ings.'

'Is it the same thing?'

'Why do you ask? You know it yourself. As regards his health--and the
rest of the things--the average man is what his environment and his
superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass.
He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive
what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for
himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled
the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from
the earth in a year.'

'Those passengers learned no lesson, then?'

'Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English
ship, and pretty soon they were nibbling again--nibbling, appetiteless,
disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half hungry, their outraged
stomachs cursing and swearing and whining and supplicating all day long.
And in vain, for they were the stomachs of fools.'

'Then, as I understand it, your scheme is--'

'Quite simple. Don't eat until you are hungry. If the food fails to
taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you, don't eat
again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you--and do you
good, too.'

'And I am to observe no regularity, as to hours?'

'When you are conquering a bad appetite--no. After it is conquered,
regularity is no harm, so long as the appetite remains good. As soon as
the appetite wavers, apply the corrective again--which is starvation,
long or short according to the needs of the case.'

'The best diet, I suppose--I mean the wholesomest--'

'All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomer than others, but all the
ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether
the food be fine or coarse it will taste good and it will nourish if a
watch be kept upon the appetite and a little starvation introduced every
time it weakens. Nansen was used to fine fare, but when his meals were
restricted to bear-meat months at a time he suffered no damage and no
discomfort, because his appetite was kept at par through the difficulty
of getting his bear-meat regularly.'

'But doctors arrange carefully considered and delicate diets for
invalids.'

'They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and
won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him.'

'It would weaken him, wouldn't it?'

'Nothing to hurt. Look at the invalids in our shipwreck. They lived
fifteen days on pinches of