CHAPTER XII
THE PRICE OF A GODDESS
Stomach is and ever has been a mighty factor in the affairs of
mankind: the proud and lowly, the fool and sage, all alike are slaves
to its imperious dictates. Let it go empty, and it is a curse,
breeding cowardice, gloomy suspicions, unreasonableness, angers and a
thousand evils and dissensions; fill it and it is a comfort, promoting
good-fellowship, kindliness and abounding virtue. Hence, instead of
saying of a man--"He has a good heart"--should not the dictum be
rather--"He is the happy possessor of an excellent stomach regularly
and adequately filled?" For truly how many actions, evil and good, may
be directly traced to the influence of this most important organ!
Thus, to your true Philosopher, "the Stomach is the thing," and so
long as his own be comfortable he may philosophise with stoical
fortitude upon other people's woes (and occasionally his own) more or
less agreeably; but starve him and our Philosopher will grieve for
himself as miserably as I--or even you. The Tooth of Remorse may be
sharp but the Fangs of Hunger bite deeper still, and who shall cherish
beauty in his soul or who find patience to rhapsodise on a sunset when
his stomach is empty as a drum? Thus, alas, Soul goes shackled by, and
Intellect is the slave of, Stomach!
All of the which foregoing points to the fact that the steak and
kidney pudding had been excellent, even as my benefactor had said;
wherefore, drowsing in somnolent content, I sat amid leaves beside a
prattling rill musing comfortably as a well-fed young philosopher may,
when these reflections were banished in sudden alarm, for upon the
drowsy afternoon stillness rose a stir of leaves, a snapping of twigs,
the sounds of one who burst through all obstacles in desperate flight.
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