. But
if it had not been so we would have lost most of the beauty of rocks and
trees and human beings. For the leaves and the flowers would all be
white, and all the men and women would look like walking corpses.
Without color in the flower what would the bees and painters do? If all
the grass and trees were white, it would be like winter all the year
round. If we had white blood in our veins like some of the insects it
would be hard lines for our poets. And what would become of our morality
if we could not blush?

"As for me, I thrill to see
The bloom a velvet cheek discloses!
Made of dust! I well believe it,
So are lilies, so are roses."

An etiolated earth would be hardly worth living in.

The chlorophyll of the leaves and the hemoglobin of the blood are
similar in constitution. Chlorophyll contains magnesium in place of iron
but iron is necessary to its formation. We all know how pale a plant
gets if its soil is short of iron. It is the iron in the leaves that
enables the plants to store up the energy of the sunshine for their own
use and ours. It is the iron in our blood that enables us to get the
iron out of iron rust and make it into machines to supplement our feeble
hands. Iron is for us internally the carrier of energy, just as in the
form of a trolley wire or of a third rail it conveys power to the
electric car. Withdraw the iron from the blood as indicated by the
pallor of the cheeks, and we become weak, faint and finally die. If the
amount of iron in the blood gets too small the disease germs that are
always attacking us are no longer destroyed, but multiply without check
and conquer us. When the iron ceases to work efficiently we are killed
by the poison we ourselves generate.

Counting the number of iron-bearing corpuscles in the blood is now a
common method of determining disease. It might also be useful in moral
diagnosis. A microscopical and chemical laboratory attached to the
courtroom would give information of more value than some of the evidence
now obtained. For the anemic and the florid vices need very different
treatment. An excess or a deficiency of iron in the body is liable to
result in criminality. A chemical system of morals might be developed on
this basis. Among the ferruginous sins would be placed murder, violence
and licentiousness. Among the non-ferruginous, cowardice, sloth and
lying. The former would be mostly sins of commission, the latter, sins
of omission. The virt