movement which fever excites. Without food, the soul pines away, goes mad, and dies exhausted ... But nourish the body, pour into its veins life-giving juices and strong liquors, and then the soul grows strong ... What power there is in a meal! Joy revives in a sad heart, and infects the souls of comrades." (Image: La Mettrie)

La Mettrie was a philosophical materialist. He held that everything in the universe was made up of matter. Spirit was a figment of overheated imaginations. Spirit did not exist, which meant no angels, no demons, no ghosts. The soul was merely the animating principle arising from matter, and animals as well as people had souls. 

La Mettrie conceded that God "might" exist but it didn't matter because He did not interfere in the world. Today, most people would call La Mettrie an atheist, and he did used that term to describe his position. He was also a hedonist. He argued that happiness was the sole purpose of life. People should indulge in pleasurable activities as much as possible, including eating fine food, drinking, and sex.

Atheism was a rare stance in even in the Enlightenment, but it had a long history. The Roman poet Lucretius espoused materialism. Some of La Mettrie's fellow philosophes advanced atheistic arguments, notably Baron d'Holbach and David Hume. (pictured below). But most of the philosophes, atheist or not, denounced La Mettrie's claim that hedonism should be the main goal of human life.

Other philosophes, called deists, rejected La Mettries's materialism. They argued that God definitely existed and had created a good world, but then left it to operate according to His benevolent natural laws. 

Deists and atheists alike fell afoul of religious and secular authorities. Deists were often denounced as atheists for rejecting key Christian doctrines. 

Like other philosophes, La Mettrie had to move about for his safety. He fled France to the more tolerant Netherlands. After the publication of Man: A Machine, things got too hot for him there. He found refuge in Prussia at the Court of Frederick the Great. Voltaire, perhaps the best known of the philosophes, also fled there in 1750.  (Images: Frederick and Voltaire)

But let's get back to eating. La Mettrie argued that the food one ate determined one's personality, disposition, intelligence, and behavior. Diet explained why some people were more savage than others: 

"Red meat makes animals fierce, and it would have the same effect on man. This is so true that the English who eat meat red and bloody, and not as well done as ours, seem to share more or less in the savagery due to this kind of food...."

As another example of how food effects behavior, La Mettrie related the story of a Swiss judge who "when he fasted, was a most upright and even a most indulgent judge, but woe to the unfortunate man whom he found on the culprit's bench after he had had a large dinner! He was capable of sending the innocent like the guilty to the gallows." 

Interestingly, modern studies of sentencing indicate the opposite: that judges tend to give more lenient sentences after eating and harsher ones when hungry. But either way, there seems to be a corelation between eating and sentencing.

Diet could even affect the intelligence of whole nations, according to La Mettrie. "One nation is of heavy and stupid wit, and another quick, light, and penetrating. Whence comes this difference, if not in part from the difference in foods....? 

La Mettrie was well versed in the science of his day, but his argument about food was hardly scientific. His evidence was anecdotal and stereotypical. 

Yet no one today would deny that diet can have enormous effects on mental and physical health. Medical and dietary science has linked poor diet to all kinds of illnesses and dangerous conditions. 

La Mettrie's death was utterly ironic. He died in 1751 of a gastric disorder, followed by a fever and delerium. Some versions say he ate a huge amount of a pheasant and truffle pate pie at one meal to show off how much he could consume. Others claim that the food that had gone bad. 

As he was dying, priests allegedly gathered in his room, hoping to get him to confess his faith in God. At one point, he cried out "Christ!" in his agony. The reverend fathers advanced eagerly towards his bed. Alas, he disappointed them. "It was just a manner of speaking," he said, smiling. 

Frederick the Great gave the eulogy at La Mettrie's funeral. He called him "a good devil and medic but a very bad author." A decidedly mixed encomium. 

The holiday season is upon us. Be careful what you eat. 

The Great Lisbon Earthquake and The Problem of Evil

The sun rose brightly on Lisbon on the morning of November 1, 1755, the Feast of All Saints. The sky was calm and clear. "There never was a finer morning seen," recalled an English visitor, Rev. Charles Daly. Nothing in the situation provided a hint of the imminent event that was about to reduce "this flourishing, opulent, and populous city to a scene of the utmost horror and desolation."

Shortly after 9:30, the Portuguese capital was struck by a massive earthquake, followed by a tsunami and widespread fires. This combination and aftershocks left much of the city and surrounding areas a heap of ruins. (Below: contemporary image of the Lisbon Earthquake)

In Lisbon, more than 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, or severely damaged, including palaces, convents, monasteries, and churches. The Opera House, completed only a few months before, was left a shell. 

