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The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Book 1 Chapter 1 - The Discovery of the Food · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, Chapter one of the Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Alexeytaalander Davis, California. The Food of the Gods and
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  Speaker 1: How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells, Book one,
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  Speaker 1: The Dawn of the Food, Chapter one, The Discovery of
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  Speaker 1: the Food one. In the middle years of the nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: they first became abundant in the strange world of ours,
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  Speaker 1: a class of men, men tending for the most part
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  Speaker 1: to become elderly, who are called, and who are very
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  Speaker 1: properly called, but who dislike extremely to be called scientists.
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  Speaker 1: They disliked the words so much that from the Columns
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  Speaker 1: of Nature, which was from their first their distinctive and
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  Speaker 1: characteristic paper, it is as carefully excluded as if it
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  Speaker 1: were that other word, which is the basis of all
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  Speaker 1: really bad language in this country. But the great public
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  Speaker 1: and its press know better. And scientists they are, and
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  Speaker 1: when they emerged to any sort of publicity, distinguished scientists,
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  Speaker 1: an eminent scientists, and well known scientists is the very
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  Speaker 1: least we call them. Certainly, both mister Bensington and Professor
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  Speaker 1: Redwood quite merited any of these terms, long before they
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  Speaker 1: came upon the marvelous discovery of which this story tells.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Bensington was a fellow of the Royal Society and
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  Speaker 1: a former President of the Chemical Society. And Professor Redwood
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  Speaker 1: was professor of physiology in the Bond Street College of
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  Speaker 1: the London University, and he had been grossly libeled by
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  Speaker 1: the anti vivisectionist time after time. And they had led
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  Speaker 1: lives of academic distinction from their very earliest youth. There were,
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  Speaker 1: of course quite undistinguished looking men, as indeed all true
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  Speaker 1: scientists are. There is more personal distinction about the mildest
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  Speaker 1: mannered actor alive than there is about the entire Royal Society.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Bensington was short and very very bald, and he
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  Speaker 1: stooped slightly. He wore gold roomed spectacles and clothed boots
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  Speaker 1: that were abundantly cut open because of his numerous corns.
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  Speaker 1: Sir Redwood was entirely ordinary in his appearance until they
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  Speaker 1: happened upon the food of the gods. As I must
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  Speaker 1: insist upon calling it. They led lives of such eminent
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  Speaker 1: and studious obscurity that it is hard to find anything
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  Speaker 1: whatever to tell the reader about them. Mister Bensington won
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  Speaker 1: his spurs, if one may use such an expression of
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  Speaker 1: a gentleman in boots of slash cloth, by his splendid
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  Speaker 1: researches upon the more toxic alkaloids, and Professor Redwood rose
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  Speaker 1: to eminence. I do not clearly remember how he rose
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  Speaker 1: to eminence. I know he was very eminent, and that's
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  Speaker 1: all things of this sort grow. I fancy it was
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  Speaker 1: of voluminous work on reaction times, with numerous plates as
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  Speaker 1: phygromographic tracings I write, subject to correction, and an admirable
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  Speaker 1: terminology that did the thing for him. The general public
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  Speaker 1: saw little or nothing of either of these gentlemen. Sometimes
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  Speaker 1: at places like the Royal Institution and the Society of Arts,
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  Speaker 1: it did, in a sort of way see mister Bensington,
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  Speaker 1: or at least his blushing baldness, and something of his
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  Speaker 1: collar and coat, and hear fragments of a lecture or
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  Speaker 1: paper that he imagined himself to be reading. All and
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  Speaker 1: once I remember one midday in the vanished past, when
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  Speaker 1: the British Association was a dover coming on Section C
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  Speaker 1: or D or some such letter, which had taken up
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  Speaker 1: its quarters in a public house, and following two serious
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  Speaker 1: looking ladies with paper parcels, out of mere curiosity, through
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  Speaker 1: a door labeled Billiards, and pull into a scandalous darkness
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  Speaker 1: broken only by a magic lantern circle of Redwood's tracings.
