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An essay by Timothy Titcomb |
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The Food Of Life |
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Title: The Food Of Life Author: Timothy Titcomb [More Titles by Titcomb] "To the soul time doth perfection give, A horse can live, and do a good deal of dull work, on hay; but spirit and speed require grain. There is no self-supplied, perennial fountain within the animal that enables him to expend more in the way of muscular power than he receives in the way of muscular stimulus and nourishment. Food, in its quality and amount, up to the limit of healthful digestion, is set over against, and exactly measures, under ordinary circumstances, the quality and amount of labor of which a horse is capable. So, a cow can live on straw and corn-stalks; but it would not be reasonable to suppose that she would give any considerable amount of milk upon so slender a diet. We do not expect rich milk, in large quantities, to be yielded by a cow that is not bountifully fed with the most nutricious food. The same fact attaches to land. We cannot get out of land more than there is in it; and having once exhausted it, we are obliged to put into it, in fertilizers, all we wish to take from it in the form of vegetable growths. Wherever there is an outgo, there must be an equal income, or exhaustion will be the inevitable consequence. The principle which these familiar facts so forcibly illustrate is a very important one, in its connection with human life. We cannot get any more out of human life than we put into it. All civilization is an illustration of what can be accomplished by feeding the human mind. All barbaric and savage life is an illustration of mental and moral starvation. The differences among mankind are the results of differences in the nourishment upon which their minds are fed. Eunice Williams, who was taken captive by the savages of Canada a hundred and fifty years ago, was the daughter of a most godly minister, of the old Puritan stamp; but a very few years of savage feeding made her a savage. Her mind was cut off from all other varieties of nourishment, and could only tend to savage issues. She kept a knowledge of her history, and many years after her capture revisited her home, accompanied by her tawny husband; but no persuasions could call her from her savage life and companionship. The conversion of men from heathenism to Christianity and Christian civilization is accomplished by introducing new food into their moral and mental diet. "A change of pastures makes fat calves," we are told; and any one who has noticed the effect upon an active mind of its translation from one variety of social and moral influences to another, will recognize the truth of the proverb. If a man will call up his acquaintances, one by one, and mentally measure the results of their lives, he will be astonished to see how small those results are. He will also see that they are, under ordinary circumstances, in the exact proportion to the amount, and in correspondence with the variety, of the food they take in. It is astonishing to see how little it takes to keep some people, and how very little such people become on their diet. A man who shuts himself away from all social life, and lays by his reading, and declines all food that addresses itself to his sensational and emotional nature, and refuses that bread of life which comes down from heaven, and feeds himself only with relation to the accomplishment of some petty work, will become as thin and scrawny, mentally and morally, as the body of a half-starved Hottentot. It is the one curse of rural life that it does not have a sufficiency and a sufficient variety of food. The same scenes, the same faces, the same limited range of books, the same dull friends, exhausted long ago--no new nourishment for powers cloyed with their never-varying food--these are what make rural life, as it is usually lived, unattractive and most unfruitful. The fruits--the issues--of this life cannot be greater than the food it gets, and the food is very scanty. It is not necessary that it should be so, and sometimes it is not so; but the rule of common rural life is insufficiency of mental food, and consequent poverty of manifestation. The utilitarian habits of New England, originating in necessity, and far outliving the circumstances in which they had their birth, have tended more than any other cause to make New England character unlovable. The saving of half-pence to add to one's store, and the denial to one's self and children of that which will delight the famished senses, and stir the thin emotions, and enlarge the range of experience, is the direct way of arriving at meanness of life. There are those who will not allow their families to cultivate flowers, because flowers are not useful, and they involve a waste of time and land. They will not have an instrument of music in their houses, because music is not useful, and it involves an expenditure of money, and the throwing away of a great deal of time. They will not buy pictures, because pictures are not useful, and because they cost money; so that many a rich man's parlor is as bare of ornament as a tomb would be. They will not attend a lecture, because, though it might furnish them with mental food for a month, it would not bring their shillings back to them. They will not attend a concert, because a concert is not useful. They will not hire a minister who possesses fine gifts--gifts that would enrich them mentally, morally, and socially--because they cannot afford it. So they take up with ministerial dry nursing, and one another's dry experiences, as spiritual food, in order to save a few more dollars. There are a few of the severer virtues that will live upon a diet of this kind. Endurance, industry, a negative purity, thrift, integrity--these