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Coding theory a first course Ling Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Ling, San;Xing, Chaoping
ISBN(s): 9780521821919, 0521821916
Edition: Repr
File Details: PDF, 1.36 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
This page intentionally left blank
Coding Theory
A First Course

Coding theory is concerned with successfully transmitting data through a noisy

channel and correcting errors in corrupted messages. It is of central importance for
many applications in computer science or engineering. This book gives a
comprehensive introduction to coding theory whilst only assuming basic linear
algebra. It contains a detailed and rigorous introduction to the theory of block codes
and moves on to more advanced topics such as BCH codes, Goppa codes and Sudan’s
algorithm for list decoding. The issues of bounds and decoding, essential to the design
of good codes, feature prominently.

The authors of this book have, for several years, successfully taught a course on coding
theory to students at the National University of Singapore. This book is based on their
experiences and provides a thoroughly modern introduction to the subject. There is a
wealth of examples and exercises, some of which introduce students to novel or more
advanced material.
 Coding Theory
A First Course

SAN LING
CHAOPING XING
National University of Singapore
  
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521821919

© Cambridge University Press 2004

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published in print format 2004

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 To Mom and Dad
and my beloved wife Bee Keow
S. L.

To my wife Youqun Shi

and my children Zhengrong and Menghong
C. P. X.
 Contents

Preface page xi

1 Introduction 1
Exercises 4
2 Error detection, correction and decoding 5
2.1 Communication channels 5
2.2 Maximum likelihood decoding 8
2.3 Hamming distance 8
2.4 Nearest neighbour/minimum distance decoding 10
2.5 Distance of a code 11
Exercises 14
3 Finite fields 17
3.1 Fields 17
3.2 Polynomial rings 22
3.3 Structure of finite fields 26
3.4 Minimal polynomials 30
Exercises 36
4 Linear codes 39
4.1 Vector spaces over finite fields 39
4.2 Linear codes 45
4.3 Hamming weight 46
4.4 Bases for linear codes 48
4.5 Generator matrix and parity-check matrix 52
4.6 Equivalence of linear codes 56
4.7 Encoding with a linear code 57
4.8 Decoding of linear codes 59

vii
viii Contents

4.8.1 Cosets 59
4.8.2 Nearest neighbour decoding for linear codes 61
4.8.3 Syndrome decoding 62
Exercises 66
5 Bounds in coding theory 75
5.1 The main coding theory problem 75
5.2 Lower bounds 80
5.2.1 Sphere-covering bound 80
5.2.2 Gilbert–Varshamov bound 82
5.3 Hamming bound and perfect codes 83
5.3.1 Binary Hamming codes 84
5.3.2 q-ary Hamming codes 87
5.3.3 Golay codes 88
5.3.4 Some remarks on perfect codes 92
5.4 Singleton bound and MDS codes 92
5.5 Plotkin bound 95
5.6 Nonlinear codes 96
5.6.1 Hadamard matrix codes 98
5.6.2 Nordstrom–Robinson code 98
5.6.3 Preparata codes 99
5.6.4 Kerdock codes 99
5.7 Griesmer bound 100
5.8 Linear programming bound 102
Exercises 106
6 Constructions of linear codes 113
6.1 Propagation rules 113
6.2 Reed–Muller codes 118
6.3 Subfield codes 121
Exercises 126
7 Cyclic codes 133
7.1 Definitions 133
7.2 Generator polynomials 136
7.3 Generator and parity-check matrices 141
7.4 Decoding of cyclic codes 145
7.5 Burst-error-correcting codes 150
Exercises 153
 Contents ix

8 Some special cyclic codes 159

8.1 BCH codes 159
8.1.1 Definitions 159
8.1.2 Parameters of BCH codes 161
8.1.3 Decoding of BCH codes 168
8.2 Reed–Solomon codes 171
8.3 Quadratic-residue codes 175
Exercises 183
9 Goppa codes 189
9.1 Generalized Reed–Solomon codes 189
9.2 Alternant codes 192
9.3 Goppa codes 196
9.4 Sudan decoding for generalized RS codes 202
9.4.1 Generation of the (P, k, t)-polynomial 203
9.4.2 Factorization of the (P, k, t)-polynomial 205
Exercises 209

