When it is realized that the proteid, or bodybuilding foods, as meats, eggs, cereals, bread, beans, peas, etc., are usually the most thoroughly cooked foods, the question naturally arises: How is it that anyone is alive, and that animals do not live forever? This is easily answered:

In every phase of life nature provides for its preservation intuitively to a certain extent, until the reason develops to decide the best courses to pur-sue to sustain it intelligently, as compulsory sleep preventing complete destruction from dissipation, regular hours and days of labor broken by rest, checking over-ruling ambition and reverting the mind to the Great Unknown Power beyond it; passions, inclinations, appetites and tastes are for the purpose of perpetuating the race and the individual, but beyond this point of absolute necessity to prevent obliteration from ignorant mistakes man is left to discover the place of "greatest good" in all things for himself. This effort is life - it is education and development. Estimating the place of greatest good is the riddle the Sphynx is always propounding, and if man cannot solve it he is devoured - consumed by his own excesses.

In early times the cell life of the body was quite perfectly sustained, so far as nourishment was concerned, intuitively, as it is at present with animals, all food being eaten raw. The bread of our early ancestors was made into cakes and dried instead of being baked; meat, herbs, vegetables, fruit, milk, nuts, honey and many other things were served in the natural state, and the appetite being less cultivated and less perverted, was satisfied by this simple diet. It was not uncommon for man to live five hundred or even nine hundred years without the other qualifications essential for the best development, to sustain youth and longevity. The normal term of human life was originally long, but like many intuitive qualities its secret of perpetuation not being understood, the ability to live was gradu-ally lost through ignorant mistakes, each succeeding generation becoming more involved in the conditions inducing old age, disease and early death until the present time, when decline begins at forty or fifty years.

During all this time, however, the mind of man has been developing until it is becoming possible for him to perceive, or discover, the laws of life and re-establish upon an intelligent basis what has been lost through ignorance. This knowledge of why and how - the use of reason and judgment - places man above the animal. Even though the animal, at present is better nourished than man, and enjoys better health, it cannot intelligently regulate its life, hold itself positive to disintegrating forces, or change its inheritance from intuitive channels, as man may do if he lives in harmony with his knowledge of what will sustain and accumulate vitality. The animal can live only within its natural cycle of existence. Man is not limited to a definite cycle except as the race belief limits him to "three-score-years and ten," but he does not even do justice to himself, or his God, in this short life, so falls very far from his great possibilities.

Under the advent of cooking, although the nourishment of the body has gradually become more impaired with the complications of civilization, and the term of life has been shortened from five hundred years to that of sixty, nature still demands that many kinds of food be used in the natural state, and that others be but slightly cooked, as "the egg that is cooked on one side," meat that is served "rare/' and bread that is baked so quickly it is only heated through by the time it is coagulated. Butter, milk, and cheese are seldom injured by heat.

It does not require much food to sustain the tissues if it is full of life and vitality, even though all the cells of the body are changed, or replaced, by new ones in a few years' time, thus people have lived all through the ages upon the cells of food that have escaped being devitalized by cooking, even though they have not been strong and healthy as they would have been with better nourishment.

The amount of natural food in use at the present time, although the value of the living cell is not known, would sustain health much more perfectly were it not for the immense amount of useless and dead substance that must be disposed of by the system in its already weakened state. All manner of food and drink is indulged to gratify the taste without thought of the purpose to be served or the harm that may result. No other machine is so misused as the human machine. It is expected to produce healthy living tissue when clogged with every conceivable kind of stuff. In gratifying the depraved appetite the cells of the organs that must sustain the mechanism of the body are exhausted by overwork, and a physician must be called upon to diet the patient - to exercise self-control for him. Even from a selfish standpoint of dissipation the first consideration should be to sustain the organs that must dispose of the surplus food enjoyed, by living cells, as a strong man can endure more dissipation of any kind than a weakly one.

Nature always mixes dross with gold. Every article of diet has a large per cent, of refuse or useless substance that in a healthy digestive system is passed off without harm. The wonderful power the digestive organs possess to free the system of refuse is seen in cases where men and boys swallow jack-knives, pennies, marbles, or even ground glass in public exhibitions. Such a diet is not conducive to long life, but does not cause so much trouble as might be imagined - perhaps not so much as devitalized food that the system attempts to utilize but cannot.

It is right to gratify the taste, and if the cells of the body are well nourished, nature is very lenient. The dieticians who claim that every morsel of food eaten but not utilized acts as poison are extreme. Such may be the case if the system is already dogged or too weak to permit the action of the excretory organ, but otherwise an occasional immoderate or unwise indulgence is easily counteracted; however, dissipations of any kind cannot be "demonstrated over" continuously. Pain is a voice of warning that mistakes are being made. A normal appetite does not crave excesses although the judgment may often be at a loss as to what is best, hence nature gives ample opportunity for correction but cannot be ignored with safety.

The demands of civilization can no more be satisfied with an entirely primitive diet than the aesthetic taste can be cast aside, reverting modern fashions in dress to the inartistic blanket and skins of animals, or supplanting modern dwelling by tents and wigwams. Such a state of affairs would undo the work of evolution. Because extremes and mistakes have caused suffering from any advances of civilization, it is no indication that civilization is undesirable. Progression is the constant purpose of nature, but the place of "greatest good" must always be the guide. Progression cannot be stopped, but it is hindered as much by rushing past the place of "greatest good" as in failing to reach its highest standard.

Although cooking has become gradually complicated, until it is a rank evil in some ways, when it is carelessly done, yet, as so many forms of food are useless, or unpalatable without it, it is evident that intelligent cooking is a part of nature's plan for human nourishment to distinguish man from the beast, and affords one of the most effective means of pleasure and action, as well as a means of developing reason, judgment and self-control, so essential in prolonging life and gaining the highest human destiny.

Nature furnishes a kind of action for the cultivation of both brain and body cells, as a part of objective growth, to sustain every high purpose or accomplishment. Regulated cooking means more than nourishment. It is educative. The greatest purpose of eating is not only to live but to live indefinitely. The best possible judgment is required even in the business world to prevent loss or friction in the future, by making present transactions with later contingencies always in view. It requires thought, care and knowledge, instead of haphazard living, that each meal in the day may tend to prolong life, as well as to gratify the taste and yield satisfaction.

It is a pleasure, not a sacrifice, to replace useless, lifeless, injurious substances with revivifying vitalized food, even though it is possible to eke out an ordinary term of existence under the present conditions of living.