Page:John Uri Lloyd - Etidorhpa.djvu/152

 the life of the animal. This material becomes then injurious, but it is 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 and within its tissues, binding the otherwise dead materials of that tissue together into an organized structure. Animals eat these structures, break them from higher to lower compounds, and in doing so live on the stored up sunshine and then excrete the worthless material side of the food. The farmer spreads these excluded substances over the earth again to once more take up the sunshine in the coming plant organization, but not until it does once more lock in its cells the energy of sunshine can it 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, when another 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 in subjection thereby, and the earth would disappear in an explosion that would reverberate throughout the universe. The water that you truly claim to be necessary to the life of man, is itself water by the grace of this same sun, for without its heat water would be ice, dry as dust. ’T is the sun that gives life and motion to creatures animate and substances inanimate; he who doubts distrusts his Creator. Food and drink are only carriers of bits of assimilable sunshine. When the fire worshipers kneeled to their god, the sun, they worshiped the great food reservoir of man. When they drew the quivering entrails from the body of a sacrificed victim they gave back to their God a spark of sunshine—it was due sooner or later. They builded well in thus recognizing the source of all life, and yet they acted badly, for their God asked no premature sacrifice, the inevitable