292 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



rest of the body and complete dissolution. " Deny me," it says, " and 

 death cometh quickly." No matter how lazy a fellow may be, per- 

 haps even a tramp on the highway, he has the same inexorable kind 

 of a stomach that you and I have; a fact we are prone to forget 

 when he calls in the morning at the kitchen door for a scant break- 

 fast. We may not have much sympathy with the man, nor his 

 mode of life, but let us not forget his suffering stomach. 



Eating then, is one of the great activities of life, and promotes, 

 through its necessities, nearly all the other activities of this busy 

 world. If we could live without eating, or could even satisfy our 

 hunger with inorganic matter, which so abounds in the world, this 

 earth, it would seem at first view, might be a kind of paradise, espec- 

 ially for a lazy man. But the present arrangement has, doubtless, 

 been wisely ]ilanned, whereby man is forced to action, and to almost 

 unceasiug effort to iind, not only something to fill the stomach, but 

 that something must be organic material. It must have lived before 

 in the animal or vegetable world, its component parts having been 

 arranged under the domination of a certain power or force, called 

 vitality, or life. 



We instinctively shrink from taking life; even decapitating the 

 ancient hen that is to make a savory dinner, is a job not to be done 

 without some compunction. A life put out by a stroke of your hand ! 

 momentous thought ! 



When you cut down a tree you arrest a wonderful tide of vital 

 forces that have been in operation, perhaps for centures. I think 

 even a tree should not be destroyed thoughtlessly. The blade of 

 grass you trample under foot is endowed with a certain kind of life, 

 but the animal consumes the grass; one animal consumes another; 

 and man, perhajjs, consumes the animals; or he digs from the earth 

 the matured tuber, gathers in the field the ripened grain, or fills his 

 basket with luscious fruit, and you say: " Here is something man 

 may eat without destroying life." Not so, my friend ; for the germ 

 of a future growth is in the tuber, the grain or the berry, and the 

 substance you consume as food is the material nature has stored up 

 to feed the future plant till it gets able to take care of itself, and 

 when you eat this substance you blot out an innumerable multitude 

 of future plants. The coming chicken is in the egg, although your 

 eye may not behold it; and yet, when you eat the egg you consume 

 that same possible chicken, head and tail, claws, bones, feathers and 

 all. 



The human stomach, then, wants organized material and will be 

 satisfied with nothing less, and we must interfere with life i)rocesses, 

 in some form, in order to obtain this material. It must not be in- 

 ferred that this organized material enters the blood and is deposited 

 in the tissues unchanged. Such an idea would make us shudder. 

 To think that a piece of hog-flesh I ate yesterday is still hog-flesh 

 in my body would not be a pleasant thought, iiut if such were the 



