CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FOOD OF MAN.
"This leads me to remark," answered the eyeless seer, "that you speakwithout due consideration of previous experience. You are, or should be,aware of other and as marked differences in food products of upperearth, induced by climate, soil and cultivation. The potato which, nextto wheat, rice, or corn, you know supplies nations of men with starchyfood, originated as a wild weed in South America and Mexico, where ityet exists as a small, watery, marble-like tuber, and its nearestkindred, botanically, is still poisonous. The luscious apple reached itspresent excellence by slow stages from knotty, wild, astringent fruit,to which it again returns when escaped from cultivation. The cucumber isa near cousin of the griping, medicinal cathartic bitter-apple, orcolocynth, and occasionally partakes yet of the properties that resultfrom that unfortunate alliance, as too often exemplified to persons whodo not peel it deep enough to remove the bitter, cathartic principlethat exists near the surface. Oranges, in their wild condition, arebitter, and are used principally as medicinal agents. Asparagus was oncea weed, native to the salty edges of the sea, and as this weed hasbecome a food, so it is possible for other wild weeds yet to do.Buckwheat is a weed proper, and not a cereal, and birds have learnedthat the seeds of many other weeds are even preferable to wheat. Thewild parsnip is a poison, and the parsnip of cultivation relapsesquickly into its natural condition if allowed to escape and roam again.The root of the tapioca plant contains a volatile poison, and is deadly;but when that same root is properly prepared, it becomes the wholesomefood, tapioca. The nut of the African anacardium (cachew nut) contains anourishing kernel that is eaten as food by the natives, and yet a dropof the juice of the oily shell placed on the skin will blister andproduce terrible inflammations; only those expert in the removal of thekernel dare partake of the food. The berry of the berberis vulgaris isa pleasant acid fruit; the bough that bears it is intensely bitter. Suchexamples might be multiplied indefinitely, but I have cited enough toillustrate the fact that neither the difference in size and structure ofthe species in the mushroom forest through which we are passing, nor theconditions of these bodies, as compared with those you formerly knew,need excite your astonishment. Cultivate a potato in your former home sothat the growing tuber is exposed to sunshine, and it becomes green andacrid, and strongly virulent. Cultivate the spores of the intra-earthfungi about us, on the face of the earth, and although now all parts ofthe plants are edible, the species will degenerate, and may even becomepoisonous. They lose their flavor under such unfavorable conditions, andalthough some species still retain vitality enough to resist poisonousdegeneration, they dwindle in size, and adapt themselves to new andunnatural conditions. They have all degenerated. Here they live onwater, pure nitrogen and its modifications, grasping with their rootsthe carbon of the disintegrated limestone, affiliating these substances,and evolving from these bodies rich and delicate flavors, far superiorto the flavor of earth surface foods. On the surface of the earth, afterthey become abnormal, they live only on dead and devitalized organicmatter, having lost the power of assimilating elementary matter. Theythen partake of the nature of animals, breathe oxygen and exhalecarbonic acid, as animals do, being the reverse of other plantexistences. Here they breathe oxygen, nitrogen, and the vapor of water;but exhale some of the carbon in combination with hydrogen, thusevolving these delicate ethereal essences instead of the poisonous gas,carbonic acid. Their substance is here made up of all the elementsnecessary for the support of animal life; nitrogen to make muscle,carbon and hydrogen for fat, lime for bone. This fungoid forest couldfeed a multitude. It is probable that in the time to come when mandeserts the bleak earth surface, as he will some day be forced to do, ashas been the case in frozen planets that are not now inhabited on theouter crust; nations will march through these spaces on their way fromthe dreary outside earth to the delights of the salubrious inner sphere.Here then, when that day of necessity appears, as it surely will comeunder inflexible climatic changes that will control the destiny ofouter earth life, these constantly increasing stores adapted to nourishhumanity, will be found accumulated and ready for food. You have alreadyeaten of them, for the variety of food with which I supplied you hasbeen selected from different portions of these nourishing productswhich, flavored and salted, ready for use as food, stand intermediatebetween animal and vegetable, supplying the place of both."
My instructor placed both hands on my shoulders, and in silence I stoodgazing intently into his face. Then, in a smooth, captivating,entrancing manner, he continued:
"Can you not see that food is not matter? The material part of bread iscarbon, water, gas, and earth; the material part of fat is charcoal andgas; the material part of flesh is water and gas; the material part offruits is mostly water with a little charcoal and gas.[4] The materialconstituents of all foods are plentiful, they abound everywhere, and yetamid the unlimited, unorganized materials that go to form foods manwould starve.
[4] By the term gas, it is evident that hydrogen and nitrogen were designated, and yet, since the instructor insists that other gases form part of the atmosphere, so he may consistently imply that unknown gases are parts of food.--J. U. L.
"Give a healthy man a diet of charcoal, water, lime salts, and air; sayto him, 'Bread contains no other substance, here is bread, the materialfood of man, live on this food,' and yet the man, if he eat of these,will die with his stomach distended. So with all other foods; give manthe unorganized materialistic constituents of food in unlimited amounts,and starvation results. No! matter is not food, but a carrier of food."
"What is food?"
"Sunshine. The grain of wheat is a food by virtue of the sunshine fixedwithin it. The flesh of animals, the food of living creatures, aresimply carriers of sunshine energy. Break out the sunshine and youdestroy the food, although the material remains. The growing plant locksthe sunshine in its cells, and the living animal takes it out again.Hence it is that after the sunshine of any food is liberated during themetamorphosis of the tissues of an animal although the material part ofthe food remains, it is no longer a food, but becomes a poison, andthen, if it is not promptly eliminated from the animal, it will destroythe life of the animal. This material becomes then injurious, but itis still material.
"The farmer plants a seed in the soil, the sunshine sprouts it,nourishes the growing plant, and during the season locks itself to andwithin its tissues, binding the otherwise dead materials of that tissuetogether into an organized structure. Animals eat these structures,break them from higher to lower compounds, and in doing so live on thestored up sunshine and then excrete the worthless material side of thefood. The farmer spreads these excluded substances over the earth againto once more take up the sunshine in the coming plant organization, butnot until it does once more lock in its cells the energy of sunshine canit be a food for that animal."
"Is manure a food?" he abruptly asked.
"No."
"Is not manure matter?"
"Yes."
"May it not become a food again, as the part of another plant, whenanother season passes?"
"Yes."
"In what else than energy (sunshine) does it differ from food?"
"Water is a necessity," I said.
"And locked in each molecule of water there is a mine of sunshine.Liberate suddenly the sun energy from the gases of the ocean held insubjection thereby, and the earth would disappear in an explosion thatwould reverberate throughout the universe. The water that you trulyclaim to be necessary to the life of man, is itself water by the graceof this same sun, for without its heat water would be ice, dry as dust.'Tis the sun that gives life and motion to creatures animate andsubstances inanimate; he who doubts distrusts his Creator. Food anddrink are only carriers of bits of assimilable sunshine. When the fireworshipers kneeled to their god, the sun, they worshiped the great foodreservoir of man. When they drew the quivering entrails from the body ofa sacrificed victim they gave back to their God a spark of sunshine--itwas due sooner
or later. They builded well in thus recognizing thesource of all life, and yet they acted badly, for their God asked nopremature sacrifice, the inevitable must soon occur, and as allorganic life comes from that Sun-God, so back to that Creator thesun-spark must fly."
"But they are heathen; there is a God beyond their narrow conception ofGod."
"As there is also a God in the Beyond, past your idea of God. Perhaps tobeings of higher mentalities, we may be heathen; but even if this is so,duty demands that we revere the God within our intellectual sphere. Letus not digress further; the subject now is food, not the SupremeCreator, and I say to you the food of man and the organic life of man issunshine."
He ceased, and I reflected upon his words. All he had said seemed soconsistent that I could not deny its plausibility, and yet it stillappeared altogether unlikely as viewed in the light of my previous earthknowledge. I did not quite comprehend all the semi-scientificexpressions, but was at least certain that I could neither disprove norverify his propositions. My thoughts wandered aimlessly, and I foundmyself questioning whether man could be prevailed upon to livecontentedly in situations such as I was now passing through. In companywith my learned and philosophical but fantastically created guardian andmonitor, I moved on.