can live, and do live, after a sort, on a plain and scanty diet, and these, as we know, abound in New England. But generosity, hospitality, charity, liberality--all those qualities that enrich the character, and all those virtues that enlarge it and give it fulness and beauty and attractiveness, are always wanting among the class that sacrifices every thing for use. More cannot be got out of any life than is put into it. Modern chemistry analyzes soils, and ascertains exactly what they need to make them produce bountifully of any kind of grains and fruits. Wheat cannot be grown on land that does not contain the constituents of wheat; and if it be desirable to grow wheat, those constituents must be added to the soil. If any mental soil does not produce those vital manifestations and results which characterize a large, rich, and attractive life, then the constituents of that life must be introduced as nutriment. One of the common experiences in the world of authorship is the writing of a single successful book, and the failure of all that follow it from the same pen. The explanation is, that the first book is the result of a life of feeding, and those that follow it come from an exhausted mind. There are many writers who, as soon as they begin to write, stop feeding, and in a very short time write themselves out. The temptation of the writer is to seclusion. His labors in a measure unfit him for social life, and for mingling in the every-day affairs of men. He is apt to become warped in his sentiments, and morbid in his feelings, and to grow small and weak as his works increase. The greatest possible blessing to an author is compulsory contact with the world--every-day necessity to meet and mingle with men and women--social responsibilities and business cares, and the consequent necessity of keeping up with the events and the literature of his time. An author in this position not only keeps a healthy mind, but he takes in food every day which his individuality assimilates to itself, and utters as the expression of its life. I have no belief that Shakspeare would ever have given us his immortal plays, but for the necessities which brought him so much into contact with men. Outside of his authorship, he lived an active, practical life--trod the boards of a theatre, managed men, looked after his money, rubbed against society in multiplied ways-- and kept himself strong, healthy, and abundantly fed with that food which was necessary to him. Shakspeare had genius, it is true, but genius without food is quite as helpless as a barren acre. All great geniuses are immense feeders. All true and healthy geniuses fasten for food upon every thing and every body. Their antennas are always out for the apprehension of ideas, and their mouths always open for their reception. Walter Scott was engaged in the active duties of the legal profession when writing his novels, and there was not a legend of Scotland, nor a bit of history or gossip, nor an old story-teller that lived within fifty miles of him, that he did not lay under tribute for mental food. It is declared, to the everlasting disgrace of Goethe, that he practiced upon the affections of women, even to old age, that he might gather food for poetry. Byron traversed Europe in search of adventure, and rummaged the scenes of legend and story for food for his voracious senses and sensibilities. His Childe Harold is nothing but the record of his tireless foraging. All men who have produced much have fed bountifully. The writers are few in whom we do not notice something painfully wanting. We do not always understand what it is, but we know that, while we may accord to them good sense, and even genius, they fail to satisfy us. There is some good thing which they lack--something unbalanced and partial and one-sided about them. We presume that this is often the result of a constitutional defect, but in most instances it is attributable to insufficient nourishment in some department of their nature. "All but," is the appropriate epitaph for the tombstone of many an author; and if we look carefully into his history we shall find an answer to the question: "All but what?" We shall find, perhaps, that he is a recluse, that his social nature is not fed at all, and that be is, of course, unsympathetic. This is a very frequent cause of dissatisfaction with an author, as it always gives a morbid tinge to his writings. Dickens is eminently a social man, and eminently healthy and sympathetic. Possibly an author may starve his senses and become purely reflective, yielding up his points of contact with the outside world, and shutting the channels by which the qualities of things find their way to his mind. Not unfrequently a man's domestic affections may be starved, or ill fed, and if so, the fact is sure to be betrayed in his writings. And if a writer's religious nature be starved, it invariably vitiates all his characteristic works. No man who shuts out God and heaven from his life can write without betraying the poverty of his diet. If an author would write satisfactorily, touching all kinds of human nature and all sides of human nature, he must feed every department of his own nature, for he has nothing to give that he does not receive. As in animal, so in mental life, there are gormandizing and gluttony, tending always to paralysis of voluntary effort. The devouring of facts, as they are found both in nature and in books, indulgence in social pleasures immoderately and constantly, pietism that feeds exclusively upon the things of religion, the feasting of the imagination upon the creations of fiction--all these are debilitating; and a blessed thing to the world is it that they unfit the mind for writing at all, as the overfeeding of the body unfits its organs for labor. Plethoric minds do not trouble the world with books, or with conversation, or with preaching. Activity simply