142 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



would proselytise and receive as it were into its own 

 communion— whom it would convert and bring into a 

 condition of mind in which they shall see things as it 

 sees them itself, and, as we commonly say, "agree 

 with " it, instead of standing out stifEly for their own 

 opinion. We call this digesting our food ; more pro- 

 perly we should call it being digested by our food, 

 which reads, marks, learns, and inwardly digests us, 

 till it comes to understand us and encourage us by 

 assuring us that we were perfectly right all the time, 

 no matter what any one might have said, or say, to 

 the contrary. Having thus recanted all its own past 

 heresies, it sets to work to convert everything that 

 comes near it and seems in the least likely to be con- 

 verted. Eating is a mode of love ; it is an effort after 

 a closer union; so we say we love roast beef. A 

 French lady told me once that she adored veal; and 

 a nurse tells her child that she would like to eat it. 

 Even he who caresses a dog or horse pro tanto both 

 weds and eats it. Strange how close the analogy 

 between love and hunger ; in each case the effort is 

 after closer union and possession; in each case the 

 outcome is reproduction (for nutrition is the most 

 complete of reproductions), and in each case there are 

 residua. But to return. 



I have shown above that one consequence of the 

 attempt so vigorously made a few years ago to establish 

 protoplasm as the one living substance, is the making 

 it clear that the non-protoplasmic parts of the body 

 and the simpler extra-corporeal tools or organs must 

 run on all fours in the matter of livingness and non- 



