plucked, kept, handled, cooked, and digested, are forsaken by the good, and therefore supply most unclean matter for the formation of bodies. 48.  But if it is not from their color and appearance, and smell and taste, that you think the good to be in these things, what else can you bring forward?  Do you prove it from the strength and vigor which those things seem to lose when they are separated from the earth and put to use?  If this is your reason (though its erroneousness is seen at once, from the fact that the strength of some things is increased after their separation from the earth, as in the case already mentioned of wine, which becomes stronger from age),—if the strength, then, is your reason, it would follow that the part of God is to be found in no food more abundantly than in flesh.  For athletes, who especially require vigor and energy, are not in the habit of feeding on cabbage and fruit without animal food. 49.  Is your reason for thinking the bodies of trees better than our bodies, that flesh is nourished by trees and not trees by flesh.  You forget the obvious fact that plants, when manured with dung, become richer and more fertile and crops heavier, though you think it your gravest charge against flesh that it is the abode of dung.  This then gives nourishment to things you consider clean, though it is, according to you, the most unclean part of what you consider unclean.  But if you dislike flesh because it springs from sexual intercourse, you should be pleased with the flesh of worms, which are bred in such numbers, and of such a size, in fruits, in wood, and in the earth itself, without any sexual intercourse.  But there is some insincerity in this.  For if you were displeased with flesh because it is formed from the cohabitation of father and mother, you would not say that those princes of darkness were born from the fruits of their own trees; for no doubt you think worse of these princes than of flesh, which you refuse to eat. 50.  Your idea that all the souls of animals come from the food of their parents, from which confinement you pretend to liberate the divine substance which is held bound in your viands, is quite inconsistent with your abstinence from flesh, and makes it a pressing duty for you to eat animal food.  For if souls are bound in the body by those who eat animal food, why do you not secure their liberation by being beforehand in eating the food?  You reply, it is not from the animal food that the good part comes which those people bring into bondage, but from the vegetables which they take with their meat.  What will you say then 83 of the souls of lions, who feed only on flesh?  They drink, is the reply, and so the soul is drawn in from the water and confined in flesh.  But what of birds without number?  What of eagles, which eat only flesh, and need no drink?  Here you are at a loss, and can find no answer.  For if the soul comes from food, and there are animals which neither drink anything nor have any food but flesh, and yet bring forth young, there must be some soul in flesh; and you are bound to try your plan of purifying it by eating the flesh.  Or will you say that 142 Disclosure of the Monstrous Tenets of the Manichæans.