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  Speaker 1: I watched the lantern's lights come and go, and listen
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  Speaker 1: to a voice I forget what it was saying, which
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  Speaker 1: I believe was the voice of Professor Redwood. And there
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  Speaker 1: was a sizzling from the lantern, and another sound that
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  Speaker 1: kept me there still out of curiosity, until the lights
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  Speaker 1: were unexpectedly turned up. And then I perceived that this
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  Speaker 1: sound was the sound of the munching of buns and
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  Speaker 1: sandwiches and things that the assembled British Associates had come
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  Speaker 1: there to eat under cover of the magic lantern darkness.
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  Speaker 1: And Redwood I remember when on talking all the time
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  Speaker 1: the lights were up and dabbing at the place where
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  Speaker 1: his diagram ought to have been visible on the screen,
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  Speaker 1: And so it was again so soon as the darkness
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  Speaker 1: was restored. I remember him them as a most ordinary
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  Speaker 1: slightly nervous looking dark man with an air of being
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  Speaker 1: preoccupied with something else and doing what he was doing
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  Speaker 1: just then under an unaccountable sense of duty. I heard
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  Speaker 1: Bensington also once in the old days, at an educational
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  Speaker 1: conference in Bloomsbury. Like most eminent chemists and botanists, mister
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  Speaker 1: Bensington was very authoritative upon teaching, though I am certain
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  Speaker 1: he would have been scared out of his wits by
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  Speaker 1: an average board school class in half an hour, and
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  Speaker 1: so far as I can remember now, he was propounding
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  Speaker 1: an improvement of Professor Armstrong's heuristic method, whereby, at the
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  Speaker 1: cost of three or four hundred pounds worth of apparatus,
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  Speaker 1: a total neglect of all other studies, and the undivided
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  Speaker 1: attention of a teacher of exceptional gifts, an average child might,
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  Speaker 1: with a peculiar sort of flumbly thoroughness, learn, in the
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  Speaker 1: course of ten or twelve years, almost as much chemistry
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  Speaker 1: as one could get in one of those objectionable shilling
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  Speaker 1: textbooks that were then so common. Quite ordinary persons, you
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  Speaker 1: perceive both of them outside their science, or if anything,
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  Speaker 1: on the unpractical side of ordinary, and that you will
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  Speaker 1: find is the case with scientific as a class all
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  Speaker 1: the world over. What there is great of them is
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  Speaker 1: an annoyance to their fellow scientists and a mystery to
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  Speaker 1: the general public. And what is not is evident. There
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  Speaker 1: is no doubt about what is not great. No race
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  Speaker 1: of men have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a
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  Speaker 1: narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes. Their
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  Speaker 1: researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion. And
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  Speaker 1: what is left over is not very much. To witness
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  Speaker 1: some queer, shy misshape and gray headed, self important little
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  Speaker 1: discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon
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  Speaker 1: of some order of chivalry, and holding a reception of
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  Speaker 1: his fellow men. Or to read the anguish of nature
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  Speaker 1: at the neglect of science when the Angel of the
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  Speaker 1: Birthday honors passes the royal society by Or to listen
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  Speaker 1: to one indefatigable lacoologists commenting on the work of another
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  Speaker 1: indefatigul lacoologist. Such things force one to realize the unfaltering
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  Speaker 1: littleness of men. And with all the wreath of science
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  Speaker 1: that these little scientists built and are yet building, is
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  Speaker 1: so wonderful, so portentous, so full of mysterious half shih
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  Speaker 1: shape and promises for the mighty future of man. They
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  Speaker 1: do not seem to realize the things they are doing.
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  Speaker 1: No doubt. Long ago even mister Bensington, when he chose
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  Speaker 1: this calling, when he consecrated his life to the alkaloids
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  Speaker 1: and their kindred compounds, had some inkling of the vision,
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  Speaker 1: more than an inkling. Without some such inspiration for such
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  Speaker 1: glories and positions, only the scientists may expect what young
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  Speaker 1: man would have given his life to such work as
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  Speaker 1: young men do. No, they must have seen the glory.
