AN INVITATION TO DINNER. 347 



worlds. Although there are plants which, as we have seen, imitate 

 animals in feeding upon living matter, and which thus break down 

 the distinctions between animals and plants founded on food, yet 

 the general course of animal and plant life remains in each case 

 tolerably distinct. It is needless to add that, as represented at 

 Smith's board, the human race will be shown to demand a very con- 

 siderable amount of living matter, and to differ materially in this 

 respect from the plant world at large. 



The information we have thus obtained regarding the nature 

 of the material benefits we may expect to obtain from our dinner, 

 prefaces in a thoroughly natural fashion the question already pro- 

 pounded, and which asks why we eat dinner at all. Smith's dinner, 

 and feasts of allied kind, serve to impress one with the idea that 

 probably human nature is given to eating too much, and that 

 repasts of less resplendent and varied character would equally well 

 serve as, in fact, they do actually serve in the experience of the 

 majority to sustain life in a perfect, or in other words a healthy, 

 condition. But, after all, variety is both necessary and pleasant in 

 food as in other details of life ; and it is the numerical strength of 

 Smith's dinner, so to speak, and not the quantitative aspects of the 

 menu, which constitutes an attractive aspect to the cultured mind. 

 The question " Why do we eat our dinner ? " involves in its reply 

 the whole philosophy of food-taking, and a large part of the philo- 

 sophy of life. To arrive in the speediest possible manner at the 

 conditions which render that reply possible, we must take a brief review 

 of certain general processes which may be said to constitute the 

 essence of the physical, and indeed of the mental part also of our 

 existence. The dictum that life is at all times inseparably con- 

 nected with changes of various kinds and degrees, forms an appro- 

 priate basis whereon to lay the foundations of the argument. The 

 changes in question are most clearly shown in such a series of 

 actions as those which constitute "growth." That increase of the 

 body which takes place from the first day of its existence until 

 maturity is reached, illustrates at least one phase of bodily altera- 

 tion which we can appreciate in its connection with food and 

 feeding. For it is obvious that from our food we must derive the 

 material for the increase of tissues and parts. " Food," in this light, 

 is simply matter derived from the external world, which, being incor- 

 porated with and transformed into our bodily substance, contributes 

 to that gradual physical enlargement which characterises early life 

 wherever existent. 



That this, however, is not the only use of food becomes clear 

 if one reflects that around Smith's dinner-table there will be assembled 

 no one guest whose growth is still a matter of vital activity. The 

 majority of us will present ourselves before the physiological eye as 



