ourse--drawing upon the body of the mother for
nourishment and supplies. The nourishment in the mother's blood, which
supplies the material for the building up of the child's body, is
obtained by the mother eating and assimilating the vegetable cells of
plants, directly or indirectly. If she eats fruit, nuts, vegetables,
etc., she obtains the nourishment of the plant life directly--if she eats
meat she obtains it indirectly, for the animal from which the meat was
taken built up the meat from vegetables. There is no two ways about
this--all nourishment of the animal and human kingdom is obtained from
the vegetable kingdom, directly or indirectly.

And the cell action in the child is identical with the cell action in the
plant. Cells constantly reproducing themselves and building themselves up
into bodily organs, parts, etc., under the direction and guidance of the
mind principle. The child grows in this way until the hour of birth. It
is born, and then the process is but slightly changed. The child begins
to take nourishment either from the mother's milk or from the milk of the
cow, or other forms of food. And as it grows larger it partakes of many
different varieties of food. But always it obtains building material from
the cell life of the plants.

And this great building up process is intelligent, purposeful, to a
wonderful degree. Man with his boasted intellect cannot explain the real
"thingness" of the process. A leading scientist who placed the egg of a
small lizard under microscopical examination and then watched it slowly
develop has said that it seemed as if some hand was tracing the outlines
of the tiny vertebrae, and then building up around it. Think for a moment
of the development of the germ within the egg of the humming-bird, or the
ant, or the gnat, or the eagle. Every second a change may be noticed. The
germ cell draws to itself nourishment from the other part of the egg, and
then it grows and reproduces another cell. Then both cells divide--then
subdivide until there are millions and millions and millions of cells.
And all the while the building up process continues, and the bird or
insect assumes shape and form, until at last the work is accomplished
and the young bird emerges from the egg.

And the work thus commenced continues until the death of the animal. For
there is a constant using-up and breaking-down of cell and tissue, which
the organism must replace. And so the vegetative mind of the plant,