a tough white fibrous matter as foreign to them as are tumors and cancer in man. Perhaps Napoleon, who lacked sulphur and abounded in phosphorus, originated or at least cultivated his fatal cancer in much the same way.
It is as natural for a perfectly normal human being to undertake things, to have a strong ambition and initiative, as it is for him to breathe. Originality is the product of a vigorous mind in a healthy body. People would be infinitely more original and resourceful than they are, if they kept their physical standards up. When a man is perfectly well, he is not an imitator. His mentality is forceful. He is not inclined to trail then, as he is when his physical standards are down.
Concentration is the secret of all achievement, but you cannot focus your faculties with vigor and efficiency if your brain is not properly nourished. Everything depends upon the quality of your brain, and that in turn depends upon the food with which it is nourished.
You are very particular about the quality of the material which you put into your manufactures. But what about the quality of your brain and your physical condition, which determine the quality of your career? Do you realize that your habitual diet is constantly adding to or taking from your brain power?
One great reason for the superiority of the brain power and achievement of successful business men over those who work for them is that they are better nourished; they have the finest quality of nutriment, food that is fresher, riper, that has been more perfectly matured in Nature’s laboratory. The man of means often overeats, but he usually eats foods of the best quality.
It is the positive mind, fed, sustained, and buttressed by nutritious food, that does things. The positive, decisive mind must be capable of complete concentration, must be the product of high food values, of perfected, full-grown cereals, fruits, and vegetables. The sun must have wrought this perfected work and ripened and developed the food values in Nature’s laboratory, where she performs her miracle of canning life elixirs in the juices in her apples, her oranges, her bananas, her strawberries, and all the other fruits. Sometimes this canning process of Nature is not completed, and these things are not allowed to come to perfection. Perhaps the fruits are shaken off of the tree in windfalls before the sun has finished his ripening work, before Nature has had time to develop her sugar, her nutritive salts, and all the other health-producing ingredients; perhaps she has not finished her work when man plucks the immature fruit; or perhaps the worm which has worked its way to the heart of the fruit has caused it to drop off before the processes have been completed. Then, if one has eaten the half-ripened, half-matured fruit, or half-developed vegetables, of course he has not been able to get the fire and force, the courage, the vim, the grit, and the stamina which would have come from Nature’s perfect product. If, in addition to eating this imperfect food, man does not obey the scientific law and give Nature a chance to digest and assimilate her food values into brain matter, he must certainly expect inferior results, inferior brain force.
There is a vast difference between unscientific and scientific food, between mediocrity and success, between a negative and a positive mind, between superb and indifferent achievement. Power is the goal of our ambition, that power which comes from the union of all of our mental faculties, kept constantly in superb condition in order to give out the very maximum of their energy and force. How to acquire mental vigor should be the great study of every one who is resolved to make the most and the best of himself.
Dr. Talmage used to say: “We are constantly praying to Heaven for that which we could easily get for ourselves by correct diet.” There are multitudes of men whose forcefulness and efficiency could be doubled and trebled by scientific diet.
The first thing for the success candidate to do is to put himself in a position to generate his maximum of brain power, brain energy, by eating foods which are capable, when digested, of evolving, of releasing, the greatest amount and the finest quality of energy. It is comparatively easy for a robust physique, with perfected food products, to develop efficiency in work; whereas, no amount of will-power in an enfeebled body can perform, by the utmost strain, the same work that the other does easily, naturally. Stamina and grit live in perfect grains, perfect fruits, perfect vegetables, intelligently, scientifically taken, digested, and assimilated. Here is the secret of power, the fountain-head of efficiency.
Many get the impression that their power to do things is something that has been handed down to them from their ancestors and that they cannot change it very much. They do not realize that, if they go without eating only a few hours longer than they should, all their powers begin to decline, ambition evaporates, hope becomes dull; all their ability begins to deteriorate, and they are only revived by partaking of food: further, they do not seem to realize that on the quality and regularity of their food the quality of their renewal depends; that, if shoddy goes into the loom, shoddy will come out in the cloth,—it will show in deteriorated wearing quality.
The first qualification for efficiency, then, is the purest possible blood, and this can only be made by the purest food taken in just the right amount and variety, and afterward assimilated in the most scientific manner. This is the only way to manufacture a first-class man with the highest standard of efficiency. If the original cells in the cereals, the vegetables, the fruit, and the meat which we eat are deteriorated; if they have not been properly matured, or were originally defective, if the soil from which they were grown, or the material from which they were produced, was not up to the mark, and if they were not properly prepared and cooked and so eaten as to facilitate the most perfect digestion; if the body is not in a condition to digest, assimilate, and transform the food into blood in the most favorable manner,—then we shall have a deteriorated body, an inferior brain, and our achievement will be of a low order.
Remember, your future, your possibilities are swimming in your blood. If that is poor, inferior, deteriorated, and diluted; if it lacks fire and force, is incapable of releasing the energy which achieves, the force which does things, it is because the food from which you manufactured it was inferior, for the brain cannot get force and power from the blood when these were not in the first place in the food cells.
The time will come when foodstuffs, which perform the miracle of making brain power, of building efficiency, will be inspected by government officials. The man of the future will not take the chances of producing an inferior brain force because the grains in his cereals have been blighted or harvested before they were perfected. He will not take chances of eating blighted, windfallen fruit, half-grown, before Nature in her laboratory has had time to perform her miracle in perfecting their juices, in developing their nutritive salts which would make perfect blood. Inferior grain and vegetables—everything that is unfit to make the highest quality of blood and brain,—will be condemned just as government inspectors now condemn diseased meats. The time will come when nothing else that affects the welfare of the race will be quite so scientifically guarded as man’s food, because locked up in it is the mainspring of life, about all of human destiny.
Chapter III.
What to Eat, or. The Science of Nutrition
Health consists with temperance alone.
—Alexander Pope.
Lengthening of life requireth observation of diets.
—Francis Bacon.
Cheese is gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night.
—German Proverb.
Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt;
It’s like sending them ruffles, while wanting a shirt.
—Oliver
