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“Now what is the essential thing, apart from air and water, which we derive from the outside world? Food, isn’t it? Did it ever occur to you to inquire where your food comes from, ultimately?”

“Well, of course,” I said, “it comes from all over the world. I don’t know whether the wheat I eat in my bread comes from Canada or the States or Argentina, or was home-grown. It doesn’t seem to me a matter of importance, anyway.”

“That isn’t what I mean at all,” Wotherspoon interrupted, “I want you to look at it in another way. I suppose you had your usual style of dinner to-day. Just think of the items: soup, fish, meat, bread, and so on. Your soup was made from bones and vegetables; your fish course was originally an animal; so was your joint; your sweet was probably purely vegetable; and your dessert certainly was a plant product. Now don’t you see what I mean?”

“No, I confess I don’t.”

“Haven’t I just shown you that everything you ate comes from either the animal or vegetable kingdom? You don’t bite bits out of the crockery, like the Mad Hatter. Everything you use to keep your physical machine alive is something which has already had life in it? Isn’t that so? You never think of having a meal of pure chemicals, do you?”