References 215
Bibliography 217
Index 219
 Preface

In the seminal paper ‘A mathematical theory of communication’ published in

1948, Claude Shannon showed that, given a noisy communication channel, there
is a number, called the capacity of the channel, such that reliable communication
can be achieved at any rate below the channel capacity, if proper encoding and
decoding techniques are used. This marked the birth of coding theory, a field
of study concerned with the transmission of data across noisy channels and the
recovery of corrupted messages.
In barely more than half a century, coding theory has seen phenomenal
growth. It has found widespread application in areas ranging from communi-
cation systems, to compact disc players, to storage technology. In the effort to
find good codes for practical purposes, researchers have moved beyond block
codes to other paradigms, such as convolutional codes, turbo codes, space-time
codes, low-density-parity-check (LDPC) codes and even quantum codes. While
the problems in coding theory often arise from engineering applications, it is
fascinating to note the crucial role played by mathematics in the development
of the field. The importance of algebra, combinatorics and geometry in coding
theory is a commonly acknowledged fact, with many deep mathematical results
being used in elegant ways in the advancement of coding theory.
Coding theory therefore appeals not just to engineers and computer scien-
tists, but also to mathematicians. It has become increasingly common to find the
subject taught as part of undergraduate or graduate curricula in mathematics.
This book grew out of two one-semester courses we have taught at the
National University of Singapore to advanced mathematics and computer
science undergraduates over a number of years. Given the vastness of the
subject, we have chosen to restrict our attention to block codes, with the aim
of introducing the theory without a prerequisite in algebra. The only mathe-
matical prerequisite assumed is familiarity with basic notions and results in

xi
xii Preface

linear algebra. The results on finite fields needed in the book are covered in
Chapter 3.
The design of good codes, from both the theoretical and practical points of
view, is a very important problem in coding theory. General bounds on the
parameters of codes are often used as benchmarks to determine how good a
given code is, while, from the practical perspective, a code must admit an effi-
cient decoding scheme before it can be considered useful. Since the beginning
of coding theory, researchers have done much work in these directions and, in
the process, have constructed many interesting families of codes. This book is
built pretty much around these themes. A fairly detailed discussion on some
well known bounds is included in Chapter 5, while quite a number of decoding
techniques are discussed throughout this book. An effort is also made to in-
troduce systematically many of the well known families of codes, for example,
Hamming codes, Golay codes, Reed–Muller codes, cyclic codes, BCH codes,
Reed–Solomon codes, alternant codes, Goppa codes, etc.
In order to stay sufficiently focused and to keep the book within a manageable
size, we have to omit certain well established topics or examples, such as a
thorough treatment of weight enumerators, from our discussion. Wherever
possible, we try to include some of these omitted topics in the exercises at
the end of each chapter. More than 250 problems have been included to help
strengthen the reader’s understanding and to serve as an additional source of
examples and results.
Finally, it is a pleasure for us to acknowledge the help we have received
while writing this book. Our research work in coding theory has received
generous financial assistance from the Ministry of Education (Singapore), the
National University of Singapore, the Defence Science and Technology
Agency (Singapore) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We are thank-
ful to these organizations for their support. We thank those who have read
through the drafts carefully and provided us with invaluable feedback, espe-
cially Fangwei Fu, Wilfried Meidl, Harald Niederreiter, Yuansheng Tang (who
has also offered us generous help in the preparation of Section 9.4), Arne
Winterhof and Sze Ling Yeo, as well as the students in the classes MA3218
and MA4261. David Chew has been most helpful in assisting us with problems
concerning LATEX, and we are most grateful for his help. We would also like to
thank Shanthi d/o Devadas for secretarial help.
 1 Introduction

Information media, such as communication systems and storage devices of

data, are not absolutely reliable in practice because of noise or other forms
of introduced interference. One of the tasks in coding theory is to detect, or
even correct, errors. Usually, coding is defined as source coding and channel
coding. Source coding involves changing the message source to a suitable
code to be transmitted through the channel. An example of source coding is
the ASCII code, which converts each character to a byte of 8 bits. A simple
communication model can be represented by Fig. 1.1.

