THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 11 



animal organism, and pre-eminently, for that paragon 

 of animal organisms, the human body. 



It might perhaps be reasonably objected, that the 

 logical conclusion from this corollary would be, that 

 uncooked vegetables and fruits ought then to be our 

 proper food. This is, however, certainly not the 

 biological conclusion ; at least under our present con- 

 ditions of life. 



We ought to know that all attempts to dictate to 

 Nature, and expect her to conform to our reasoning, 

 are utterly futile. Our reasonings and deductions 

 must be constantly tested and corrected by actual 

 experience : they then become valuable guides to 

 teach us how to interpret the phenomena presented 

 to us spontaneously by Nature, or to show us where 

 we can usefully experiment. 



I think we can very simply and satisfactorily 

 explain the seeming difference between the (ap- 

 parent) logical and biological result, in this question 

 of cooking. We all know there is a difference 

 between good and bad cooking. Our digestions 

 painfully tell that there is such a difference. Judg- 

 ing by the health-standard, and not by those of the 

 pampered palate and vitiated taste, we simply say 

 THAT cookery is good, which makes the food more 

 easily digestible and assimilable, and THAT is bad 

 which does the reverse. 



See, if we cannot express this in relation to the 

 solar force, lying latent for our use [see p. 5, note], 

 comfortably locked up in the compounds formed 

 solely, as well as solarly, for us poor animals, by 

 vegetable agency. 



We have seen that the biological conditions of 



