At the foot of the mountains, from whence I write to you, my dear
child, when we want to show the country to a stranger, we commence by
making him climb one of the heights, whence he may take in at a glance
the whole landscape below, all the woods and villages scattered over
the plain, even up to the blue line of the Rhine, which stretches out
to the distant horizon. After this he will easily find his way about.
It is to the top of a mountain equally useful that I have just led
you. It has cost you some trouble to climb with me. You have had to
keep your eyes very wide open that you might see to the end of the
road we had to go together. Now then, let us come down and view the
country in detail. Then we shall go as if we were on wheels.
And now let us begin at the beginning:
Well, doubtless, as the subject is eating, you will expect me to begin
with the mouth.
Wait a moment; there is something else first. But you are so accustomed
to make use of it, that you have never given it a thought, I dare say.
It is not enough merely that one should have a mouth; we must be able
to put what we want within it. What would you do at dinner, for
instance, if you had no hands?
The hand is then the first thing to be considered.
I shall not give you a description of it; you know what it is like.
But what, perhaps, you do not know, because you have never thought
about it, is, the reason why your hand is a more convenient, and
consequently more perfect, instrument than a cat's paw, for instance,
which yet answers a similar purpose, for it helps the cat to catch
mice.
Among your five fingers there is one which is called the thumb, which
stands out on one side quite apart from the others. Look at it with
respect; it is to these two little bones, covered over with a little
flesh, that man owes part of his physical superiority to other animals.
It is one of his best servants, one of the noblest of God's gifts to
him. Without the thumb three-fourths (at least) of human arts would
yet have to be invented; and to begin with, the art not only of carrying
the contents of one's plate to one's mouth, but of filling the plate
(a very important question in another way) would, but for the thumb,
have had difficulties to surmount of which you can form no idea.
Have you noticed that when you want to take hold of anything (a piece
of bread, we will say, as we are on the subject of eating), have you
noticed that it is always the thumb who puts himself forward, and that
he is always on one side by himself, whilst the rest of the fingers
are on the other? If the thumb is not helping, nothing remains in your
hand, and you don't know what to do with it. Try, by way of experiment,
to carry your spoon to your mouth without putting your thumb to it,
and you will see what a long time it will take you to get through a
poor little plateful of broth. The thumb is placed in such a manner
on your hand that it can face each of the other fingers one after
another, or all together, as you please; and by this we are enabled
to grasp, as if with a pair of pincers, whatever object, whether large
or small. Our hands owe their perfection of usefulness to this happy
arrangement, which has been bestowed on no other animal, except the
monkey, our nearest neighbor.
I may even add, while we are about it, that it is this which
distinguishes the hand from a paw or a foot. Our feet, which have other
things to do than to pick up apples or lay hold of a fork, our feet
have also each five fingers, but the largest cannot face the others;
it is not a thumb, therefore, and it is because of this that our feet
are not hands. Now the monkey has thumbs on the four members
corresponding to our arms and legs, and thus we may say that he has
hands at the end of his legs as well as of his arms. Nevertheless, he
is not on that account better off than we are, but quite the contrary.
I will explain this to you presently.
To return to our subject. You see that it was necessary, before saying
anything about the mouth, to consider the hand, which is the mouth's
purveyor. Before the cook lights the fires the maid must go to market,
must she not? And it is a very valuable maid that we have here: what
would become of us without her?
If we were in the habit of giving thought to everything, we should
never even gather a nut without being grateful to the Providence which
has provided us with the thumb, by means of which we are able to do
it so easily.
But however well I may have expressed it, I am by no means sure, after
all, that I have succeeded in showing you clearly, how absolutely
necessary our hand is to us in eating, and why it has the honor to
stand at the beginning of the history of what we eat.
It still appears to you, I suspect, that even if you were to lose the
use of your hands you would not, for all that, let yourself die of
hunger.
This is because you have not attended to another circumstance, which
nevertheless demands your notice--namely, that from one end of the
world to the other, quantities of hands are being employed in providing
you with the wherewithal to eat.
To go on further: Have you any idea how many hands have been put in
motion merely to enable you to have your coffee and roll in the morning?