Example 1.0.1 Consider the source encoding of four fruits, apple, banana,
cherry, grape, as follows:
apple → 00, banana → 01, cherry → 10, grape → 11.
Suppose the message ‘apple’, which is encoded as 00, is transmitted over a
noisy channel. The message may become distorted and may be received as 01
(see Fig. 1.2). The receiver may not realize that the message was corrupted.
This communication fails.

The idea of channel coding is to encode the message again after the source
coding by introducing some form of redundancy so that errors can be detected
or even corrected. Thus, Fig. 1.1 becomes Fig. 1.3.

message source receiver

↓ ↑
source encoder −→ channel −→ source decoder

Fig. 1.1.

1
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 “Promoted breeding cattle,
To make the Cretans bloodier in battle;
For we all know that English people are
Fed upon beef. . . . .
We know, too, they are very fond of war—
A pleasure—like all pleasures—rather dear.”

[247] See Life and Letters. Murray.

[248] Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Sir
R. Phillips. London, 1808.
[249] They had been published by him several
years earlier in the Medical Journal for July 27 1811.
[250] Golden Rules of Social Philosophy: being a
System of Ethics. 1826.
[251] A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and
Civilisation. 1833. London: Sherwood & Co. It will be
seen that the origin of his revolt from orthodox
dietetics, given by himself, differs from that narrated in
the Life from which we have quoted above. It is
possible that both incidents may have equally affected
him at the moment, but that the spectacle of the
London slaughter-house remained most vividly
impressed upon his mind.
[252] Million of Facts, p. 176. For the substance of
the greater part of this biography, our
acknowledgments are due to the researches of Mr. W.
E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L., F.S.S.
[253] La Chute d’un Ange. Huitième Vision.
[254] Les Confidences, par Alphonse de Lamartine,
Paris, 1849–51, quoted in Dietetic Reformer, August,
1881. It is in this book, too, that he commemorates
some of the many atrocities perpetrated by schoolboys
with impunity, or even with the connivance of their
masters, for their amusement, upon the helpless
victims of their unchecked cruelty of disposition.
[255] The question of kreophagy and anti-
kreophagy had already been mooted, it appears, in the
Institut, at the period of the great Revolution of 1789,
as a legitimate consequence of the apparent general
awakening of the human conscience, when slavery
also was first publicly denounced. What was the result
of the first raising of this question in the French
Chamber of Savans does not appear, but, as Gleïzès
remarks, we may easily divine it. One interesting fact
was published by the discussion in the Deputies’
Chamber—viz., that in the year 1817, in Paris, the
consumption of flesh was less than that of the year
1780 by 40,000,000lb., in proportion to the population
(see Gleïzès, Thalysie, Quatrième Discours), a fact
which can only mean that the rich, who support the
butchers, had been forced by reduced means to live
less carnivorously.
[256] In the same strain an eminent savan, Sir D.
Brewster, has given expression to his feeling of
aversion from the slaughter-house—a righteous feeling
which (strange perversion of judgment) is so
constantly repressed in spite of all the most forcible
promptings of conscience and reason! These are his
words: “But whatever races there be in other spheres,
we feel sure that there must be one amongst whom
there are no man-eaters—no heroes with red hands—
no sovereigns with bloody hearts—and no statesmen
who, leaving the people untaught, educate them for
the scaffold. In the Decalogue of that community will
stand pre-eminent, in letters of burnished gold, the
highest of all social obligations—‘Thou shalt not kill,
neither for territory, for fame, for lucre, nor for food,
nor for raiment, nor for pleasure.’ The lovely forms of
life, and sensation, and instinct, so delicately fashioned
by the Master-hand, shall no longer be destroyed and
trodden under foot, but shall be the objects of
increasing love and admiration, the study of the
philosopher, the theme of the poet, and the
companions and auxiliaries of Man.”—More Worlds
than One.
[257] Bible de l’Humanité—Redemption de la
Nature, VI.
[258] Cf. a recently published Essay, in the form of
a letter to the present Premier, Mr. Gladstone, entitled
The Woman and the Age. The author, one of the most
refined thinkers of our times, has at once admirably
exposed the utter sham as well as cruelty of a
vivisecting science, and demonstrated the necessary
and natural results to the human race from its
