Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 July 30

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July 30

Digestion before the Fall

Ronald Knox's The Creed in Slow Motion, 1949 ed., is a collection of talks given during the Second World War. On page 68, he says in passing:

I even read a book the other day— not by a Catholic, but by a very intelligent man— which suggested that, before the Fall, man’s will directed his digestion. Think how nice it would be if you could digest your meals at will, like brushing your teeth.

He doesn't mention what book it was. Does anyone have any ideas? Marnanel (talk) 12:58, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

I believe it would be difficult to be certain. I have to assume that this was between 1920 and 1930. At the end of the 1800s, Nietzsche was popular, which made way for many very similar philosophical works. Nietzshe had a common complaint throughout his work that mankind previously had control over the body, but over time had devolved into a purely reactionary vessel. He specifically mentions digestion in some of his works. I remember one passage that I studied in college in which he claimed that the flood of information fron a daily newspaper muddies the mind and trains people to quickly react, not think, as the information is digested and the body continues this. It quickly digests whatever is put into the mouth withough considering if it should be digested and what the nutrients might be used for. Because he brought this up in multiple books and the same thoughts were expressed by many others at the time, it would be difficult to identify exactly which book Knox read. You could narrow it down to only non-Catholics, but I doubt many people who published Nietzsche-like books were Catholic. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 14:27, 30 July 2024 (UTC)