Everything requires careful consideration if one is to understand it. In ancient times, as I recollect, people often ate human beings, but I am rather hazy about it. I tried to look this up, but my history has no chronology, and scrawled all over each page are the words: ‘virtue’ and ‘morality.’ Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently half the night, until I began to see words between the lines, the whole book being filled with the two words –‘Eat People.’
–Lu Hsun, “Diary of a Madman”
There are cases at the present time in which the practice of using human flesh for food is customary on a large and systematic scale. On the island of New Britain human flesh is sold in shops as butcher’s meat is sold among us. In at least some of the Solomon Islands victims (preferably women) are fattened for a feast, like pigs.
–William Graham Sumner, Folkways
I have in my possession a song of one of these prisoners, which contains this challenge: that all come boldly and gather to dine of him, for they will be eating at the same time of their own fathers and grandfathers who have served to feed and nourish his body. ‘These muscles, this flesh and these veins are yours, poor fools that you are; you do not see that the substance of your ancestors’ limbs is still contained in them; but savor them well and you will taste the flavor of your own flesh.’
–Montaigne, “On Cannibals”
One unusual feature of Hangzhou in that period (the Song Dynasty) is that there were establishments that served human flesh. That of women, old men, young girls, and children was served in separate dishes, since each had its own distinctive taste. The food in general was referred to as ‘two-legged mutton.’
–Alasdair Clayre, The Heart of the Dragon
None of the tribes of West Africa eat human flesh, but the interior tribes eat any corpse regardless of the cause of death. Families hesitate to eat their own dead, but they sell or exchange them for the dead of other families.
–Sumner, Folkways
I don’t intend to stand here before you and attempt to deny that my client did, in fact, cook children and eat them. The preponderance of evidence on this point is clear and overwhelming, and though the prosecution has chosen –for what I would maintain are purely the purposes of pandering to public outrage– to emphasize the cooking and eating of children, it should be noted that my client has also acknowledged that he cooked and ate many others as well –many, many others, as you have heard.
He has cooked and eaten adults –the able-bodied, the elderly and infirm– as well as children. And while I cannot defend my client’s actions, I will attempt to show that, as offensive as this behavior may well be, and perhaps rightfully should be, to our modern sensibilities, it was not, in fact, all that long ago that the predilection for human meat was common in many parts of the world.
Indeed, there are reports from the field of anthropology that indicate that this practice is still being carried out in some areas of the globe today.
As such I would maintain that my client’s crime is the product of a rare atavistic condition, and purely genetic in nature; you have heard evidence that the practice of the cooking and eating of children was long a tradition in my client’s family. For many generations his family has largely subsisted on human flesh.
That said, we make no excuses in pleading for your leniency. My client takes full responsibility for behavior which doubtless strikes many of you as reprehensible, yet given his otherwise exemplary conduct –he has raised four productive children of his own that he did not cook and eat, and who do not themselves cook and eat children– and his years of political service to his country, I would ask that you recognize his potential for full reform in considering his sentence.
It is my belief that a moderate prison term, during which my client would be subjected to a strenuous program of dietary reeducation, is in society’s best interest, and will insure that he is eventually and successfully reintroduced in full standing to the human community, where his leadership skills and winning charisma can once again be utilized for the greater good and the benefit of his many political constituents.
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