There are only two solutions possible, the invention of either a solvent more perfect than water, or a super-Food. The first alternative is theoretically none too probable. As to the second, if food were merely a chemical and mechanical agent in us, the problem would be one of diet. But there is some reason to believe that food contains a substance yet unanalyzed and unweighed which is of the nature of pure Energy. We need no psychical research but only common sense and common experience to tell us that there is a difference between a live thing and a dead one beyond the detective powers of the laboratories of Mid-Victorian arrogance and dogmatism.
Nature everywhere is prolific of live things, animal and vegetable.
There's far more energy in the acorn than in radium, at which fools gape so wide in wonder. The acorn cannot hoard its wealth or experience, use its credit of possibility, except by taking earth, air, and water into partnership, and invoking on the Venture, the Benediction of the Sun. If we destroy the fragile walls of its huge Library of Wisdom, we do not otherwise than the Saracen at Alexandria. Love itself no more intangible, more fugitive, more tragic, or more heedless. But that is due to the definite bent and scope of the particular structure of the physical basis of the Life-force which must be one even as Electricity is one.