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  Speaker 1: They must have had the vision, but so near that
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  Speaker 1: it has blinded them. The splendor has blinded them mercifully,
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  Speaker 1: so that for the rest of their lives they can
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  Speaker 1: hold the lights of knowledge and comfort that we may see.
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  Speaker 1: And perhaps it accounts for Redwood's such of preoccupation that
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  Speaker 1: there can be no doubt of it. Now. He among
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  Speaker 1: his fellows, was different. He was different inasmuch as something
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  Speaker 1: of the vision still lingered in his eyes. Two the
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  Speaker 1: food of the Gods, I call it this substance of
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  Speaker 1: mister Bensington and Professor Rudwood made between them and having
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  Speaker 1: regard now to what it has already done, on all
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  Speaker 1: that it is certainly going to do. They were surely
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  Speaker 1: no exaggeration in the name, So I shall continue to
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  Speaker 1: call it therefore throughout my story. But mister Bensington would
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  Speaker 1: no more have called it that in cold blood than
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  Speaker 1: he would have gone out from his flat in Sloane
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  Speaker 1: Street clad in regal scarlet and a wreath of laurel.
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  Speaker 1: The phrase was a mere first cry of astonishment from him.
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  Speaker 1: He called it the food of the Gods in his enthusiasm,
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  Speaker 1: and for an hour or so at the most altogether
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  Speaker 1: after that he decided he was being absurd. When he
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  Speaker 1: first thought of the thing, he saw, as it were,
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  Speaker 1: a vista of enormous possibilities, literally enormous possibilities. But upon
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  Speaker 1: this dazzling vista, after one stare of amazement, he resolutely
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  Speaker 1: shut his eyes, even as a conscientious scientist should. After that,
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  Speaker 1: the Food of the Gods sounded blatant to the pitch
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  Speaker 1: of indecency. He was surprised he had used the expression. Yet,
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  Speaker 1: for all that something of that clear eyed moment hung
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  Speaker 1: about him and broke out Ever and again, really, you know,
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  Speaker 1: he said, rubbing his hands together and laughing nervously. It
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  Speaker 1: is more than a theoretical interest. For example, he confided,
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  Speaker 1: bringing his face close to the professor's and an undertone.
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  Speaker 1: It would, perhaps, if suitably handled, sell precisely, he said,
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  Speaker 1: walking away, as a food, or at least a food ingredient.
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  Speaker 1: A similar course, that it is palatable, a thing we
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  Speaker 1: cannot know till we have prepared it. He turned upon
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  Speaker 1: the hearth rug and studied the carefully designed slits upon
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  Speaker 1: his cloth shoes. Name, he said, looking up, in response
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  Speaker 1: to an inquiry for my part, I inclined to the
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  Speaker 1: good old classical allusion it. It makes science rests give
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  Speaker 1: it a touch of old fashioned dignity. I've been thinking.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if you would think it, observed me,
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  Speaker 1: A little fancy is surely occasionally permissible. Heracleophorbia eh in
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  Speaker 1: the nutrition of a possible hercules. You know it might,
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  Speaker 1: of course, if you think not. Redwood reflected with his
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  Speaker 1: eyes on the fire and made no objection. You think
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  Speaker 1: it would do? Redwood moved his head gravely. It might
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  Speaker 1: be titanophorbia, you know, food of titans. You preferred the former.
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  Speaker 1: You're quite sure you don't think it a little too,
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  Speaker 1: no Ah, I'm glad. And so they called it herac
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  Speaker 1: orbia throughout their investigations, and in their report, the report
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  Speaker 1: that was never published because of the unexpected developments that
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  Speaker 1: upset all their arrangements. It is invariably written in that way.
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  Speaker 1: There were three kindred substances prepared before they hit on
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  Speaker 1: the one their speculations had foretold. And these they spoke
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  Speaker 1: of as heracleiophobia I, heracliophobia two and heracliophobia three. It
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  Speaker 1: is heracliophobia four which I, insisting upon Bensington's original name,
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  Speaker 1: call here the food of the Gods. Three. The idea
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  Speaker 1: was mister Bensington's, but it was suggested to him by
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  Speaker 1: one of Professor Redwood's contributions to the Philosophical Transactions. He
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  Speaker 1: very properly consulted the gentleman before he carried it further,
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  Speaker 1: besides which it was as a research of physiological quite
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  Speaker 1: as much as a chemical inquiry. Professor Redwood was one
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  Speaker 1: of these scientific men who are addicted to tracings and curves.
