Etidorhpa or the End of Earth Part 11

My instructor placed both hands on my shoulders, and in silence I stood gazing intently into his face. Then, in a smooth, captivating, entrancing manner, he continued:

"Can you not see that food is not matter? The material part of bread is carbon, water, gas, and earth; the material part of fat is charcoal and gas; the material part of flesh is water and gas; the material part of fruits is mostly water with a little charcoal and gas.[4] The material const.i.tuents of all foods are plentiful, they abound everywhere, and yet amid the unlimited, unorganized materials that go to form foods man would starve.

[4] By the term gas, it is evident that hydrogen and nitrogen were designated, and yet, since the instructor insists that other gases form part of the atmosphere, so he may consistently imply that unknown gases are parts of food.--J. U. L.

"Give a healthy man a diet of charcoal, water, lime salts, and air; say to him, 'Bread contains no other substance, here is bread, the material food of man, live on this food,' and yet the man, if he eat of these, will die with his stomach distended. So with all other foods; give man the unorganized materialistic const.i.tuents of food in unlimited amounts, and starvation results. No! matter is not food, but a carrier of food."

"What is food?"

"Suns.h.i.+ne. The grain of wheat is a food by virtue of the suns.h.i.+ne fixed within it. The flesh of animals, the food of living creatures, are simply carriers of suns.h.i.+ne energy. Break out the suns.h.i.+ne and you destroy the food, although the material remains. The growing plant locks the suns.h.i.+ne in its cells, and the living animal takes it out again.

Hence it is that after the suns.h.i.+ne of any food is liberated during the metamorphosis of the tissues of an animal although the material part of the food remains, it is no longer a food, but becomes a poison, and then, if it is not promptly eliminated from the animal, it will destroy the life of the animal. This material becomes then injurious, but it is still material.

"The farmer plants a seed in the soil, the suns.h.i.+ne sprouts it, nourishes the growing plant, and during the season locks itself to and within its tissues, binding the otherwise dead materials of that tissue together into an organized structure. Animals eat these structures, break them from higher to lower compounds, and in doing so live on the stored up suns.h.i.+ne and then excrete the worthless material side of the food. The farmer spreads these excluded substances over the earth again to once more take up the suns.h.i.+ne in the coming plant organization, but not until it does once more lock in its cells the energy of suns.h.i.+ne can it be a food for that animal."

"Is manure a food?" he abruptly asked.

"No."

"Is not manure matter?"

"Yes."

"May it not become a food again, as the part of another plant, when another season pa.s.ses?"

"Yes."

"In what else than energy (suns.h.i.+ne) does it differ from food?"

"Water is a necessity," I said.

"And locked in each molecule of water there is a mine of suns.h.i.+ne.

Liberate suddenly the sun energy from the gases of the ocean held in subjection thereby, and the earth would disappear in an explosion that would reverberate throughout the universe. The water that you truly claim to be necessary to the life of man, is itself water by the grace of this same sun, for without its heat water would be ice, dry as dust.

'Tis the sun that gives life and motion to creatures animate and substances inanimate; he who doubts distrusts his Creator. Food and drink are only carriers of bits of a.s.similable suns.h.i.+ne. When the fire wors.h.i.+pers kneeled to their G.o.d, the sun, they wors.h.i.+ped the great food reservoir of man. When they drew the quivering entrails from the body of a sacrificed victim they gave back to their G.o.d a spark of suns.h.i.+ne--it was due sooner or later. They builded well in thus recognizing the source of all life, and yet they acted badly, for their G.o.d asked no premature sacrifice, the inevitable must soon occur, and as all organic life comes from that Sun-G.o.d, so back to that Creator the sun-spark must fly."

"But they are heathen; there is a G.o.d beyond their narrow conception of G.o.d."

"As there is also a G.o.d in the Beyond, past your idea of G.o.d. Perhaps to beings of higher mentalities, we may be heathen; but even if this is so, duty demands that we revere the G.o.d within our intellectual sphere. Let us not digress further; the subject now is food, not the Supreme Creator, and I say to you the food of man and the organic life of man is suns.h.i.+ne."

He ceased, and I reflected upon his words. All he had said seemed so consistent that I could not deny its plausibility, and yet it still appeared altogether unlikely as viewed in the light of my previous earth knowledge. I did not quite comprehend all the semi-scientific expressions, but was at least certain that I could neither disprove nor verify his propositions. My thoughts wandered aimlessly, and I found myself questioning whether man could be prevailed upon to live contentedly in situations such as I was now pa.s.sing through. In company with my learned and philosophical but fantastically created guardian and monitor, I moved on.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CRY FROM A DISTANCE.--I REBEL AGAINST CONTINUING THE JOURNEY.

