Besides this, during a great part of the year the peasant is prevented, by the rules of the Church, from using much that he possesses.
In southern climes, where these rules were elaborated and first practised, the prescribed fasts are perhaps useful not only in a religious, but also in a sanitary sense.

Having abundance of fruit and vegetables, the inhabitants do well to abstain occasionally from animal food.

But in countries like Northern and Central Russia the influence of these rules is very different.

The Russian peasant cannot get as much animal food as he requires, whilst sour cabbage and cucumbers are probably the only vegetables he can procure, and fruit of any kind is for him an unattainable luxury.

Under these circumstances, abstinence from eggs and milk in all their forms during several months of the year seems to the secular mind a superfluous bit of asceticism.