shameless outrage upon, and cynical contempt for, the
first principles of morality.
[259] The Bird, by Jules Michelet. English
Translation. Nelson, London, 1870. See, too, his
eloquent exposure of the scientific or popular error
which, denying conscious reason and intelligence, in
order to explain the mental constitution of the non-
human races (as well that of the higher mammals as
of the inferior species), has invented the vague and
mystifying term “instinct.”
[260] La Femme, vi. Onzième Edition. Paris, 1879.
[261] This memorable building has been succeeded
by the present well-known one in Cross Lane, where
the Rev. James Clark, one of the most esteemed, as
well as one of the oldest, members of the Vegetarian
Society is the able and eloquent officiating minister.
 [262] These biographical facts we have transferred
to our pages from an interesting notice by Mr W. E. A.
Axon, F.R.S.L.
[263] Memoir of the Rev. William. Metcalfe, M.D.
By his son, Rev. Joseph Metcalfe, Philadelphia, 1865.
[264] See Memoir of the Rev. William Metcalfe. By
his son, the Rev J. Metcalfe. Philadelphia; J. Capen.
1866.
[265] See Memoir in Sylvester Graham’s Lectures
on the Science of Human Life. Condensed by T. Baker,
Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law.
Manchester: Heywood; London: Pitman.
[266] The New American Cyclopædia. Appleton,
New York, 1861. It deserves remark in this place that,
in no English cyclopædia or biographical dictionary, as
far as our knowledge extends, is any sort of notice
given of this great sanitary reformer. The same
disappointment is experienced in regard to not a few
other great names, whether in hygienic or
humanitarian literature. The absence of the names of
such true benefactors of the world in these books of
reference is all the more surprising in view of the
presence of an infinite number of persons—of all kinds
—who have contributed little to the stock of true
knowledge or to the welfare of the world.
[267] The Greek story of the savage horses of the
Thracian king who were fed upon human flesh,
therefore, may very well be true.
[268] Graham here quotes various authorities—
Linné, Cuvier, Lawrence Bell, and others.
[269] Professor Lawrence instances particularly
“the Laplanders, Samoides, Ostiacs, Tungooses,
Burats, and Bamtschatdales, in Northern Europe and
Asia, as well as the Esquimaux in the northern, and
the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the southern,
extremity of America, who, although they live almost
entirely on flesh, and that often raw, are the smallest,
weakest, and least brave people of the globe.”—
Lectures on Physiology. Of all races the North
American native tribes, who subsist almost entirely by
the chase, are notoriously one of the most ferocious
and cruel. That the omnivorous classes in “civilised”
Europe—in this country particularly—have attained
their present position, political or intellectual, in spite
of their kreophagistic habits is attributable to a
complex set of conditions and circumstances (an
extensive inquiry, upon which it is impossible to enter
here) which have, in some measure, mitigated the evil
results of a barbarous diet, will be sufficiently clear to
every unprejudiced inquirer. If flesh-eating be the
cause, or one of the principal causes, of the present
dominance of the European, and especially English-
speaking peoples, it may justly be asked—how is to be
explained, e.g., the dominance of the Saracenic power
(in S. Europe) during seven centuries—a dominance in
arms as well as in arts and sciences—when the semi-
barbarous Christian nations (at least as regards the
ruling classes) were wholly kreophagistic.
[270] For one of the ablest and most exhaustive
scientific arguments on the same side ever published
we refer our readers to The Perfect Way in Diet, by
Mrs. Algernon Kingsford, M.D. (Kegan Paul, London,
1881). Originally written and delivered as a Thesis for
le Doctorat en Médicine at the Paris University, under
the title of L’Alimentation Végétale Chez L’Homme
(1880), it was almost immediately translated into
German by Dr. A. Aderholdt under the same title of Die
Pfanzennahrung bei dem Menschen. It is, we believe,
about to be translated into Russian. The humane and
moral argument of this eloquent work is equally
admirable and equally persuasive with the scientific
proofs.
[271]

“Sai, che là corre il mondo ove più versi

Di sue dolcesse il lusinghier Parnaso,
E che’l Vero condito in molli versi
I più schivi allettando ha persuaso.
Cosi all’ egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soave licor gli orli del vaso:
Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve,
E dall’ inganno sua vita riceve.”
Gerusalemme Liberata, I.

