Читать книгу KEEPING FIT - Orison Swett Marden - Страница 4

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Here is bread, which strengthens man’s heart, and therefore is called the staff of life.

—Matthew Henry.

O hour of all hours, the most blessed upon earth,

The blessed hour of our dinners!

—Owen Meredith.

Cheese and bread make the cheeks red.

—German Proverb.

Behold a crust of bread and a jug of water let down into Bunyan’s cell, which a little later appear in the greatest allegory that was ever written by man!

Watch that crust of bread as it is cut, crushed, ground, driven by muscles, dissolved by acids and alkalies; absorbed and hurled into the mysterious red river of the man’s life blood! Scores of little factories along this wonderful river, waiting for this crust, transmute it as it passes, as if by magic, here into a bone cell, there into gastric juice, here into bile, there into a nerve cell, yonder into a brain cell. We cannot trace the process by which it arrives at the muscle and acts, arrives at the brain and thinks. We cannot see the manipulating hand which throws back and forth the shuttle which weaves Bunyan’s destinies, nor can we trace the subtle alchemy which transforms this prison crust into “Pilgrim’s Progress.” But we do know that, unless we supply food when the stomach begs and clamors, brain and muscle cannot continue to act; and we also know that, unless the food is properly chosen, unless we eat it properly, unless we maintain good digestion by exercise of mind and body, it will not produce the allegories of a Bunyan, the energy and achievements of a Roosevelt, the inventions of a Marconi, an Edison, or the successes of a great constructive man of business.

The age of miracles past! Why, there is a miracle performed at every meal which is more mysterious than the raising of the dead to life! You take a piece of bread, a piece of meat, a few vegetables into your mouth, and in a few hours they become man; they begin to think, they begin to act; that food takes on all the characteristics of your personality. Your ancestors relive and act in it. What was a few hours ago food is now making laws in Congress, is passing decisions upon the bench, is farming, is running machinery, is doing all sorts of things. Is the quality, the quantity, the manner of partaking of the nourishing material which is to perform the miracles of the world of any great consequence? Is it worth much concern?

Part of your efficiency, your health, your mental vigor, your future welfare, lives in that meal of which you are about to partake. Can you afford to take in material which is going to give you deteriorated blood? Can you afford to take in that which will give you a second-class brain and can only manufacture mental processes in keeping with its own inferior quality?

Your food can give off, when assimilated in the body, only the force which Nature has stored up in its cells.

You may say it does not matter much what you eat,—so long as it satisfies your hunger. Do you realize that the cells in that stale vegetable and soft, spongy fruit, which has already begun to decay, and the poor meat you are eating, are much deteriorated; that they have lost their recuperative, renewing, refreshing force? Do you realize that while you may satisfy hunger, you are manufacturing second-class blood, a second-class brain, a second-class nerve tissue, a second-class man? And you want to be a first-class man, do you not? As a man eateth, so is he. As he eats, so will he live, so will his strength be.

You have wondered, no doubt, many times, why you lack power to concentrate your mind, to hold your mental grip upon the thing you are doing. You perhaps have not realized that the quality of your intellectual grasp, of your focusing power, lies in your food. The quality of your vitality, of your brain power, the quality of your courage, of your initiative, of your productive power, will be in exact ratio to the quality of the material from which these are manufactured. The quality of the manufactured product cannot excel the quality of the raw material.

The fire and force, the vim for achievement, are put into our food by the power of the sun and the chemistry of the soil. The strength for which we long, the force which does things, the stamina, the grit, the brawn, and what we call “gray matter,” Nature produces in her laboratory, where she performs her wonderful miracles.

The roots of our spiritual life run through the material body into the food stuffs, into the soil, and outward to the source of all physical power, the sun. We are bound up together; we are of the earth, earthy. We come from Nature; we return to Nature. All vital energy is generated in the sun; Nature’s alchemy takes the vital energy and recreates it in food products which we receive from her and assimilate, and from which comes the abundance of our achievements, our spiritual life.

The brain gets a great deal of credit for what justly belongs to good health, to a strong physique. “Intense, rapid, sustained,” is the motto of effective mentality. It is not a question of will-power so much as of vitality and strength. Robust health produces a positive intellectuality, and this is the force that does things in the world; whereas, in proportion to failing health, to lowered vitality, the mind becomes negative.

The man who accomplishes things is noted for his ability to decide matters vigorously and finally; while the vacillator is pained at the very thought that he must make a final decision, and is always reconsidering, weighing and balancing, recalling his letters, tearing open the seals to see whether he has really meant what he has written, whether it were wise to send the letter, after all, or whether he has left out something important. But the man of decision is the man who succeeds, and decision is the child of strong vitality, of a well nourished brain.

