I expected you to ask this, but if you want everything explained as
we go along, we shall not get very far. In fact, if I answer all your
questions I shall be letting out my secret too soon, and telling you
the end of my story almost before it is begun.

So be it, however; perhaps you will feel more courage to go on, when
you know where we are going.

The steward of a country-house distributes tiles, planks, paint, bricks,
lime; but none of these things are his own, as you know; he has received
them from his master: and, in the same way, our steward has nothing
of his own: everything he distributes comes from the master of the
house, and as I have already told you, this master is the stomach. As
fast as the steward distributes, therefore, must the master renew the
stores--and renew them all, for unless he does this, the work would
stop. In proportion as the blood gives out on all sides the contents
of his pockets, the stomach must replenish them, and fill them with
everything necessary, or there would be a revolution in the house.
Now, as there can be nothing in the stomach but what has got into it
by the mouth, it behooves us to put into the mouth whatever is needed
for the supply of our numerous workmen; and this is why we eat.

I perceive that I have plunged here into an explanation out of which
I shall not easily extricate myself, for I can guess what you are going
to say next. When you began to cut your teeth, you had eaten neither
phosphorus nor lime, as nothing but milk had entered your mouth.

That is true. Neither then, nor since then, have you eaten those things,
and what is more, I hope you never will. And yet both must have got