It forms brain cells and creates mental force with which to control the organism. It keeps in repair the nerves, which are the telegraph wires connecting the brain with all parts of the body. It converts the potential energy in the food into heat with which to keep itself warm. Withal it is not left free to do its work automatically. It has within it a higher intelligence, a spiritual force, which may definitely hamper its workings by getting a wrong control of the telegraph wires, thus interfering with the digestion, the heart action, the lungs and all metabolic changes. The right exercise of this higher intelligence, in turn, depends upon the condition of the body, because when the mechanism of the body is out of repair it hampers mental and spiritual control. Surely man is marvelously made! The intelligent care of the body,—the temple through which the soul communicates with material conditions,—is a Christian duty. “The priest with liver trouble and the parishioner with indigestion, do not evidence that skilled Christian living so essential to the higher life.” Certain it is that improper foods affect the disposition, retard the spiritual growth and change the drift of one’s life and of the lives about one. Man has become so engrossed and hedged about with the complex demands of social, civic, and domestic life, all of which call for undue energy and annoyance and lead him into careless or extravagant habits of eating and living, that he forgets to apply the intelligence which he puts into his business to the care of the machine which does the work. Yet the simple laws of nature in the care of the body, are plainer and easier to follow than the complex habits which he forms. The “simple life” embraces the habits of eating as well as the habits of doing and of thinking. FOOTNOTES: [1] It is impossible in this book to go into the anatomy and physiology of digestion exhaustively.—The reader is respectfully referred to Miss Cocroft’s book upon “The Vital Organs: their Use and Abuse.” This traces the food through the digestive canal, indicating the juices which act upon it, putting it into a necessary state to be absorbed by the body and appropriated to its various uses. PURPOSES OF FOOD The purposes of food are: To supply the material of which the body is made. To rebuild tissue, which is constantly being torn down and eliminated. To produce heat, and to supply muscular and mental energy. Let us discuss these purposes in above order. [Sidenote: Food Supply] By food supply is meant not only that the proper foods in kind and quantity be eaten, but that the body be in condition to digest, absorb, and assimilate the foods, and to eliminate the waste, otherwise the foods fail to supply the body needs. It is the nourishment which the body assimilates and appropriates to its needs which counts in food economy.