Is it not astonishing that, despite these facts, in our efforts to economize, we often lose tenfold by cutting off our nutrition, in going without lunches, or bolting inferior food at a cheap quick-lunch counter? By trying to save a few cents a day in this way we cut off ten dollars’ worth of vitality. We may reduce our business-getting ability by dulling the ambition, so that we may lose a hundred dollars’ worth of business.

When we skimp on food we do so at the cost of power and vitality. If the body is not completely nourished, the blood will be impoverished, or made impure; and vitiated blood means poor quality of thinking, than which nothing can be more extravagant.

The great thing is to keep oneself up to the highest point of efficiency at any cost or pains. Anything which reduces the fire and force in the brain, which lessens the ambition or the energy, weakens will-power, courage, self-confidence, inclination to work, initiative, and power of decision. In fact, the whole mental apparatus, the efficiency of the whole of life’s machinery, is affected. Such economies are criminal.

One might as well try to economize on the board of a horse about to enter a contest of speed, and expect him to win, as to economize on his own food and expect to remain in tiptop condition. Speed and staying power are what he is after for the horse, and these must come mostly from the food, the drink, and the general care.

Every ambitious man is in a perpetual race for supremacy of some kind. Can he afford to economize on that which produces brain force, that which produces health? Can he afford to economize on energy-producing material?

Many well-meaning people fail in life because they are not good to themselves. They do not have enough to eat, or they do not have food of the requisite quality to keep their brains and bodies up to the highest point of efficiency.

We are not here simply to exist, but to achieve the greatest thing possible to us, and we cannot afford to deny ourselves the best of everything that can contribute to our efficiency. Multitudes are doing mediocre work just because they do not have the highest quality of brain food. They do not take proper care of themselves.

I know fairly well-to-do people who are too stingy to buy fruit, except when it is very cheap, although it is necessary to health; for it is not only a blood purifier, but it is also a blood-maker. Nothing else is better for the system than good ripe fruit; and, no matter how scarce or high in price every one should have some at least every day. Many people, without knowing it, are pinching their very life sources by foolish economies,—eating poor, tough meats, dried-up or half-matured or wilted vegetables, cheap, adulterated teas, coffees, spices, etc.

Now, every one ought to start out in life with a determination to be good to himself, just to himself. He ought to resolve not to cheat his very source of power by feeding his body with inferior products. Pinching on the very source of one’s supply of mental and physical power is fatal frugality. There is a great difference between the results of first-class and second-class brain power, and it is the quality of the food that often makes the difference.

Failure is frequently due to mental deterioration, to weakening of courage, of self-confidence and of mental grasp, so that men make business slips which they would not have made formerly. They have deteriorated physically, and they do not realize that their minds go up and down with their physical condition like the mercury in a thermometer.

The unfortunate thing about mental deterioration which follows the violation of physical laws is that it is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, and people who have been successful are often suddenly confronted with failure because of the loss of their mental grip, the crippling of their courage and initiative.

Napoleon’s downfall was largely due to physical deterioration. In youth he had given much thought to diet, as a means of making the most of himself, but the subject was then but vaguely understood. Even as some savages think that the spirit of a conquered foe passes over into them and strengthens them, so he looked upon food. The stronger the animal eaten, the stronger the eater should become. Hence he who would become king of all the Giant-killer Jacks should eat elephants, the largest and strongest of land animals. But elephants were scarce and costly in France, and his purse was not that of a multimillionaire.

An ox was the nearest substitute he could think of obtainable at a moderate price, and oxen were slaughtered for the army every day. But even an ox could not be considered a full substitute, so he must exercise care and eat the strongest part of him and thus approximate his ideal standard as closely as possible. This strongest of all parts must clearly be the brain, for that rules all the rest of the animal. So he had saved and cooked for him, and daily ate, the brain of an ox.

Now it so happens that iron, lime, and sulphur are indispensable in the formation of red blood corpuscles, and lime and sulphur are not found in brain substance. It also happens that sulphur is one of the best medicines for the itch, and probably, through its presence in the blood in proper quantities, one of the best preventives of that disease, at least in a severe form. Possibly because of his deficiency in sulphur, incidental to his peculiar diet, he caught or developed at Toulon the itch in an aggravated form, which annoyed him greatly for years. His physicians tried in vain to cure him, and repeatedly urged him to allow them to “drive it in.”

