Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/86



But this question has long lost much of its sharp edge of urgency, since we, in all good common sense, fell back upon the grand and perennial supply, which nature provides at our very door, namely, our own dead. What so fitting and proper as that the dead, when done with all the good things they possessed and used while in life, should render them up to the needs of the living whom they leave struggling behind them. Thus the brains and bones of our departed friends, with all their contained phosphates, form no small part of any wealth which our dead may leave us. If your friend or relative leave you no other property, yet in leaving you heir to his material self, you could still cherish his memory in the good things cleared out of the legacy.

The disposal of our dead was long previously a troublesome question, until we had adopted the enlightened and economic practice now prevalent. When the increase of people forbade any longer to poison our soil by burial of the dead, we resorted to cremation. But with still further increase the air, too, under the cremation resource, began to be injuriously overcharged. At length we found that what had heretofore seemed our most troublesome enemy was in reality our best friend. Indeed the phosphate market is not now the only one benefited by the precious dead. We shall see that the question directly touches also that of the food supply; for after we have gone far enough in chemical analysis to dehumanize the structure, why not avail of any still