The History of a Mouthful of Bread | Page 7

himself forward, and that
he is always on one side by himself, whilst the rest of the fingers are on
the other? If the thumb is not helping, nothing remains in your hand,
and you don't know what to do with it. Try, by way of experiment, to
carry your spoon to your mouth without putting your thumb to it, and
you will see what a long time it will take you to get through a poor little
plateful of broth. The thumb is placed in such a manner on your hand
that it can face each of the other fingers one after another, or all
together, as you please; and by this we are enabled to grasp, as if with a
pair of pincers, whatever object, whether large or small. Our hands owe
their perfection of usefulness to this happy arrangement, which has
been bestowed on no other animal, except the monkey, our nearest
neighbor.
I may even add, while we are about it, that it is this which distinguishes
the hand from a paw or a foot. Our feet, which have other things to do
than to pick up apples or lay hold of a fork, our feet have also each five
fingers, but the largest cannot face the others; it is not a thumb,
therefore, and it is because of this that our feet are not hands. Now the

monkey has thumbs on the four members corresponding to our arms
and legs, and thus we may say that he has hands at the end of his legs
as well as of his arms. Nevertheless, he is not on that account better off
than we are, but quite the contrary. I will explain this to you presently.
To return to our subject. You see that it was necessary, before saying
anything about the mouth, to consider the hand, which is the mouth's
purveyor. Before the cook lights the fires the maid must go to market,
must she not? And it is a very valuable maid that we have here: what
would become of us without her?
If we were in the habit of giving thought to everything, we should
never even gather a nut without being grateful to the Providence which
has provided us with the thumb, by means of which we are able to do it
so easily.
But however well I may have expressed it, I am by no means sure, after
all, that I have succeeded in showing you clearly, how absolutely
necessary our hand is to us in eating, and why it has the honor to stand
at the beginning of the history of what we eat.
It still appears to you, I suspect, that even if you were to lose the use of
your hands you would not, for all that, let yourself die of hunger.
This is because you have not attended to another circumstance, which
nevertheless demands your notice--namely, that from one end of the
world to the other, quantities of hands are being employed in providing
you with the wherewithal to eat.
To go on further: Have you any idea how many hands have been put in
motion merely to enable you to have your coffee and roll in the
morning? What a number, to be sure, over this cup of coffee (which is a
trifle in comparison with the other food you will consume in the course
of the day); from the hand of the negro who gathered the coffee crop to
that of the cook who ground the berries, to say nothing of the hand of
the sailor who guided the ship which bore them to our shores. Again,
from the hand of the laborer who sowed the corn, and that of the miller
who ground it into flour, to the hand of the baker who made it into a
roll. Then the hand of the farmer's wife who milked the cow, and the
hand of the refiner who made the sugar; to say nothing of the many
others who prepared his work for him, and I know not how many more.
How would it be, then, if I were to amuse myself by counting up all the
hands that are wanted to furnish--

The sugar-refiner's manufactory, The milkmaid's shed, The baker's
oven, The miller's mill, The laborer's plough, The sailor's ship?
And even now is there nothing we have forgotten? Ah, yes! the most
important of all the hands to you;--the hand which brings together for
your benefit the fruits of the labor of all the others--the hand of your
dear mother, always active, always ready, that hand which so often acts
as yours when your own is awkward or idle.
Now, then, you see how you might really manage to do without those
two comparatively helpless little paws