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  Speaker 1: You are familiar if you are at all the sort
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  Speaker 1: of reader I like with the sort of scientific paper.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it is a paper you cannot make head
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  Speaker 1: nor tail, and at the in come five or six
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  Speaker 1: longfoli of diagrams that open out and show peculiar zigzag tracings,
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  Speaker 1: flashings of lightning, overdone or sinuous, inexplicable things called smooth
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  Speaker 1: curves set up on ordinates, and rooting in absissy and
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  Speaker 1: things like that. You puzzle over the thing for a
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  Speaker 1: long time and end with suspicion that not only do
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  Speaker 1: you not understand it, but that the author does not
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  Speaker 1: understand it either. But really, you know, many of these
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  Speaker 1: scientific people understand the meaning of their own papers quite well.
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  Speaker 1: It is simply a defect of expression that raises the
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  Speaker 1: obstacle between us. I am inclined to think that Redwood
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  Speaker 1: thought and tracings and curves, And after his monumental work
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  Speaker 1: upon reaction times, the unscientific reader is exhorted to stick
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  Speaker 1: to it for a little bit longer and everything will
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  Speaker 1: be clear as daylight. Redwood began to turn out smooth
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  Speaker 1: curves and sphygmographeries upon growth, And it was one of
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  Speaker 1: his papers upon growth that really gave mister Bensington his idea. Redwood,
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  Speaker 1: you know, had been measuring growing things of all sorts, kittens, puppies, sunflowers, mushrooms,
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  Speaker 1: bean plants, and until his wife put a stop to it,
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  Speaker 1: his baby. And he showed the growth went out not
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  Speaker 1: at a regular place, or as he put it so,
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  Speaker 1: but with bursts and intermashion of this sort, And that
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  Speaker 1: apparently nothing grew regularly and steadily, And so far as
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  Speaker 1: he could make out, nothing could grow regularly and steadily.
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  Speaker 1: It was as if every living thing had just to
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  Speaker 1: accumulate force to grow, grow with their vigor only for
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  Speaker 1: a time, and then had to wait for a space
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  Speaker 1: before it could go on growing again. And in the
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  Speaker 1: muffled and highly technical language of the really careful scientist,
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  Speaker 1: Redwood suggested that the process of growth probably demanded the
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  Speaker 1: presence of a considerable quantity of some necessary substance in
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  Speaker 1: the blood that was only formed very slowly, and that
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  Speaker 1: when this substance was used by growth, it was only
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  Speaker 1: very slowly replaced, and that meanwhile the organism had to
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  Speaker 1: mark time. He compared his unknowned substance to oil and machinery.
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  Speaker 1: A growing animal was rather like an engine, he suggested.
