“Horses don’t eat meat, neither, an’ they don’t chew their cuds,” Mrs. Barnard argued further.  She had never in her life argued with Cephas; but sorrel pies, after the night before, made her wildly reckless.

Cephas got a gourdful of water from the pail in the sink, and carried it carefully over to the table.  “Horses are the exception,” he returned, with dignified asperity.  “There always are exceptions.  What I was comin’ at was—­I’d been kind of wrong in my reasonin’.  That is, I ’ain’t reasoned far enough.  I was right so far as I went.”

Cephas poured some water from the gourd into the bowl of flour and began stirring.

Sarah caught her breath.  “He’s makin’—­paste!” she gasped.  “He’s jest makin’ flour paste!”

“Jest so far as I went I was right,” Cephas resumed, pouring in a little more water with a judicial air.  “I said Man was animal, an’ he is animal; an’ if you don’t take anything else into account, he’d ought to live on animal food, jest the way I reasoned it out.  But you’ve got to take something else into account.  Man is animal, but he ain’t all animal.  He’s something else.  He’s spiritual.  Man has command over all the other animals, an’ all the beasts of the field; an’ it ain’t because he’s any better an’ stronger animal, because he ain’t.  What’s a man to a horse, if the horse only knew it? but the horse don’t know it, an’ there’s jest where Man gets the advantage.  It’s knowledge an’ spirit that gives Man the rule over all the other animals.  Now, what we want is to eat the kind of things that will strengthen knowledge an’ spirit an’ self-control, because the first two ain’t any account without the last; but there ain’t no kind of food that’s known that can do that.  If there is, I ’ain’t never heard of it.”

Cephas dumped the whole mass of paste with a flop upon the mixing-board, and plunged his fists into it.  Sarah made an involuntary motion forward, then she stood back with a great sigh.

“But what we can do,” Cephas proceeded, “is to eat the kind of things that won’t strengthen the animal nature at the expense of the spiritual.  We know that animal food does that; we can see how it works in tigers an’ bears.  Now, it’s the spiritual part of us we want to strengthen, because that is the biggest strength we can get, an’ it’s worth more.  It’s what gives us the rule over animals.  It’s better for us to eat some other kind of food, if we get real weak and pindlin’ on it, rather than eat animal food an’ make the animal in us stronger than the spiritual, so we won’t be any better than wild tigers an’ bears, an’ lose our rule over the other animals.”