Ay! Bethink you, now, of all the bread-and-butter, and bonbons, and
gingerbread, and cakes, and sweetmeats, and even soup and plain food
(the soup and plain food being the most useful of all) which you have
been sending, day by day, for some time past, down what we used to
call "the red lane," into the little gulf below. What do you think
became of them when they got there? Well, they set to work at once,
without asking your leave, to transform themselves into something else;
and gliding cunningly into all the holes and corners of your body,
became there, each as best he might, bones, flesh, blood, etc.,
etc. Touch yourself where you will, it is upon these things you lay
your hand, though, of course, without recognizing them, for the
transformation is perfect and complete. And it is the same with
everybody.
Look at your little pink nails, which push out further and further
every morning; examine the tips of your beautiful fair hair, which
gets longer and longer by degrees; coming out from your head as grass
springs up from the earth; feel the firm corners of your second teeth,
which are gradually succeeding those which came to you in infancy; you
have _eaten_ all these things, and that no long time ago.
Nor are you children the only creatures who are busy in this way. There
is your kitten, for instance, who a few months ago was only a tiny bit
of fur, but is now turning gradually into a grown-up cat. It is her
daily food which is daily becoming a cat inside her--her saucers of
milk now, and very soon her mice, all serve to the same end.
The large ox, too, of whom you are so much afraid, because you cannot
as yet be persuaded what a good-natured beast he really is, and how
unlikely to do any harm to children who do none to him--that large ox
began life as a small calf, and it is the grass which he has been
eating for some time past which has transformed him into the huge mass
of flesh you now see, and which by-and-by will be eaten by man, to
become man's flesh in the same manner.
But, further, still: Even the forest trees, which grow so high and
spread so wide, were at first no bigger than your little finger, and
all the grandeur and size you now look upon, they have taken in by the
process of eating. "What, _do trees eat?_" you ask.
Verily, do they; and they are, by no means, the least greedy of eaters,
for they eat day and night without ceasing. Not, as you may suppose,
that they crunch bonbons, or anything else as you do; nor is the process
with them precisely the same as with you. Yet you will be surprised
hereafter, I assure you, to find how many points of resemblance exist
between them and us in this matter. But we will speak further of this
presently.
Now, I think you must allow that there are few fairytales more
marvellous than this history of bread and meat turning into little
boys and girls, milk and mice turning into cats, and grass into oxen!
And I call it a _history_, observe, because it is a transformation
that never happens suddenly, but by degrees, as time goes on.
Now, then, for the explanation. You have heard, I dare say, of those
wonderful spinning-machines which take in at one end a mass of raw
cotton, very like what you see in wadding, and give out at the other
a roll of fine calico, all folded and packed up ready to be delivered
to the tradespeople. Well, you have within you, a machine even more
ingenious than that, which receives from you all the bread-and-butter
and other sorts of food you choose to put into it, and returns it to
you changed into the nails, hair, bones and flesh we have been talking
about, and many other things besides; for there are quantities of
things in your body, all different from each other, which you are
manufacturing in this manner all day long, without knowing anything
about it. And a very fortunate thing this is for you: for I do not
know what would become of you if you had to be thinking from morning
to night of all that requires to be done in your body, as your mother
has to look after and remember all that has to be done in the house.
Just think what a relief it would be to her to possess a machine which
should sweep the rooms, cook the dinners, wash the plates, mend torn
clothes, and keep watch over everything without giving her any trouble;
and, moreover, make no more noise or fuss than yours does, which has
been working away ever since you were born without your ever troubling
your head about it, or probably even knowing of its existence! Just
think of this and be thankful.
But do not fancy you are the only possessor of a magical machine of
this sort. Your kitten has one also, and the ox we were speaking of,
and all other living creatures. And theirs render the same service to
them that yours does to you, and much in the same way; for all these
machines are made after one model, though with certain variations
adapted to the differences in each animal. And, as you will see
by-and-by, these variations exactly correspond with the different sort
of work that has to be done in each particular case. For instance,
where the machine has grass to act upon, as in the ox, it is differently
constructed from that in the cat which has to deal with meat and mice.
In the same way in our manufactories, though all the spinning-machines
are made upon one model, there is one particular arrangement for those
which spin cotton, another for those which spin wool, another for flax,
and so on.
