Page:Shortessaysdeliv00temp.djvu/84

80 thirteen shillings, and labourers of the second class only ten shillings. I am not going to recommend vegetarianism, which, how- ever, has many healthy adherents, as I know from comradeship ; and very many eminent supporters in science and medicine, as Baron Cuvier, Linnaeus, Professors Lawrence and Newman, Dr. Richard- son, Sir Henry Thomson, and so on. It is, besides, the mode of diet of two-thirds of the entire human race ; and was, indeed, the diet largely of our own ancestors, who were no weaklings. But I am anxious to show that the stress laid upon meat as the chief and only means to a healthy, strong life is quite of a mistaken kind. For every 100 parts there are more parts of water in meat than there are in many of the cereals and nutritious vegetables, as peas, beans, lentils, and haricots. Meat may be a little more quickly digested, perhaps, but that is about all its particular A^alue. If you have read the preceding translation, " Stars and Atoms," carefully, and Huxley's essay on " The Physical Basis of Life," which is in the D.M.I. Library, you must know that everything in nature may be reduced to atoms, these atoms assuming different appearances, according to certain unknown conditions. Our physical bodies, the bodies of animals and the bodies of plants (so to speak) and vege- tables are built up of atoms or protoplasm, similar in each and with all. To sustain his body man requires a constant supply of these atoms, which he may take from either the animal or vegetable worlds, for both animal and vegetable physically are really identical, if outwardly differing. Flesh is merely vegetable matter in an altered form — a biological or psychical difference constituting appear- ances. One proof of this, apart from scientific and chemical investi- gations, is that, as I have said, two-thirds of the human race live as well upon one as upon the other. But observe that while they do so, every particular race is careful to choose some article of food that is pre-eminently nutritious and climatic. Our own ancestors lived on oatmeal, which has the remarkable strength of 88 parts out of 100 of solid matter, 12 only being of water. The Irish took, un- fortunately, to a less healthy diet, chiefly of potatoes, which have in their composition 76 parts of water — though you may not quite see it — and only 24 parts of solid good food ; and they, the Irish, have suffered accordingly. The Indians, Hindoos, make rice almost their sole food : and one of the healthiest, strongest races of the world, the Arabs of the desert, live on figs and dates; the Italian peasantry often on chestnuts, cheese, and macaroni — a kind of wheaten flour. Note how figs and dates contain so much more nutrition than other fruits ; and place this against such slight eating as turnips, onions, etc. Besides all this, permit me to point out to you what of course you know, the difference in price between meat at tenpence a pound and, for instance, maize, which costs a penny or half-penny a pound, or for wheat, which is sold at three halfpence a pound. We, however, could not live on figs and dates, which supply little heat-giving force. The Arabs have plenty of natural simlight ; we