Sometimes it is ambition that calls us, personal or professional; we get beforehand the sweet taste of power upon the tongue. It may perhaps be sometimes the rewards of work, riches and honour and so on, but more often, I think, the dreams of youth circle round the work itself. We will be of use in the world, we will find new paths and make them safe for those coming after us to walk in, we will get rid of that evil and set up a ladder towards that good; we will heal, teach, feed, amuse, uplift or cherish the other human beings round about us. We will store only for the sake of distributing; we will climb only to be better able to give a helping hand.
Well, there are some danger signals at cross-roads of our dream-way, some precautions to be observed if we would not let romance obscure and hinder us in our search after reality. But none of these “castles” are bad in themselves. In so far as they quicken our attention power, deepen our thoughtfulness, make our activities more elastic and keep us from carelessness or sloth, they are surely all to the good as episodes in our development.
E.M. Cobham.
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF VEGETALISM.
This article, the earlier part of which appeared in the October number, is from the French of Prof. H. Labbé, the head of the laboratoire à la Faculté de Médecine, in Paris. It reflects a characteristic aloofness to a any considerations other than scientific or economic. But it will well repay careful study.—[Eds.]
V
Though the consumption of vegetable foods seems to offer a slight disadvantage from the point of view of albuminoid matters, this is not the case touching hydro-carbonated matters and sugars. The vegetable kingdom constitutes the almost exclusive source of these alimentary principles. One cannot indeed take much account of the consumption of the .5-.6 per cent, of glycogen which exists in the animal muscle partaken of under the shape of butcher's meat. There is hardly enough in this for a large eater of between 200 and 250 grammes of meat, to find in hydrocarbonated matters the 1/300 or the 1/400 of the daily ration. Hydrocarbons are necessarily borrowed from the vegetable foods. This is also the case with sugars which do not exist in the animal kingdom in appreciable quantities. It is the same thing with alcohol which is obtained only from the vegetable kingdom.
VI
As to fatty matters, animal foods, like vegetable products, are abundantly provided with them. Moreover, from the point of view of digestibility and capability of assimilating, one may say that there is a quasi-absolute identity between animal and vegetable fats. The reason which would induce us to prefer either would not seem to be of a physiological nature. The economics, which we shall see further on, take this upon themselves, as the most serious reproach which can be made against the use of animal dishes is doubtless their dearness, and the reason which militates most in favour of the predominance of a vegetable diet is to a certainty its cheapness.