[272] See Pflanzenkost; oder die Grundlage einer

Neuen Weltanschauung, Von Gustav Struve, Stuttgart,
1869. For the substance of the brief sketch of the life
of Struve we are indebted to the courtesy of Herr Emil
Weilshaeuser, the recently-elected President of the
Vegetarian Society of Germany (Jan., 1882), himself
the author of some valuable words on Reformed
Dietetics.
[273] See Sakuntalà, or the Fatal Ring, of the
Hindu Shakspere Kalidâsa, the most interesting
production of the Hindu Poetry. It has been translated
into almost every European language.
[274] Mandaras’ Wanderungen. Zweite Ausgabe.
Mannheim. Friedrich Götz. 1845. For a copy of this
now scarce book we are indebted to the courtesy of
Herr A. von Seefeld, of Hanover.
[275] Pflanzenkost, die Grundlage einer neuen
Weltanschauung. Stuttgart, 1869. Cf. Liebig’s
Chemische Briefe (“Letters on Chemistry.”)
 [276] Das Seelenleben; oder die Naturgeschichte
des Menschen. Von Gustav Struve. Berlin: Theobald
Grieben. 1869.
[277]

“Weh’ denen, die dem Ewigblinden

Des Lichtes Himmelsfackel leihen!”
SCHILLER. Das Lied von der Glocke.

[278] Quoted in Die Naturgemässe Diät: die Diät

der Zukunft, von Theodor Hahn, Cöthen, 1859. For the
substance of biographical notice prefixed to this article
we are again indebted to the kindness of Herr Emil
Weilshäuser, of Oppeln.
[279] Das Menschendasein in seinen Weltewigen
Zügen und Zeichen. Von Bogumil Goltz. Frankfurt.
[280] Compare the remarks of Jean Paul Richter
(1763–1825), in his treatise on Education, Levana, in
which he, too, in scarcely less emphatic language,
protests against the general neglect of this department
of morals. Among other references to the subject, the
celebrated novelist thus writes: “Love is the second
hemisphere of the moral heaven. Yet is the sacred
being of love little established. Love is an inborn but
differently distributed force and blood-heat of the
heart (blutwärme des herzens). There are cold and
warm-blooded souls, as there are animals. As for the
child, so for the lower animal, love is, in fact, an
essential impulse; and this central fire often, in the
form of compassion, pierces its earth-crust, but not in
every case.... The child (under proper education)
learns to regard all animal life as sacred—in brief, they
impart to him the feeling of a Hindu in place of the
heart of a Cartesian philosopher. There is here a
question of something more even than compassion for
other animals; but this also is in question. Why is it
that it has so long been observed that the cruelty of
the child to the lower animals presages cruelty to men,
just as the Old-Testament sacrifice of animals
preshadowed that of the sacrifice of a man? It is for
himself only the undeveloped man can experience
pains and sufferings, which speak to him with the
native tones of his own experience. Consequently, the
inarticulate cry of the tortured animal comes to him
just as some strange, amusing sound of the air; and
yet he sees there life, conscious movement, both
which distinguish them from the inanimate substances.
Thus he sins against his own life, whilst he sunders it
from the rest, as though it were a piece of machinery.
Let life be to him [the child] sacred (heilig), even that
which may be destitute of reason; and, in fact, does
the child know any other? Or, because the heart beats
under bristles, feathers, or wings, is it, therefore, to be
of no account?”
[281] See a pamphlet upon this subject by Dr. V.
Gützlaff—Schopenhauer ueber die Thiere und den
Thierschutz: Ein Beitrag zur ethischen Seite der
Vivisectionsfrage. Berlin, 1879.
[282] Le Fondement de La Morale, par Arthur
Schopenhauer, traduit de l’Allemand par A. Burdeau.
Paris, Baillière et Cie, 1879.
[283] Quoted in Die Naturgemässe Diät, die Diät
der Zukunft, von Theodor Hahn, 1859. We may note
here that Moleschott, the eminent Dutch physiologist,
and a younger contemporary of Liebig, alike with the
distinguished German Chemist and with the French
zoologist, Buffon, is chargeable with a strange
inconsistency in choosing his place among the
apologists of kreophagy, in spite of his conviction that
“the legumes are superior to flesh-meat in abundance
of solid constituents which they contain; and, while the
amount of albuminous substances may surpass that in
flesh-meat by one-half, the constituents of fat and the
salts are also present in a greater abundance.” (See
Die Naturgemässe Diät, von Theodor Hahn, 1859).
But, in fact, it is only too obvious why at present the
large majority of Scientists, while often fully admitting
the virtues, or even the superiority of the purer diet,
yet after all enrol themselves on the orthodox side.
Either they are altogether indifferent to humane
teaching, or they want the courage of their convictions
to proclaim the Truth.
[284] Among English philosophic writers, the
arguments and warnings (published in the Dietetic
Reformer during the past fifteen years) of the present
head of the Society for the promotion of Dietary
Reform in this country, Professor Newman, in regard to
National Economy and to the enormous evils, present
and prospective, arising from the prevalent insensibility
to this aspect of National Reform are at once the most
forcible and the most earnest. It would be well if our
public men, and all who are in place and power, would
give the most earnest heed to them. But this,
unhappily, under the present prevailing political and
social conditions, experience teaches to be almost a
vain expectation.
[285] Μήλοισι Grævius, the famous German
Scholar of the 17th century, maintains to mean here
Fruits, not “Flocks,” according to the vulgar
interpretation, and the translation of Grævius, it will be
allowed, is at least more consistent with the context
than is the latter. It must be added that the whole
verse bracketed is of doubtful genuineness.
 [286] This remarkable passage, it is highly
interesting to note, is the earliest indication of the idea
of “guardian angels,” which afterwards was developed
in the Platonic philosophy; and which, considerably
modified by Jewish belief, derived from the Persian
theology, finally took form in the Christian creed.
Compare the beautiful idea of guardian angels, or
spirits in the Prologue of the Shipwreck of Plautus.
[287] See Poetæ Minores Græci ... Aliisque
Accessionibus Aucta. Edited by Thomas Gaisford. Vol.
III. Lipsiæ, 1823.
[288]