As we paced along, meditating, I became more sensibly impressed with the fact that our progress was down a rapid declination. The saline incrustations, fungi and stalagmites, rapidly changed in appearance, an endless variety of stony figures and vegetable cryptogams recurring successively before my eyes. They bore the shape of trees, shrubs, or animals, fixed and silent as statues: at least in my distorted condition of mind I could make out resemblances to many such familiar objects; the floor of the cavern became increasingly steeper, as was shown by the stalact.i.tes, which, hanging here and there from the invisible ceiling, made a decided angle with the floor, corresponding with a similar angle of the stalagmites below. Like an accompanying and encircling halo the ever present earth-light enveloped us, opening in front as we advanced, and vanis.h.i.+ng in the rear. The sound of our footsteps gave back a peculiar, indescribable hollow echo, and our voices sounded ghost-like and unearthly, as if their origin was outside of our bodies, and at a distance. The peculiar resonance reminded me of noises reverberating in an empty cask or cistern. I was oppressed by an indescribable feeling of mystery and awe that grew deep and intense, until at last I could no longer bear the mental strain.

"Hold, hold," I shouted, or tried to shout, and stopped suddenly, for although I had cried aloud, no sound escaped my lips. Then from a distance--could I believe my senses?--from a distance as an echo, the cry came back in the tones of my own voice, "Hold, hold."

"Speak lower," said my guide, "speak very low, for now an effort such as you have made projects your voice far outside your body; the greater the exertion the farther away it appears."

I grasped him by the arm and said slowly, determinedly, and in a suppressed tone: "I have come far enough into the secret caverns of the earth, without knowing our destination; acquaint me now with the object of this mysterious journey, I demand, and at once relieve this sense of uncertainty; otherwise I shall go no farther."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AN ENDLESS VARIETY OF STONY FIGURES."]

"You are to proceed to the Sphere of Rest with me," he replied, "and in safety. Beyond that an Unknown Country lies, into which I have never ventured."

"You speak in enigmas; what is this Sphere of Rest? Where is it?"

"Your eyes have never seen anything similar; human philosophy has no conception of it, and I can not describe it," he said. "It is located in the body of the earth, and we will meet it about one thousand miles beyond the North Pole."

"But I am in Kentucky," I replied; "do you think that I propose to walk to the North Pole, man--if man you be; that unreached goal is thousands of miles away."

"True," he answered, "as you measure distance on the surface of the earth, and you could not walk it in years of time; but you are now twenty-five miles below the surface, and you must be aware that instead of becoming more weary as we proceed, you are now and have for some time been gaining strength. I would also call to your attention that you neither hunger nor thirst."

"Proceed," I said, "'tis useless to rebel; I am wholly in your power,"

and we resumed our journey, and rapidly went forward amid silences that were to me painful beyond description. We abruptly entered a cavern of crystal, every portion of which was of sparkling brilliancy, and as white as snow. The stalact.i.tes, stalagmites and fungi disappeared. I picked up a fragment of the bright material, tasted it, and found that it resembled pure salt. Monstrous, cubical crystals, a foot or more in diameter, stood out in bold relief, acc.u.mulations of them, as conglomerated ma.s.ses, banked up here and there, making parts of great columnar cliffs, while in other formations the crystals were small, resembling in the aggregate ma.s.ses of white sandstone.

"Is not this salt?" I asked.

"Yes; we are now in the dried bed of an underground lake."

"Dried bed?" I exclaimed; "a body of water sealed in the earth can not evaporate."

"It has not evaporated; at some remote period the water has been abstracted from the salt, and probably has escaped upon the surface of the earth as a fresh water spring."

"You contradict all laws of hydrostatics, as I understand that subject,"

I replied, "when you speak of abstracting water from a dissolved substance that is part of a liquid, and thus leaving the solids."

"Nevertheless this is a constant act of nature," said he; "how else can you rationally account for the great salt beds and other deposits of saline materials that exist hermetically sealed beneath the earth's surface?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MONSTROUS CUBICAL CRYSTALS."]

"I will confess that I have not given the subject much thought; I simply accept the usual explanation to the effect that salty seas have lost their water by evaporation, and afterward the salt formations, by some convulsions of nature, have been covered with earth, perhaps sinking by earthquake convulsions bodily into the earth."

"These explanations are examples of some of the erroneous views of scientific writers," he replied; "they are true only to a limited extent. The great beds of salt, deep in the earth, are usually acc.u.mulations left there by water that is drawn from brine lakes, from which the liberated water often escaped as pure spring water at the surface of the earth. It does not escape by evaporation, at least not until it reaches the earth's surface."

INTERLUDE--THE STORY INTERRUPTED.

CHAPTER XX.