KEEPING FIT. Orison Swett Marden

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

       Table of Contents

      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 Goldsmith.

      “Whose son art thou?” inquired King Lane, in wonder, when the stripling David came into his presence after slaying the huge Goliath of Gath. “Whose daughter art thou?” asked the equally astonished barons, bishops, priests, and princes, of Joan of Arc, who, as De Quincey puts it, “had come out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings.”

      Whose son—whose daughter—art thou? Is your strength of body, or mind, or purpose, chiefly derived from your ancestry?—or are you, in the main, the child of your individual physical, mental, and spiritual rules of life,—of your own aims, training, regimen, and deeds?

      If the latter, one almost unconsciously wonders with the poet: “Upon what does this, our Caesar, feed, that he has grown so great?”—or what is lacking in his diet or his mentality that he remains so feeble in body, mind or soul?

      An authority who has made a study of bee culture says that as soon as a hive needs a new queen the bees begin to feed the larvae of a few workers with the best part of a jelly-like substance called by bee cultivators the royal jelly. The one selected from the developed larvae for a queen continues to be fed upon this substance, while the others, of course, are no longer thus favored. As a result of her special diet the future queen grows several times as large as her companions and many times more intelligent.

      Numerous experiments made upon animals and birds with different kinds of food have resulted in radical changes in their structure and appearance. In the case of birds very great changes were made in their plumage. The disposition and the tissues themselves were materially altered, coarsened or refined, according to the nature of the food.

      We all know what a difference there is in the appearance, in the spirit and bearing of the fine high-stepping horses of the rich, which are fed with the greatest care, on the best foods, and those of the horses of poor people which are fed upon the meanest kind of hay, perhaps without any grain. Plants which have plenty of sunlight and nourishing soil have two or three times as much growth in a year as those whose roots are dwarfed in poor soil and whose leaves get little or no sunshine. Contrast the appearance of well-nourished crops with those that have had no fertilizer and have been grown on poor, arid soil.

      There is just as great difference in the physical appearance of prosperous, well-fed men and women and of those who are underfed and under-nourished in the ranks of the poor as there is in the appearance of the high-stepping, well-fed and well-cared-for horses of the rich and the “dopey,” stupid, half-fed and half-cared-for horses of the poor; just as marked a difference in the quality and strength of the children reared in homes of wealth and luxury and those brought up in city slums as there is in the quality and strength of the plants raised from nourishing soil in the sunlight and those that have struggled up in poor soil, largely deprived of sun and dew.

      The appearance and quality of plants and animals are alike dependent on the nutriment they receive. Sunshine, light, air, water, and the right kind and quantity of food are necessary for the perfect development of all.

      Ignorance of food values and bodily requirements would reduce a Webster to a pygmy. It is just as necessary to know how to choose our foods and to know their action upon the body as it is to be trained for our vocations.

      In repairing our homes and keeping them in order, we use