A whale swallows at a gulp more shrimps than would be required to make sauce for the universe. That gentle songster, the canary, is like the celebrated contralto songstress, who eats daily half a peck of saffron salad;—the bird consumes nearly his own bulk weight of food. But he is delicate compared with the caterpillar, which consumes five hundred times its own weight before it lies down, to rise a butterfly. As for the hyæna, he is popularly said, when hungry, and other food not presenting itself, to eat himself; and probably, like Dr. Kitchener, he carries his own sauce-box about with him! But the stomach of man is not made to perform such feats as those accomplished by the whale, the canary, or the caterpillar. He is especially to remember, that though an animal, he is not a beast.
Man, it must be remembered, began with refinement. He was made perfect, upright, and to him was given “every herb bearing seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Here food is used as the symbol of celestial blessings; as in the passage, “He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied them.” With the fall, civilization and innocence also fell, and barbarism was the offspring of disobedience. There was a time when men had sunk so low that they were like the Troglodytes described by Pomponius Mela—“Troglodytæ nullarum opum domini, strident magis quam loquuntur, specus subeunt, alunturque serpentibus”—they had no property, shrieked rather than spoke, lived in caves, and devoured serpents for food. The fine wheat and the honey from the rock was not theirs. The Fenns, painted by Tacitus, were only a shade less barbarous: “Mira feritas,” says the graphic Caius Cornelius, “fœda paupertas; non arma, non equi, non penates; victui herba, vestui pelles, cubili humus”—wonderful for their wildness, their poverty filthy; they had neither horses, nor gods; the grass was their food, skins their raiment, and the ground their couch. The Helvetii were progressistas in the race for the prize of civilization; and, when planning an emigration project, they took two years to thoroughly perfect the plan, laying up stores of provisions the while. Whoever Ceres may have really been, it is clear that in her is to be recognised the benefactress of mankind:—
“Prima Ceres unco glebam dimovit aratro,
Prima dedit fruges, alimentaque mitia terris,
Prima dedit leges;”
she who taught them the uses of the plough, of agriculture, and of fixed laws, and who gave them what God had intended for civilized and innocent man, “the finest wheat,”—she must have been the renovator of the earth, and of beauty upon it. Man, like the rudest saints of the desert—so near may savagery be to undisciplined sanctity—had been “feeding on ashes but now the finest wheat was again there to give him strength and delight,”—wheat, where golden grain had, perhaps, first yielded its abundance beneath the shade of the primeval tree of knowledge.
The era of wheat, of the ploughshare, and of iron, was the era of the second civilization. Man was no longer generally a wild savage, or a cunning hunter. God again vouchsafed to him “the finest of the wheat;” and, as civilization progressed, so also was widened the circle of supply, upon which indeed much of civilization depends.
The subject of “Man and his Food,” with regard to the future, has been ably discussed by Dr. Leonard Withington, of Newbury, Massachusetts. He has moved the question, whether we have reached the terminus of all our stores or not? He holds, that the forest, the field, the river, and the sea may yield contributions to our table, in addition to the known abundance for which our as abundant gratitude is now due. We have not reached the line of our last inventions; and, doubtless, new articles are to be discovered, which will have an equal influence on virtue and happiness. “Boundless nature,” says Dr. Withington, “lies before us, and undeveloped skill is wrapt up in the human breast. The exuberance of our system is not exhausted,—her beasts, her birds, her fishes, her plants, her growing trees and her copious grasses, her pastures, her valleys, her lofty mountains and her rolling streams, are all spread out to the hungry world. Nature is an image of God, and she echoes, though she does not originate the words, ‘In my Father’s house is bread enough, and to spare. Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it; thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water; thou preparedst them corn when thou hadst so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; thou settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the springing thereof.’”
Dr. Cumming holds, not only that death is the most unnatural of conditions, but that when the era of heavenly, everlasting life shall be established, the heaven of man will be here upon earth. So Dr. Withington thinks that the earth will not only be made more heavenly beautiful than it now is, before the period of the new paradise, but more abundant also. “The manna,” he says, “which is hereafter to be provided, will not be rained down from heaven, but will spring up from the earth.” And there is common sense in this last assertion, for in it is implied that abundance will come by the proper application of knowledge and labour, without which the earth, ever wise and prudent, will yield but little. The increasing populations of that earth have two objects before them which are of no small importance, and which are thus defined by Dr. Withington:—“One is, to impart from the open field of nature all those good and wholesome things which our Father has laid up for us; and secondly, to train our taste and habits for the using of those things which are nutritive and sweet, and which may have the best influence on our moral character and social happiness.” The training should begin from early childhood,—and early childhood requires delicate training.
An American writer on dietetics is half afraid that people will smile if he, in connexion with the subject, introduces dainty children; and yet, as he justly remarks, “there is a mystery about this subject, on which we may well bestow a passing thought.” There are children in all the various classes of life who are “very difficult about their food.” “These little connoisseurs,” says Dr. Withington, “cannot eat with the rest of the family, and the mother and the son are often at issue in an interminable controversy. The mother often says it is all whim and caprice; and some severe matrons tell their children that they shall not eat a morsel until the given lump is devoured. But the son would say, if he could quote Shakspeare, ‘You cram these things into mine ear against the stomach of my sense. I know I don’t love it. I can’t eat it; it is not fit to be eaten.’” The doctor proceeds to inquire if this turn of the appetite be a matter of caprice or necessity. He examines whether the mother, or the boy be right. He acknowledges the antiquity of a controversy which has been carried on for ages, and he has no doubt “that Eve had it with Cain and Abel, the first supper she gave them after they were weaned. We offer it,” he adds, “as a profound conjecture, that Cain was a dainty boy, and probably doubled up his fist at his mother.” With regard to the controversy itself, he appears to think that it has much of the quality of that which marked the dispute about the colour of the chameleon, and that “both parties are partly wrong.” It is likely, as he remarks, that much depends on the training and volition, and also on original nature and temperament. “There are some things we were never made for, and they were never made for us. There are some kinds of food which, though they may suit the race, were never made for the individual. But this blinded appetite, partly natural, partly artificial, follows through life.” And this is leaving the controversy very much where the worthy doctor found it.