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Some years later (and no earlier than 1880), Wagner was sent a tract written by Jean Antoine Gleïzès (1773-1843), Thalysia oder Das Heil der Menschheit (originally published in French 1840-42; German translation 1872), in which the author argued that Christ's mission had been to end the eating of flesh: according to Gleïzès, this was the true meaning of the bread and wine of the Last Supper. He also argued, like Schopenhauer, that man was raised above other animals by his capacity for compassion. Wagner was impressed by the arguments of Gleïzès, perhaps even more so than he had been by the similar ones put forward by Daumer. Wagner synthesised the ideas of these writers with the views of Schopenhauer (as quoted above) in his essay Heldenthum und Christenthum (Herodom and Christendom, 1881), in which he contrasted these ideas about diet with those of Count Gobineau (whose views Wagner's essay treated with too much respect, to the subsequent harm of Wagner's reputation). Following Gleïzès and his own opinion that in the teachings of the great spiritual teachers (lost or distorted in the religious books written by their disciples) there was a common core of teaching, Wagner claimed the support of "the noblest sages of all time" for the belief that the cause of mankind's degeneration was the substitution of flesh for vegetable food.
