In this respect popular
notions are as inexact as in the very similar case of the supply of
phosphorus. Because phosphorus is needful for brain action, people jump
forthwith to the absurd conclusion that fish and other foods rich in
phosphates ought to be specially good for students preparing for
examination, great thinkers, and literary men. Mark Twain indeed once
advised a poetical aspirant, who sent him a few verses for his critical
opinion, that fish was very feeding for the brains; he would recommend a
couple of young whales to begin upon. As a matter of fact, there is more
phosphorus in our daily bread than would have sufficed Shakespeare to
write 'Hamlet,' or Newton to discover the law of gravitation. It isn't
phosphorus that most of us need, but brains to burn it in. A man might
as well light a fire in a carriage, because coal makes an engine go, as
hope to mend the pace of his dull pate by eating fish for the sake of
the phosphates.
The question still remains, How did the salt originally get there? After
all, when we say that it was produced, as rock-salt, by evaporation of
the water in inland seas, we leave unanswered the main problem, How did
the brine in solution get into the sea at all in the first place? Well,
one might almost as well ask, How did anything come to be upon the earth
at any time, in any way? How did the sea itself get there? How did this
planet swim into existence at all? In the Indian mythology the world is
supported upon the back of an elephant, who is supported upon the back
of a tortoise; but what the tortoise in the last resort is supported
upon the Indian philosophers prudently say not.
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