________________
194
JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
present in the 4.5 grams of dry residue. The chemical analysis of this dry residue showed nothing but inorganic salts. At first, then, these inorganic salts had been contained in the yolk in a fine, regulated state of division inixed with all the other material. And we know that their molecules were there in another, an excited state, in exact proportion with the captured solar spectrum. Precisely herein lay the Jory, the wealth of colour of the nourishing principle. hnce we are justified in asking : are these vainly sought, still unknown substances, perhaps Spectral proportions of excite molecular states ? Is it for this reason that they are undisco erable by chemical analysis ? According to all that I know of the matter, this seems to me the most probable. This much a certain that the excited states of the molecules, either of then.elves or at slightest impulse, give up the energy quanta and pas.again into the stable permanent states of the neutral molecule. thereby losing their specific nutritive action. In this vay the sensitiveness and the ready destructibility of the vitamins would be explained without difficulty:
“And with the help of this conception of the vitamins the relation of animal to vegetable food would be inore readily undersiood. Since the so-caled vitamins originate only in the vegetable kingdom, and yet are contained in cod-liver oil, milk and eggs, animal products, it will be seen that animal life is able to preserve, accumulate and use for its purposes the excited molecular states, so that in inilk, in the egg, and stored in the liver and other organs, at least when living, they are always present in their original vegetable values, though mixed in the organs with other substances which as regards nutrition act rather as ballast. But from this it becomes comprehensible that milk, eggs and animal organs also possess nutritive value, and that beasts of prey, which swallow their victims alive and with the blood, can flourish on pure animal food,
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
