g in my reasonin'. That is,
I 'ain't reasoned far enough. I was right so far as I went."

Cephas poured some water from the gourd into the bowl of flour and
began stirring.

Sarah caught her breath. "He's makin'--paste!" she gasped. "He's jest
makin' flour paste!"

"Jest so far as I went I was right," Cephas resumed, pouring in a
little more water with a judicial air. "I said Man was animal, an' he
is animal; an' if you don't take anything else into account, he'd
ought to live on animal food, jest the way I reasoned it out. But
you've got to take something else into account. Man is animal, but he
ain't all animal. He's something else. He's spiritual. Man has
command over all the other animals, an' all the beasts of the field;
an' it ain't because he's any better an' stronger animal, because he
ain't. What's a man to a horse, if the horse only knew it? but the
horse don't know it, an' there's jest where Man gets the advantage.
It's knowledge an' spirit that gives Man the rule over all the other
animals. Now, what we want is to eat the kind of things that will
strengthen knowledge an' spirit an' self-control, because the first
two ain't any account without the last; but there ain't no kind of
food that's known that can do that. If there is, I 'ain't never heard
of it."

Cephas dumped the whole mass of paste with a flop upon the
mixing-board, and plunged his fists into it. Sarah made an
involuntary motion forward, then she stood back with a great sigh.

"But what we can do," Cephas proceeded, "is to eat the kind of things
that won't strengthen the animal nature at the expense of the
spiritual. We know that animal food does that; we can see how it
works in tigers an' bears. Now, it's the spiritual part of us we want
to strengthen, because that is the biggest strength we can get, an'
it's worth more. It's what gives us the rule over animals. It's
better for us to eat some other kind of food, if we get real weak and
pindlin' on it, rather than eat animal food an' make the animal in us
stronger than the spiritual, so we won't be any better than wild
tigers an' bears, an' lose our rule over the other animals."

Cephas took the rolling-pin and brought it heavily down upon the
sticky mass on the board. Sarah shuddered and started as if it had
hit her. "Now, if we can't eat animal food," said Cephas, "what other
kind of food can we eat? There ain't but one other kind that's known
to man, an' that's vegetable food, the prod