Whether they mutually devour one another or levy tribute on the plant, they invariably quicken themselves with the stimulant of the sun's heat, a heat stored in grass, fruit, seed and those which feed on such.

The sun, the soul of the universe, is the supreme dispenser of energy.
Instead of being served up through the intermediary of food and passing through the ignominious circuit of gastric chemistry, could not this solar energy penetrate the animal directly and charge it with activity, even as the battery charges an accumulator with power?
Why not live on sun, seeing that, after all, we find naught but sun in the fruits which we consume?
Chemical science, that bold revolutionary, promises to provide us with synthetic foodstuffs.

The laboratory and the factory will take the place of the farm.

Why should not physical science step in as well?
It would leave the preparation of plastic food to the chemist's retorts; it would reserve for itself that of energy-producing food which, reduced to its exact terms, ceases to be matter.

With the aid of some ingenious apparatus, it would pump into us our daily ration of solar energy, to be later expended in movement, whereby the machine would be kept going without the often painful assistance of the stomach and its adjuncts.