86 . Natural Salvation. 



Food, as we . at present view it, seems a simple matter. 

 The lower animals and plants afford it. It has but to be 

 herded, cultivated, harvested, and cooked. What more 

 simple ? But of all future inventions and discoveries, 

 some of the greatest, the most important, will pertain to 

 food. 



At present we ingest the errata of plant and animal 

 life. "The dead, alas, are in us," and "death is in the 

 pot " ; but less that our foodstuffs contain poisons than 

 from lack of organic energy to maintain the complicated 

 apparatuses requisite to reduce and make it ready for 

 assimilation by the tissue cells. It is our food which 

 renders greatly prolonged life impossible, at present. 

 Nor is it probable that the human organism ever was, or 

 ever could be, bred or trained to live forever on food such 

 as human beings now eat. The physiological processes by 

 which food is reduced, comminuted, corrected as to its 

 chemical constituents, peptonized, hepatized, oxygenated, 

 and, in a word, carried forward to higher and higher stages 

 of chemical instability, fit for assimilation by the tissue cells 

 all these processes set up a heavy draught on the col- 

 lective, organic life of the animal body, and necessitate 

 the putting forth of energies, on the part of all the cells, 

 which cause an ever-increasing deficit of potential, a 

 growing debt from overwork, a chronic accumulation of 

 the effects of fatigue, which, under present conditions, 

 must sooner or later lead to a running down of the cells. 