But, further:
You have possibly noticed already, without being told, that all animals
are not of equal value; or, at least, to use a better expression, they
have not all had the same advantages bestowed on them. The dog, for
instance, that loving and intelligent companion, who almost reads your
thoughts in your eyes, and is as affectionate and obedient to his master
as it were to be wished all children were to their parents--this dog
is, as you must own, very superior, in all ways, to the frog, with its
large goggle eyes and clammy body, hiding itself in the water as soon
as you come near it. But again, the frog, which can come and go as it
likes, is decidedly superior to the oyster, which has neither head nor
limbs, and lives all alone, glued into a shell, in a sort of perpetual
imprisonment.
Now the machine I have been telling you about is found in the oyster
and in the frog as well as in the dog, only it is less complicated,
and therefore less perfect in the oyster than in the frog; and less
perfect again in the frog than in the dog; for as we descend in the
scale of animals we find it becoming less and less elaborate--losing
here one of its parts, there another, but nevertheless remaining still
the same machine to all intents and purposes; though by the time it
has reached its lowest condition of structure we should hardly be able
to recognize it again, if we had not watched it through all its
gradations of form, and escorted it, as it were, from stage to stage.
Let me make this clear to you by a comparison.
You know the lamp which is lit every evening on the drawing-room table,
and around which you all assemble to work or read. Take off first the
shade, which throws the light on your book--then the glass which
prevents it smoking--then the little chimney which holds the wick and
drives the air into the flame to make it burn brightly. Then take away
the screw, which sends the wick up and down; undo the pieces one by
one, until none remain but those absolutely necessary to having a light
at all--namely, the receptacle for the oil and the floating wick which
consumes it.
Now if any one should come in and hear you say, "Look at my lamp,"
what would he reply? He would most likely ask at once, "What lamp?"--for
there would be very little resemblance to a lamp in that mere ghost
of one before him.
But to you, who have seen the different parts removed one after another,
that wick soaked in oil (let your friend shake his head about it as
he pleases) will still be the lamp to you, however divested of much
that made it once so perfect, and however dimly it may shine in
consequence.
And this is exactly what happens when the machine we are discussing
is examined in the different grades of animals. The ignoramus who has
not followed it through its changes and reductions cannot recognize
it when it is presented to him in its lowest condition; but any one
who has carefully observed it throughout, knows that it is, in point
of fact, the same machine still.
This, then, is what we are now going to look at together, my dear
little girl. We will study first, piece by piece, the exquisite machine
within ourselves, which is of such unceasing use to us as long as we
do not give it more than a proper share of work to perform. Do you
understand? We will see what becomes of the mouthful of bread which
you place so coolly between your teeth, as if when that was done nothing
further remained to be thought about. We will trace it in its passage
through every part of the machine, from beginning to end. It will
therefore be simply only the _History of a Mouthful of Bread_ I
am telling you, even while I seem to be talking of other matters; for
to make that comprehensible I shall have to enter into a good many
explanations.
And when you have thoroughly got to understand the history of what you
eat yourself, we will look a little into the history of what other
animals eat, beginning by those most like ourselves, and going on to
the rest in regular succession downwards. And while we are on the
subject, I will say a word or two on the way in which vegetables eat,
for, as you remember, I have stated that they do eat also.
Do you think this is likely to interest you, and be worth the trouble
of some thought and attention?
Perhaps you may tell me it sounds very tedious, and like making a great
fuss about a trifle; that you have all your life eaten mouthfuls of
bread without troubling yourself as to what became of them, and yet
have not been stopped growing by your ignorance, any more than the
little cat, who knows no more how it happens than you do.
True, my dear; but the cat is only a little cat, and you are a little
girl. Up to the present moment you and she have known, one as much as
the other on this subject, and on that point you have therefore had
no superiority over her. But she will never trouble herself about it,
and will always remain a little cat. You, on the contrary, are intended
by God to become something more in intelligence than you are now, and
it is by learning more than the cat that you will rise above her in
this respect. To learn, is the duty of all men, not only for the
pleasure of curiosity and the vanity of being called learned, but
because in proportion to what we learn we approach nearer to the destiny
which God has appointed to man, and when we walk obediently in the
path which God himself has marked out for us, we necessarily become
better.
It is sometimes said to grown-up people, that it is never too late to
learn. To children one may say that it is never too early to learn.
And among the things which they may learn, those which I want now to
teach you have the double merit of being, in the first place amusing,
and afterwards, and above all, calculated to accustom you to think of
God, by causing you to observe the wonders which He has done. Sure am
I that when you know them you will not fail to admire them; moreover
I promise your mother that you will be all the better, as well as
wiser, for the study.