An idea suggests itself.  We say to ourselves that, without being life, a machine is something more than matter, for man has added a little of his mind to it.  Now the iron beast, consuming its ration of coal, is really browsing the ancient foliage of arborescent ferns in which solar energy has accumulated.

Beasts of flesh and blood act no otherwise.  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 food-stuffs.  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.  What a delightful world, where one would lunch off a ray of sunshine!

Is it a dream, or the anticipation of a remote reality?  The problem is one of the most important that science can set us.  Let us first hear the evidence of the young Lycosae regarding its possibilities.

For seven months, without any material nourishment, they expend strength in moving.  To wind up the mechanism of their muscles, they recruit themselves direct with heat and light.  During the time when she was dragging the bag of eggs behind her, the mother, at the best moments of the day, came and held up her pill to the sun.  With her two hind-legs, she lifted it out of the ground, into the full light; slowly she turned it and returned it, so that every side might receive its share of the vivifying rays.  Well, this bath of life, which awakened the germs, is now prolonged to keep the tender babes active.

Daily, if the sky be clear, the Lycosa, carrying her young, comes up from the burrow, leans on the kerb and spends long hours basking in the sun.  Here, on their mother’s back, the youngsters stretch their limbs delightedly, saturate themselves with heat, take in reserves of motor power, absorb energy.