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  Speaker 1: They can move a certain distance and must then be
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  Speaker 1: oiled before it can run again. But why shouldn't one
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  Speaker 1: oil the engine from without, said mister Bensington when he
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  Speaker 1: read the paper, And all this, said Redwood, with the delightful,
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  Speaker 1: nervous and kingsecutiveness of his class, might very probably be
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  Speaker 1: found to throw a light upon the mystery of certain
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  Speaker 1: of the duckless glands, as though they had anything to
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  Speaker 1: do with it at all. In a subsequent communication, Redwood
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  Speaker 1: went further. He gave a perfect brox benefit of diagrams,
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  Speaker 1: exactly like rocket trajectories they were. And the gist of it,
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  Speaker 1: so far as it had any gist, was that the
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  Speaker 1: blood of puppies and kittens, and the sap of some flowers,
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  Speaker 1: and the juice of mushrooms in what he called the
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  Speaker 1: growing phase differed in the proportion of certain elements from
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  Speaker 1: their blood in the sap on the days when they
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  Speaker 1: were not particularly growing. And when mister Bensington, after holding
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  Speaker 1: the diagram's sideways and upside down, began to see what
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  Speaker 1: this difference was, a great amazement came upon him, because,
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  Speaker 1: you see, the difference might probably be due to the
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  Speaker 1: presence of just the very substance he'd recently been trying
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  Speaker 1: to isolate in his researches upon such alkaloids as are
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  Speaker 1: most stimulating to their nervous system. He put down Redwood's
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  Speaker 1: paper on the patent reading desk that swung inconveniently from
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  Speaker 1: his arm chair, took off his gold rim spectacles, breed
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  Speaker 1: on them, and wiped them very carefully. By Jove, said
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  Speaker 1: mister Bensington. Then replacing his spectacles again, he turned to
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  Speaker 1: the patent reading desk, which, immediately as his elbow came
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  Speaker 1: against its arm, gave a coquettish squeak, and deposited the
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  Speaker 1: paper with all its diagrams, in a dispersed and crumpled state,
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  Speaker 1: on the floor. By jove, said Bensington, straining his stomach
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  Speaker 1: over the arm chair with a patient disregard of the
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  Speaker 1: habits of this convenience, and then, finding the pamphlets still
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  Speaker 1: out of reach, he went down on all floors in pursuit.
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  Speaker 1: It was on the floor that the idea of calling
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  Speaker 1: at the food of the gods came to him. For
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  Speaker 1: you see, if he was right, and Redwood was right,
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  Speaker 1: then by ejecting or administering this new substance of his
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  Speaker 1: in food, he would do away with the resting face,
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  Speaker 1: and instead of growth going on in this fashion, it
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  Speaker 1: would if you follow me go. Thus four the night
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  Speaker 1: after his conversation with Redwood, mister Bensington could scarcely sleep
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  Speaker 1: a wink. He did seem once to get into his
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  Speaker 1: sort of doze, but it was only for a moment.
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  Speaker 1: And then he dreamt he had dug a deep hole
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  Speaker 1: into the earth and poured in tons and tons of
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  Speaker 1: the food of the gods, and the earth was swelling
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  Speaker 1: and swelling, and all the boundaries of the countries were bursting,
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  Speaker 1: and the Royal Geographical Society was all at work like
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  Speaker 1: one great guild of tailors letting out the equator. That,
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  Speaker 1: of course was a ridiculous idea, but it shows the
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  Speaker 1: state of mental excitement into which mister Benson had got
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  Speaker 1: and the real value he attached to his idea, much
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  Speaker 1: better than any of the things he said or did
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  Speaker 1: when he was awake and on his guard. Or I
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  Speaker 1: should not have mentioned it, because as a general rule,
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  Speaker 1: I do not think it is all interesting for people
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  Speaker 1: to tell each other about their dreams. By a singular coincidence,
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  Speaker 1: Redwood also had a dream that night, and his dream
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  Speaker 1: was this. It was a diagram done in fire upon
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  Speaker 1: a long scroll of the Abyss, and he Redwood was
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  Speaker 1: standing on a planet before a sort of black platform,
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  Speaker 1: lecturing about the new sort of growth that was now
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  Speaker 1: possible to the more than royal institution of primordial forces,
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  Speaker 1: forces which had always previously, even in the growth of races, empires,
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  Speaker 1: planetary systems, and worlds, gone so and even in some
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  Speaker 1: cases so. And he was explaining to them quite lucidly
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  Speaker 1: and convincingly that these slows, oh, these even retrogressive methods,
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  Speaker 1: could be very speedily, quite put out of fashion by
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  Speaker 1: his discovery. Ridiculous, of course, but that's who shows that
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  Speaker 1: either dream is to be regarded as in any way
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  Speaker 1: significant or prophetic beyond what I have categorically said. I
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  Speaker 1: do not for one moment suggest end of book one,
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  Speaker 1: chapter one of The Food of the Gods and How
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  Speaker 1: It Came to Earth. Recording by Alextalander Davis, California, www
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  Speaker 1: dot alextalander dot com