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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78

Nourishing Food

Nourishing Food.

It is impossible to apply successfully the principles of cultivation and selection of plants to human life if the human life does not, like the plant life, have proper nourishment. . . .

What we want in developing a new plant, making it better in all ways than any of its kind that have preceded it is a splendid norm, not anything abnormal So we feed it from the soil, and it feeds from the air, and thus we make it a powerful aid to man. It is dependent upon good food. Upon good food for the child, well-balanced food, depends good digestion; upon good digestion, with pure air to keep the blood pure, depends the nervous system. . . . Preserve beyond all else as the priceless portion of a child the integrity of the nervous system. Upon this depends their success in life. With the nervous system shattered, what is life worth? . . .

The integrity of your child's nervous system, no matter what any so-called educator may say, is thus impaired : he can never again be what he would have been had you taken him as the plant-cultivator takes a plant, and for these first ten precious years of his life had fitted him for the future. Nothing else is doing so much to break down the nervous system of Americans, not even the insane rushing of maturer years, as this over-crowding and cramming of child-life before the age of ten. And the mad haste of maturer years is the legitimate result of the earlier strain. . . .

The nation must protect itself. I mean by this that it is imperative in order that the nation may rise to its full powers and accomplish its destiny, that the people who comprise this nation must be normal physically. . . To the extent that any portion of the people are physically unfit, to that extent the nation is weakened.

Do not misunderstand me : I am not advocating paternalism in any sense; far from it. But is not the human race worth as much care as the orchards, the farms, the cattle ranches? . . .