Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/59

Rh The lower animal has a natural hunger until it is spoiled by contact with man (or woman) who tempts it with candies and similar articles, miscalled food. The young child has a natural hunger until it is spoiled in the same way. In the child, natural hunger is more or less replaced by acquired appetites, the degree depending largely upon the amount of wealth its parents possess—the greater the wealth, the greater the acquirement of false appetite. And as it grows older, it loses all recollection of what real Hunger means. In fact, people speak of Hunger as a distressing thing, rather than as a natural instinct. Sometimes men go out camping, and the open air, exercise, and natural life gives them again a taste of real hunger, and they eat like school boys and with a relish they have not known for years. They feel "hungry" in earnest, and eat because they have to, not from mere habit, as they do when they are home and are overloading their stomachs continually.

We recently read of a party of wealthy people who were shipwrecked while on a yachting pleasure trip. They were compelled to live on the most meager fare for about ten days. When rescued they looked the picture of health—rosy, bright-eyed, and possessed of the precious gift of a good, natural Hunger. Some of the party had been dyspeptics for years, but the ten days' experience with food scarce and at a premium, had completely cured them of their dyspepsia and other troubles. They had obtained sufficient to properly nourish them, and had gotten rid of the waste products of the system which had been poisoning them. Whether or not they