“Quum sis ipse nocens, moritur cur victima pro te?

Stultitia est, morte alterius sperare Salutem.”

[289] The Light of Asia: or, The Great Renunciation

(Mahâbhinishkramana). Being the Life and Teaching of
Gautama, Prince of India, and Founder of Buddhism
(as told in verse by an Indian Buddhist). By Edwin
Arnold. London: Trübner.—In the Hindu Epic, the
Mahâbhârata, the same great principle is apparent,
though less conspicuously:—

“The constant virtue of the Good is tenderness and love

To all that live in earth, air, sea—great, small—below, above:
Compassionate of heart, they keep a gentle will to each:
Who pities not, hath not the Faith. Full many a one so lives.”
III.—Story of Savîtri

[290] Compare the beautiful verses of Lucretius—

who, almost alone amongst the poets, has indignantly
denounced the vile and horrible practice of sacrifice—
picturing the inconsolable grief the Mother Cow bereft
of her young, who has been ravished from her for the
sacrificial altar:—

“Sæpe ante Deûm vitulus delubra decora

Thuricremas propter mactatus concidit aras
Sanguinis expirans calidum de pectore flumen,
At mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans
Noacit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis,
Omnia convisens oculis loca, si queat usquam
Conspicere amissum fœtum, completque querellis
Frondiferum nemus absistens, et crebra revisit
Ad stabulum desiderio perfixa Juvenci;
Nec teneræ salices atque herbæ rore vigentes,
Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis
Oblectare animum, subitamque avertere curam,
Nee vitulorum aliæ species per pabula læta
Derivare queunt animum curâque levare.”
(De Rerum Naturâ II.)

See also the memorable verses in which the

rationalist poet stigmatises the vicarious sacrifice of
Iphigeneia.—Tantum Religio potuit suadere Malorum
(L).
[291] See, also, Fasti, already quoted above.