The human cost was immense. The population of Lisbon in 1755 is estimated to have been around 200,000. Daly estimated the number of deaths at 60,000. Modern estimates vary considerably, between 10,000 and 100,000 for the city and other coastal towns and villages, including some in Spain and Morocco. Whatever the actual toll, the Lisbon earthquake ranks as one of the deadliest events of its kind in recorded history.

The earthquake had hardly finished its destructive work when people began to ask why it happened. A common view was an old favorite: God's judgment on wickedness of the citizens. Father Gabriel Malagrida put it bluntly: The cause of the catastrophe, he told the people of Lisbon, was "your abominable sins." He denounced the view that it was merely a natural event with natural causes. To dismiss it as such would discourage repentance and attempts to "avert the wrath of God." 

In the wake of the earthquake these "attempts" included the punishment of heretics and skeptics, some by hanging or burning. (Below: A priest shows the King of Portugal the best way to prevent earthquakes: burn some heretics).

Father Gabriel was, of course, a Roman Catholic, as was nearly everybody in Portugal. But foreign Protestants also attributed the quake to God's righteous anger: in this case anger at persecution of Protestants. 

Rev. John Wesley, the English founder of Methodism, was certain why God had punished Lisbon: "Is there indeed a God who judges the world? … if so, it is not surprising he should begin there, … where so many brave men have been murdered ... in a most barbarous manner … 'And shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on a city such as this?' (Below: Wesley)

Wesley was referring to persons tortured and executed by the Inquisition in their efforts to eliminate "heresy." Criticism of the Inquisition's deeds also came from another, far different perspective: that of the Enlightenment philosophes. Their main spokesman on this occasion was the French writer, Voltaire. 

One of Voltaire's favorite targets was the Church and religious fanatics. After hearing of the earthquake, he wrote to a friend, "I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens up and swallows all alike."

Voltaire became fascinated, one might say obsessed, by the earthquake. It undermined his previous view, influenced by the German philosopher Leibniz, that the world is good, indeed as good as it can be. If we could understand the Divine Plan, we would see it. Leibniz attempted to provide an answer to what is called the Problem of Evil. How a good and all-powerful God could allow evil to exist in the world. Voltaire had previously accepted that view, called optimism, but he abandoned it after the earthquake. 

In 1756, Voltaire published his famous "Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake." In it, he rejects the philosophic optimists' contention that the world is fundamentally good and Christian claims that God punishes people for their sins through natural disasters. Voltaire argues that it is illogical to believe God is both good and omnipotent. In view of the immense suffering in the world, God can't be both. Either he is unwilling to eliminate evil or unable to do so. Voltaire, a deist, opted for the latter: God is good, but not all-powerful. The excerpt below hits some of his main points:

Oh, miserable mortals! Oh wretched earth!...
Deluded philosophers who cry, "All is Well"
Hasten, contemplate these frightful ruins...
One hundred thousand unfortunates devoured by the earth...
Will you say: "This is the result of eternal laws
Directing the acts of a free and good God?"
Will you say: in seeing this mass of victims
"God is revenged, their death is the price for their crimes?"
What crime, what error did these children,
Crushed and bloody on their mothers' breasts, commit?
Did Lisbon, which is no more, have more vices
Than London and Paris immersed in their pleasures?
Lisbon is destroyed, and they dance in Paris!

In 1759, Voltaire published what is his most famous work: Candide; or Optimism. In this short novel, he elaborates on the themes of the Lisbon Earthquake poem. The main character, Candide, begins as an optimist, having been taught by his Leibnizian tutor Dr. Pangloss that this is "the best of all possible worlds." (To be fair, Pangloss's views vastly oversimplify Leibniz's.) 

After experiencing and witnessing a multitude of misfortunes, including wars, religious intolerance, horrible cruelty, dishonesty, slavery, and yes, the Lisbon Earthquake, Candide rejects Pangloss's view of the world in favor of a more pragmatic one: the world is far from as good as it could be but if we work together and treat one another with respect, we can make it more tolerable. 

(Below: Candide meets a slave in Surinam who has lost a hand in sugar refining machinery and a leg, chopped off as punishment for running away. "This the price of your eating sugar in Europe."

In sum, the Great Lisbon Earthquake was not just a monumental tragedy. It inspired a major discussion about the nature of God and the world, and the causes of evil or suffering within that world. (Below, a German image of the Earthquake).