SKETCH OF JACOB MOLESCHOTT. 403 



Feuerbach, who summed np its teachings in the pithy phrase, 

 *' Der Menscli ist tuas er isst" ("Man is what he eats"). A simi- 

 lar utterance is that with which Moleschott closes the chapter 

 on the nutritive properties of leguminous plants : " Oline Phos- 

 phor, kein Gedanke" ("Without phosphorus no thought"). 



Moleschott's book had a socialistic as well as a scientific 

 character, although this feature was hardly recognized by his 

 contemporaries and critics. It indicated the direction which 

 European legislation is now taking to solve the social question, 

 namely, through the stomach, by making better and surer pro- 

 vision for the present and future wants of the working classes. 



About eighteen months later Moleschott published his Physi- 

 ologie des Stoffwechsels in Pflanzen und Thieren (Erlangen : 

 Enke, 1851), of which Humboldt, in a letter dated November 30, 

 1851, expressed his warm appreciation and hearty indorsement. 

 This work, however, was only preliminary to another of wider 

 scope, entitled Der Kreislauf des Lebens : Physiologische Ant- 

 worten auf Liebig's chemische Brief e (Mainz : Zabern, 1853 ; fifth 

 edition, 1887), consisting of a series of twenty letters on revelation 

 and natural law, with strictures on Liebig's confusion of these con- 

 ceptions, the sources of human knowledge, the eternity of matter, 

 its gradual evolution, constant circulation, and endless transforma- 

 tions in the growth, decay, and renewal of animal and vegetable 

 life; force as an. essential and inseparable quality of matter, espe- 

 cially as regards the functions of the brain in their relations to the 

 faculty of thought and the freedom of the will, and kindred topics.* 



In the practical application of his theories Moleschott animad- 

 verted on the prevailing custom of burying the dead in permanent 

 cemeteries, where their bodies decay with no advantage, and often 

 with serious injury, to the living. " If every place of burial," he 

 says, " after having been used a year, should be exchanged for a 

 new one, it would become in the course of six or ten years a most 

 fertile field which would do more honor to the dead than mounds 

 and monuments." But, he adds, it would be still better if we 

 could return to the ancient custom of burning the dead, which he 

 declares to be unquestionably more practical as well as more poet- 

 ical. By this process the air would be made richer in carbonic 

 acid and ammonia, and the ashes, which contain the elements of 

 new crops of cereals for the nurture of man and beast, would 

 transform our barren heaths into luxuriant plains. At present, 

 he adds, we are acting like the stupid and slothful servant who 

 buried his one talent in the earth instead of wisely investing it so 

 as to gain another. 



* The latest editions of Moleschott's works, his Kleine Schriften (Minor Essays), Vor- 

 trage (Addresses), etc., are now published by Emil Roth in Giessen. 