To this he would not consent, for a long time, saying that the itch is but an outward manifestation of an effort of Nature to get rid of something bad inside. For his part he was glad that his system was so resistant and persistent in trying to throw off the bad thing, whatever it was, and he wanted that cured, not its mere itching manifestation or symptom. One might, he admitted, put an extinguisher on a volcano, but that would only cause it to break out in some other way or place.

But at the zenith of his power he consented, for he considered it very undignified for the great conqueror of conquerors and emperor of emperors to squirm and scratch on even the greatest occasions, and scratch he had to, sometimes, no matter what was going on. He was never quite the same man after he “conquered his itch by driving it in.”

He also suffered from epilepsy, due, perhaps, in no small degree, to his diet, for it is caused by insufficiency of red blood corpuscles and consequent disturbances in the circulation. When the itch, perhaps a kind of outlet for his real trouble, had gone, his epileptic attacks increased in frequency and severity and sometimes temporarily incapacitated him when under greatest pressure and needing the strongest and most perfect circulation,—even before or during some of his most important battles in later life.

Further, he had a very restless brain, and this was stimulated to undue activity both positively by the excess of phosphatic material in his dietary, and negatively by lack of nerve-quieting oxygen in his blood from deficiency of lime and sulphur in his food. As Faraday discovered, oxygen is slightly magnetic and hence is attracted by the iron in the red blood corpuscles. When the red corpuscles are deficient in quantity, not enough oxygen is taken up by this magnetic attraction. So his brain, like an engine with an imperfect safety valve, drove the wheels of his life at a pace too furious to last long in perfect condition. Again, from lack of enough red corpuscles, he could not absorb enough oxygen to burn up or oxidize the fat produced by his food, and he became corpulent. Worst of all, not improbably the cancer of the stomach from which he died at St. Helena was occasioned, if not caused, by lack of sulphur in his food.

Close observers have repeatedly noted how decayed limbs of trees or even fence posts that have stood in the ground a long time, after the rains have soaked out their sulphates and warm damp weather has developed their phosphorescence, have thrown out growths of a tough white fibrous matter as foreign to them as are tumors and cancer in man. Perhaps Napoleon, who lacked sulphur and abounded in phosphorus, originated or at least cultivated his fatal cancer in much the same way.

It is as natural for a perfectly normal human being to undertake things, to have a strong ambition and initiative, as it is for him to breathe. Originality is the product of a vigorous mind in a healthy body. People would be infinitely more original and resourceful than they are, if they kept their physical standards up. When a man is perfectly well, he is not an imitator. His mentality is forceful. He is not inclined to trail then, as he is when his physical standards are down.

Concentration is the secret of all achievement, but you cannot focus your faculties with vigor and efficiency if your brain is not properly nourished. Everything depends upon the quality of your brain, and that in turn depends upon the food with which it is nourished.

You are very particular about the quality of the material which you put into your manufactures. But what about the quality of your brain and your physical condition, which determine the quality of your career? Do you realize that your habitual diet is constantly adding to or taking from your brain power?

One great reason for the superiority of the brain power and achievement of successful business men over those who work for them is that they are better nourished; they have the finest quality of nutriment, food that is fresher, riper, that has been more perfectly matured in Nature’s laboratory. The man of means often overeats, but he usually eats foods of the best quality.

It is the positive mind, fed, sustained, and buttressed by nutritious food, that does things. The positive, decisive mind must be capable of complete concentration, must be the product of high food values, of perfected, full-grown cereals, fruits, and vegetables. The sun must have wrought this perfected work and ripened and developed the food values in Nature’s laboratory, where she performs her miracle of canning life elixirs in the juices in her apples, her oranges, her bananas, her strawberries, and all the other fruits. Sometimes this canning process of Nature is not completed, and these things are not allowed to come to perfection. Perhaps the fruits are shaken off of the tree in windfalls before the sun has finished his ripening work, before Nature has had time to develop her sugar, her nutritive salts, and all the other health-producing ingredients; perhaps she has not finished her work when man plucks the immature fruit; or perhaps the worm which has worked its way to the heart of the fruit has caused it to drop off before the processes have been completed. Then, if one has eaten the half-ripened, half-matured fruit, or half-developed vegetables, of course he has not been able to get the fire and force, the courage, the vim, the grit, and the stamina which would have come from Nature’s perfect product. If, in addition to eating this imperfect food, man does not obey the scientific law and give Nature a chance to digest and assimilate her food values into brain matter, he must certainly expect inferior results, inferior brain force.

There is a vast difference between unscientific and scientific food, between mediocrity and success, between a negative and a positive mind, 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.