What a number, to be sure, over this cup of coffee (which is a trifle
in comparison with the other food you will consume in the course of
the day); from the hand of the negro who gathered the coffee crop to
that of the cook who ground the berries, to say nothing of the hand
of the sailor who guided the ship which bore them to our shores. Again,
from the hand of the laborer who sowed the corn, and that of the miller
who ground it into flour, to the hand of the baker who made it into
a roll. Then the hand of the farmer's wife who milked the cow, and the
hand of the refiner who made the sugar; to say nothing of the many
others who prepared his work for him, and I know not how many more.
How would it be, then, if I were to amuse myself by counting up all
the hands that are wanted to furnish--
The sugar-refiner's manufactory,
The milkmaid's shed,
The baker's oven,
The miller's mill,
The laborer's plough,
The sailor's ship?
And even now is there nothing we have forgotten? Ah, yes! the most
important of all the hands to you;--the hand which brings together
for your benefit the fruits of the labor of all the others--the hand
of your dear mother, always active, always ready, that hand which so
often acts as yours when your own is awkward or idle.
Now, then, you see how you might really manage to do without those two
comparatively helpless little paws of yours (although there is a thumb
to each), without suffering too much for want of food. With such an
army of hands at work, in every way, to furnish provision for that
little mouth, there would not be much danger.
But cut off your cat's fore paws--oh dear! what am I saying? Suppose,
rather, that she has not got any, and then count how many mice she
will catch in a day. The milk you give her is another matter, remember.
Like your cup of coffee, that is provided for her by others.
Believe me, if you were suddenly left all alone in a wood, like those
pretty squirrels who nibble hazel-nuts so daintily, you would soon
discover, from being thus thrown upon your own resources, that the
mouth is not the only thing required for eating, and that whether it
be a paw or a hand, there must always be a servant to go to market for
Mr. Mouth, and to provide him with food.
Happily, we are not driven to this extremity. We take hold of our
coffee-biscuit between the thumb and forefinger, and behold it is on
its road--Open the mouth, and it is soon done!
But before we begin to chew, let us stop to consider a little.
The mouth is the door at which everything enters. Now, to every
well-kept door there is a doorkeeper, or porter. And what is the office
of a well-instructed porter? Well, he asks the people that present
themselves, who they are, and what they have come for; and if he does
not like their appearance, he refuses them admittance. We too, then,
to be complete, need a porter of this sort in our mouths, and I am
happy to say we have one accordingly. I wonder whether you know him?
You look at me quite aghast! Oh, ungrateful child, not to know your
dearest friend! As a punishment, I shall not tell you who he is to-day.
I will give you till to-morrow to think about it.
Meanwhile, as I have a little time left, I will say one word more about
what we are going to look at together. It would hardly be worth while
to tell you this pretty story which we have begun, if from time to
time we were not to extract a moral from it. And what is the moral of
our history to-day?
It has more than one.
In the first place it teaches you, if you never knew it before, that
you are under great obligations to other people, indeed to almost
everybody, and most of all perhaps to people whom you may be tempted
to look down upon. This laborer, with his coarse smock-frock and heavy
shoes, whom you are so ready to ridicule, is the very person who, with
his rough hand, has been the means of procuring for you half the good
things you eat. That workman, with turned-up sleeves, whose dirty black
fingers you are afraid of touching, has very likely blackened and
dirtied them in your service. You owe great respect to all these people,
I assure you, for they all work for you. Do not, then, go and fancy
yourself of great consequence among them--you who are of no use in any
way at present, who want everybody's help yourself, but as yet can
help nobody.
Not that I mean to reproach you by saying this. Your turn has not come
yet, and everybody began like you originally. But I do wish to impress
upon you that you must prepare yourself to become some day useful to
others, so that you may pay back the debts which you are now
contracting.
Every time you look at your little hand, remember that you have its
education to accomplish, its debts of honor to repay, and that you
must make haste and teach it to be very clever, so that it may no
longer be said of you, that you are of no use to anybody.
And then, my dear child, remember that a day will come, when the revered
hands that now take care of your childhood--those hands which to-day
are yours, as it were--will become weak and incapacitated by age. You
will be strong, then, probably, and the assistance which you receive
now, you must then render to her, render it to her as you have received
it--that is to say, with your hands. It is the mother's hand which
comes and goes without ceasing about her little girl now. It is the
daughter's hand which should come and go around the old mother
hereafter--her hand and not another's.
Here again, my child, the mouth is nothing without the hand. The mouth
says, "I love," the hand proves it.