demands food enough, and in sufficient variety, to feed its powers while operative, from day to day. This is the reason why immensely learned men have rarely done much for the world. Many of them have won reputations, like remarkably fat steers, for breadth of back and depth of brisket, but they are never known to move more than their own enormous bulks. Beyond a certain point of mental feeding, over and above the necessities of labor, the mind gets sleepy and clumsy. I have alluded to authors, particularly, because, unlike the world in general, they give form and record to their life. The masses of men live as authors live, but their lives are not put down in books, so that the public may read and measure them. We will suppose that two men are fed upon the same diet. Each shall have sufficient food for his religious, social, esthetic, domestic, sensational, and emotional natures, yet only one of them shall embody in books the life which he draws from these varieties of nourishment. The other lives essentially the same life, but it fails of record. It may be as rich, and characteristic, in every particular, as that of the author, but it fails of artistic form because, perhaps, he lacks the peculiar mental gift required for its construction. So the real life of the author and the life of his reader may be the same, the one having advantage over the other in no particular, and the fact that one is embodied in artistic forms conferring upon it no essential excellence. What I have said about authors, therefore, applies to all mankind, engaged in whatever calling or profession. If any portion of any man's nature be not well fed, he will betray the fact in his life. Poverty of food in any particular will surely bring poverty of manifestation in that department of life which is deprived of its natural nourishment. A familiar illustration of the failure of a life to secure its appropriate food, will be found in men and women who live unmarried. An old bachelor will sooner or later betray the fact that his finer affections are starved. It is next to impossible for him to hide from the world the wrong to which he is subjecting himself. His character will invariably show that it is warped and weak and lame, and his life will be barren of all those manifestations which flow from domestic affections abundantly fed. Here and there, one like Washington Irving will nourish a love transplanted to Heaven, and bring around him the sweet faces and delicate natures of women, to minister to a thirsting heart, and preserve, as he did, his geniality and tenderness to the last; but such as he are comparatively few. An old bachelor, voluntarily single, always betrays a nature badly fed in one of its important departments. So, too, those who marry, but who are not blest with children, betray the lack of food. Many of these hunger through life for children to feed their affections, and take on peculiarities that betray the fact that something is wrong with them. Some adopt children in order to supply a want which seems imperative, and others take pets of different kinds to their bosoms, ranging through the scale from birds to bull-dogs. It is a familiar trick of starved faculties and affections to take on a morbid appetite, and feed themselves on the strangest of supplies. So, if a man would live a full and generous life, he must supply it with a full and generous diet. So far as his ability will go, he should make his home the embodiment of his best taste. There should be abundant meaning in its architecture. There should be pictures upon its walls, and books upon its shelves and tables. All the domestic and social affections should be abundantly fed there. His table should be a gathering place for friends. Music should minister to him. He should bring himself into contact with the great and wise and good, who have embalmed their lives in the varied forms of art. The facts that live in the earth under his feet, the beauty that spreads itself around him, and all those truths which appeal to his religious nature, are food which should minister to his life. An irreligious man--no matter what his genius may be--is always a starveling. An unsocial man can by no possibility lead a true life. A man's nature should be thrown wide open at every point, to drink in the nourishment that comes from the healthy sources of supply; and thus only may his life become abundantly rich and beautiful. I repeat the proposition that I started with: we cannot get more out of human life than we put into it. There is another aspect of this subject that I have barely space to allude to. The illustration with which this article opens, touching the effects of hay and grain respectively upon the life of the horse, suggests that the food with which our bodies are nourished may have an important bearing upon our mental and moral life. Of this I have no doubt. Coarse food, made of material but feebly vitalized, makes coarse men and women. Muscular tissues not formed from choice material, brains built of poor stuff, nervous fibres to which the finest and most delicate food has not ministered, are not the instruments of the highest grade of mental life. The dispensation of sawdust is passed away. It is pretty well understood that the most complicated, the noblest, and the finest creature in the world requires the best food the world can produce; and that he requires it in great variety. If a man leads simply an animal life-- eating, working, and sleeping--let him feed as animals do; but if he lives a life above animals, as a social and religious being, then let him take food that gives pleasure to his palate, and pluck and power to all the instruments of his mind. Hay may answer very well for a mind that moves at the rate of only three miles an hour; but a mile was never yet made "inside of 2:40" without grain. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |