The Belly and Its Members
In former days, a man's limbs did not work together as amicably as they do now, but each had a will and way of its own. One time the bodily members began to find fault with the belly for spending an idle, luxurious life, while they were wholly occupied in laboring for its support and ministering to its wants and pleasures. So the members entered into a conspiracy to cut off the belly?s supplies for the future. The hands were no longer to carry food to the mouth, nor the mouth to receive the food, nor the teeth to chew it.
They had not long persisted in this course of starving the belly into subjection, before they all began, one by one, to fail and flag, and the whole body to pine away. Then the members were convinced that the belly, cumbersome and useless as it seemed, had an important function of its own. They decided that they could no more do without it than it could do without them, and that if they would have the constitution of the body in a healthy state, they must work together, each in his proper sphere, for the common good of all.