Life drifting by the show-window ... I too as much a part of life as the lobster², the fourteen carat ring, the horse liniment, but very difficult to establish the fact, the fact being that life is merchandise with a bill of lading attached, what I choose to eat being more important than I the eater, each one eating the other and consequently eating, the verbruler of the roost. In the act of eating the host is violated and justice defeated tempor- arily. The plate and what's on it, through the predatory power of the intestinal⁴ apparatus⁵, commands attention and unifies⁶ the spirit, first hypnotizing it, then slowly swallowing it, then masticating⁷ it, then absorbing it. The spiritual part of the being passes off like a scum, leaves absolutely no evidence or trace of its passage, vanishes, vanishes even more completely than a point in space after a mathematical discourse⁹. The fever, which may return tomorrow, bears the same relation to life as the mercury in a thermometer bears to heat. Fever will not make life heat, which is what was to have been proved and thus consecrates¹⁰ the meat balls and spaghetti. To chew while thousands chew, each chew an act of murder, gives the necessary social cast from which you look out the window and see that even human kind can be slaughtered¹¹ justly, or maimed, or starved, or tortured because, while chewing, the mere¹² advantage of sitting in a chair with clothes on, wiping the mouth with napkin, enables you to comprehend, what the wisest men have never been able to comprehend, namely that there is no other way of life possible, said wise men often, disdaining

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