Why, you ask, are there such terrible things as volcanos? Of what use can they be?
They are of use enough, my child; and of many more uses, doubt not, than we know as yet, or ever shall know. But of one of their uses I can tell you.
They make, or help to make, divers and sundry curious things, from gunpowder to your body and mine.
What? I can understand their helping to make gunpowder, because the sulphur in it is often found round volcanos; and I know the story of the brave Spaniard who, when his fellows wanted materials for gunpowder, had himself lowered in a basket down the crater of a South American volcano, and gathered sulphur for them off the burning cliffs: but how can volcanos help to make me? Am I made of lava? Or is there lava in me?
My child, I did not say that volcanos helped to make you. I said that they helped to make your body; which is a very different matter, as I beg you to remember, now and always. Your body is no more you yourself than the hoop which you trundle, or the pony which you ride. It is, like them, your servant, your tool, your instrument, your organ, with which you work: and a very useful, trusty, cunningly-contrived organ it is; and therefore I advise you to make good use of it, for you are responsible for it. But you yourself are not your body, or your brain, but something else, which we call your soul, your spirit, your life. And that "you yourself" would remain just the same if it were taken out of your body, and put into the body of a bee, or of a lion, or any other body; or into no body at all. At least so I believe; and so, I am happy to say, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every million have always believed, because they have used their human instincts and their common sense, and have obeyed (without knowing it) the warning of a great and good philosopher called Herder, that "The organ is in no case the power which works by it;" which is as much as to say, that the engine is not the engine-driver, nor the spade the gardener.
There have always been, and always will be, a few people who cannot see that. They think that a man's soul is part of his body, and that he himself is not one thing, but a great number of things. They think that his mind and character are only made up of all the thoughts, and feelings, and recollections which have passed through his brain; and that as his brain changes, he himself must change, and become another person, and then another person again, continually. But do you not agree with them: but keep in mind wise Herder's warning that you are not to "confound the organ with the power," or the engine with the driver, or your body with yourself: and then we will go on and consider how a volcano, and the lava which flows from it, helps to make your body.
Now I know that the Scotch have a saying, "That you cannot make broth out of whinstones" (which is their name for lava). But, though they are very clever people, they are wrong there. I never saw any broth in Scotland, as far as I know, but what whinstones had gone to the ****** of it; nor a Scotch boy who had not eaten many a bit of whinstone, and been all the better for it.
Of course, if you simply put the whinstones into a kettle and boiled them, you would not get much out of them by such rough cookery as that. But Madam How is the best and most delicate of all cooks; and she knows how to pound, and soak, and stew whinstones so delicately, that she can make them sauce and seasoning for meat, vegetables, puddings, and almost everything that you eat; and can put into your veins things which were spouted up red-hot by volcanos, ages and ages since, perhaps at the bottom of ancient seas which are now firm dry land.
This is very strange--as all Madam How's doings are. And you would think it stranger still if you had ever seen the flowing of a lava stream.