“Pace Ceres læta est. . . . . .

A Bove succincti cultros removete Ministri, &c.” IV. 407–416.

[292] Florilegium of Stobæus—(17–43 and 18–38),

quoted by Professor Mayor in Dietetic Reformer, July,
1881. In the erudite and exhaustive edition of Juvenal,
by Professor Mayor (Macmillan, Cambridge), will be
found a large number of quotations from Greek and
Latin writers, and a great deal of interesting matter
upon frugal living.
[293] “Hygiasticon: On the Right Course of
Preserving Life and Health unto Extreme Old Age;
together with Soundness and Integrity of the Senses,
Judgment, and Memory. Written in Latin by Leonard
Lessius, and now done into English. The second
edition. Printed by the printers to the Universitie of
Cambridge, 1634.” Lessio, like his master Cornaro,
Haller, and many other advocates of a reformed diet,
was influenced not at all by humanitarian, but by
health reasons only.
[294] Cf. Plutarch—Essay on Flesh-Eating.
[295] Some Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Thomas
Tryon, late of London, Merchant. Written by Himself.
London, 1705.
[296] Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri.—
Ovid, Met. I.
[297] Compare Seneca and Chrysostom, above.
[298] If Tryon could point to diseases among the
victims of the shambles in the 17th century, what use
might he not make of the epidemics or endemics of
the present day?
[299] The Way to Health, Long Life, and
Happiness: or a Discourse of Temperance, and the
Particular Nature of all things Requisite for the Life of
Man.... The Like never before Published.
Communicated to the World, for the General Good, by
Philotheos Physiologus [Tryon’s nom de plume.]
London, 1683. It is (in its best parts) the worthy
precursor of The Herald of Health, and of the valuable
hygienic philosophy of its able editor—Dr. T. L. Nichols.
[300] See Biog. Universelle, Art. Philippe Hecquet
[301] Traité des Dispenses, &c. Par Philippe
Hecquet, M.D., Paris. Ed. 1709.
[302]
“That lies beneath the knife,
Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life.”
Æn. VII. (Pope’s translation.) Quoted first by Montaigne.
Essais.

