Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/39

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HER POSSIBILITIES
33

of the individual, vary very greatly. The first thing to note is that these appetites are natural, and if not absolutely necessary they are certainly useful. "Your physical anatomy is the most valuable piece of property you will ever own." Every part exists for a purpose, and we have to learn what that purpose is and how best to use it rightly for that purpose. Hunger and thirst have their place in the scheme of human life as they have in animal life. They are incentives to work, and are thereby necessary for health. But this is not all that is to be said about human hunger and thirst. To us, as human beings, eating and drinking mean something more than satisfying mere physical requirements, something different from gratifying an animal appetite. We do not fill our stomachs at irregular intervals when they are empty. At stated times we dine. We have elevated eating and drinking to be social functions; we make meals and meal times minister to the intellectual, emotional, and social elements in our nature. We invoke reason to assist in the redemption of the necessary vegetative and vital functions of the body, to be spiritually helpful to the fullest spiritual life. Herein we differ from the lower animals. The brutes have not yet invented five o'clock tea, not even in the civilized or domestic surroundings of the Zoo.

Now the potentialities of the mere physical racial functions in both men and women are infinitely greater than what is required for the continuation of the human species. And these can be refined in the same way as the other appetites; nay, they are capable of promoting the spiritual well-being of men and women in a way that nothing else can approach or be compared with. This development is recent in the human race; it is also very restricted. But these refined feelings exist in more