Now, every one ought to start out in life with a determination to be good to himself, just to himself. He ought to resolve not to cheat his very source of power by feeding his body with inferior products. Pinching on the very source of one’s supply of mental and physical power is fatal frugality. There is a great difference between the results of first-class and second-class brain power, and it is the quality of the food that often makes the difference.
Failure is frequently due to mental deterioration, to weakening of courage, of self-confidence and of mental grasp, so that men make business slips which they would not have made formerly. They have deteriorated physically, and they do not realize that their minds go up and down with their physical condition like the mercury in a thermometer.
The unfortunate thing about mental deterioration which follows the violation of physical laws is that it is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, and people who have been successful are often suddenly confronted with failure because of the loss of their mental grip, the crippling of their courage and initiative.
Napoleon’s downfall was largely due to physical deterioration. In youth he had given much thought to diet, as a means of making the most of himself, but the subject was then but vaguely understood. Even as some savages think that the spirit of a conquered foe passes over into them and strengthens them, so he looked upon food. The stronger the animal eaten, the stronger the eater should become. Hence he who would become king of all the Giant-killer Jacks should eat elephants, the largest and strongest of land animals. But elephants were scarce and costly in France, and his purse was not that of a multimillionaire.
An ox was the nearest substitute he could think of obtainable at a moderate price, and oxen were slaughtered for the army every day. But even an ox could not be considered a full substitute, so he must exercise care and eat the strongest part of him and thus approximate his ideal standard as closely as possible. This strongest of all parts must clearly be the brain, for that rules all the rest of the animal. So he had saved and cooked for him, and daily ate, the brain of an ox.
Now it so happens that iron, lime, and sulphur are indispensable in the formation of red blood corpuscles, and lime and sulphur are not found in brain substance. It also happens that sulphur is one of the best medicines for the itch, and probably, through its presence in the blood in proper quantities, one of the best preventives of that disease, at least in a severe form. Possibly because of his deficiency in sulphur, incidental to his peculiar diet, he caught or developed at Toulon the itch in an aggravated form, which annoyed him greatly for years. His physicians tried in vain to cure him, and repeatedly urged him to allow them to “drive it in.”
To this he would not consent, for a long time, saying that the itch is but an outward manifestation of an effort of Nature to get rid of something bad inside. For his part he was glad that his system was so resistant and persistent in trying to throw off the bad thing, whatever it was, and he wanted that cured, not its mere itching manifestation or symptom. One might, he admitted, put an extinguisher on a volcano, but that would only cause it to break out in some other way or place.
But at the zenith of his power he consented, for he considered it very undignified for the great conqueror of conquerors and emperor of emperors to squirm and scratch on even the greatest occasions, and scratch he had to, sometimes, no matter what was going on. He was never quite the same man after he “conquered his itch by driving it in.”
He also suffered from epilepsy, due, perhaps, in no small degree, to his diet, for it is caused by insufficiency of red blood corpuscles and consequent disturbances in the circulation. When the itch, perhaps a kind of outlet for his real trouble, had gone, his epileptic attacks increased in frequency and severity and sometimes temporarily incapacitated him when under greatest pressure and needing the strongest and most perfect circulation,—even before or during some of his most important battles in later life.
Further, he had a very restless brain, and this was stimulated to undue activity both positively by the excess of phosphatic material in his dietary, and negatively by lack of nerve-quieting oxygen in his blood from deficiency of lime and sulphur in his food. As Faraday discovered, oxygen is slightly magnetic and hence is attracted by the iron in the red blood corpuscles. When the red corpuscles are deficient in quantity, not enough oxygen is taken up by this magnetic attraction. So his brain, like an engine with an imperfect safety valve, drove the wheels of his life at a pace too furious to last long in perfect condition. Again, from lack of enough red corpuscles, he could not absorb enough oxygen to burn up or oxidize the fat produced by his food, and he became corpulent. Worst of all, not improbably the cancer of the stomach from which he died at St. Helena was occasioned, if not caused, by lack of sulphur in his food.
Close observers have repeatedly noted how decayed limbs of trees or even fence posts that have stood in the ground a long time, after the rains have soaked out their sulphates and warm damp weather has developed their phosphorescence, have thrown out growths of a tough white fibrous matter as foreign to them as are tumors and cancer in man. Perhaps Napoleon, who lacked sulphur and abounded in phosphorus, originated or at least cultivated his fatal cancer in much the same way.
It is as natural for a perfectly normal human being to undertake things, to have a strong ambition and initiative, as it is for him to breathe. Originality is the product of a vigorous mind in a healthy body. People would be infinitely more original and resourceful than they are, if they kept their physical standards up. When a man is perfectly well, he is not an imitator. His mentality is forceful. He is not inclined to trail then, as he is when his physical standards are down.
Concentration is the secret of all achievement, but you cannot focus your faculties with vigor and efficiency if your brain is not properly nourished. Everything depends upon the quality of your brain, and that in turn depends upon the food with which it is nourished.
You are very particular about the quality of the material which you put into your manufactures. But what about the quality of your brain and your physical condition, which determine the quality of your career? Do you realize that your habitual diet is constantly adding to or taking from your brain power?
One great reason for the superiority of the brain power and achievement of successful business men over those who work for them is that they are better nourished; they have the finest quality of nutriment, food that is fresher, riper, that has been more perfectly matured in Nature’s laboratory. The man of means often overeats, but he usually eats foods of the best quality.
It is the positive mind, fed, sustained, and buttressed by nutritious food, that does things. The positive, decisive mind must be capable of complete concentration, must be the product of high food values, of perfected, full-grown cereals, fruits, and vegetables. The sun must have wrought this perfected work and ripened and developed the food values in Nature’s laboratory, where she performs her miracle of canning life elixirs in the juices in her apples, her oranges, her bananas, her strawberries, and all the other fruits. Sometimes this canning process of Nature is not completed, and these things are not allowed to come to perfection. Perhaps the fruits are shaken off of the tree in windfalls before the sun has finished his ripening work, before Nature has had time to develop her sugar, her nutritive salts, and all the other health-producing ingredients; perhaps she has not finished her work when man plucks the immature fruit; or perhaps the worm which has worked its way to the heart of the fruit has caused it to drop off before the processes have been completed. Then, if one has eaten the half-ripened, half-matured fruit, or half-developed vegetables, of course he has not been able to get the fire and force, the courage, the vim, the grit, and the stamina which would have come from Nature’s perfect product. If, in addition to eating this imperfect food, man does not obey the scientific law and give Nature a chance to digest and assimilate her food values into brain matter, he must certainly expect inferior results, inferior brain force.
There is a vast difference between unscientific and scientific food, between mediocrity