[303] And, Pope might have added, a more

diabolical torture still—calves bled to death by a slow
and lingering process—hung up (as they often are)
head downwards. Although not universal as it was
some ten years ago, this, among other Christian
practices, yet flourishes in many parts of the country,
unchecked by legal intervention.
[304] See Article, Plutarch, above.
[305] So far, at least, as the natural and necessary
wants of each species are concerned.—That “Nature”
is regardless of suffering, is but too apparent in all
parts of our globe. It is the opprobrium and shame of
the human species that, placed at the head of the
various races of beings, it has hitherto been the
Tyrant, and not the Pacificator.
[306] The Four Stages of Cruelty, in which,
beginning with the torture of other animals, the
legitimate sequence is fulfilled in the murder of the
torturer’s mistress or wife.
[307] Which is the accomplice really guilty? The
ignorant, untaught, wretch who has to gain his living
some way or other, or those who have been entrusted
with, or who have assumed, the control of the public
conscience—the statesman, the clergy, and the
schoolmaster? Undoubtedly it is upon these that
almost all the guilt lies, and always will lie.
[308] Bull-baiting, in this country, has been for
some years illegal; but that moralists, and other
writers of the present day, while boasting the abolition
of that popular pastime, are silent, upon the equally
barbarous, if more fashionable sports of Deer-hunting,
&c., is one of those inconsistencies in logic which are
as unaccountable as they are common.
[309] “That is,” remarks Ritson, “in a state of
Society influenced by Superstition, Pride, and a variety
of prejudices equally unnatural and absurd.”
[310] “The converse of all this is true. He is
certainly taught by example, and by temptation, and
prompted by (what he thinks is) interest.”—Note by
Ritson in Abstinence from Flesh a Moral Duty.
[311] Among living enlightened medical authorities
of the present day, Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S.,
perhaps the most eminent hygeist and sanitary
reformer in the country now living, has delivered his
testimony in no doubtful terms to the superiority of the
purer diet. In his recent publication Salutisland he has
banished the slaughter-house, with all its
abominations, from that model State. See also his
Hygieia.
[312] L’Art de Prolonger la Vie et de Conserver la
Santé: ou, Traité d’Hygiène. Par M. Pressavin, Gradué
de l’Université de Paris; Membre du Collège Royal de
Chirurgie de Lyon, et Ancien Demonstrateur en Matière
Medicale-Chirurgicale. A Lyon, 1786.
[313] Die Eleusische Fest.
[314] Der Alpenjäger. See also Göthe—Italienische
Reise, XXIII. 42; Aus Meinem Leben, XXIV. 23;
Werther’s Leiden; Brief 12.
[315] Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation (page 311). By Jeremy Bentham, M.A.,
Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, &c.; Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1876. It must be added that the assumption (on the
same page on which this cogent reasoning is found),
that man has the right to kill his fellow-beings, for the
purpose of feeding upon their flesh, is one more
illustration of the strange inconsistencies into which
even so generally just and independent a thinker as
the author of the Book of Fallacies may be forced by
the “logic of circumstances.” Among recent notable
Essays upon the Rights of the Lower Animals (the right
to live excepted) may here be mentioned—Animals
and their Masters, by Sir Arthur Helps (1873), and The
Rights of an Animal, by Mr. E. B. Nicholson, librarian of
the Bodleian, Oxford (1877).
[316] Compare the Voyages of Volney, one of the
most philosophical of the thinkers of the eighteenth
century, who himself for some time seems to have
lived on the non-flesh diet. Attributing the ferocious
character of the American savage, “hunter and
butcher, who, in every animal sees but an object of
prey, and who is become an animal of the species of
wolves and of tigers,” to such custom, this celebrated
traveller adds the reflection that “the habit of shedding
blood, or simply of seeing it shed, corrupts all
sentiments of humanity.” (See Voyage en Syrie et en
Egypte.) See, too, Thevenot (the younger), an earlier
French traveller, who describes a Banian hospital, in
which he saw a number of sick Camels, Horses, and
Oxen, and many invalids of the feathered race. Many
of the lower Animals, he informs us, were maintained
there for life, those who recovered being sold to
Hindus exclusively.
[317] This feeling occasionally appears in his
poems, as, for instance, when describing a “banquet”
and its flesh-eating guests, he wonders how “Such
bodies could have souls, or souls such bodies.”
 [318] Note on this point the words of the late W. R.
Greg, to the effect that “the amount of human life
sustained on a given area may be almost indefinitely
increased by the substitution of vegetable for animal
food;” and his further statement—“A given acreage of
wheat will feed at least ten times as many men as the
same acreage employed in growing ‘mutton.’ It is
usually calculated that the consumption of wheat by
an adult is about one quarter per annum, and we
know that good land produces four quarters. But let us
assume that a man living on grain would require two
quarters a year; still one acre would support two men.
But, a man living on [flesh] meat would need 3lbs. a
day, and it is considered a liberal calculation if an acre
spent in grazing sheep and cattle will yield in ‘beef’
and ‘mutton’ more than 50lb. on an average—the best
farmer in Norfolk having averaged 90lb., but a great
majority of farms in Great Britain only reach 20lb. On
these data it would require 22 acres of pasture land to
sustain one adult person living on [flesh] meat. It is
obvious that in view of the adoption of a vegetable
diet lies the indication of a vast increase in the
population sustainable on a given area.”—Social and
Political Problems (Trübner).
[319] “Of the Cruelty connected with he Culinary
Arts” in Philozoa; or, Moral Reflections on the Actual
Condition of the Animal Kingdom, and on the Means of
Improving the Same; with numerous Anecdotes and
Illustrative Notes, addressed to Lewis Gompertz, Esq.,
President of the Animals’ Friend Society: By T. Forster,
M.B., F.R.A.S., F.L.S., &c. Brussels, 1839. The writer
well insists that, however remote may be a universal
Reformation, every individual person, pretending to
any culture or refinement of mind, is morally bound to
abstain from sanctioning, by his dietetic habits, the
revolting atrocities “connected with the culinary arts,
of which Mr. Young, in his Book on Cruelty, has given a
long catalogue.”
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETHICS OF
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