s the very highest of all
temporal things. There is no kind of an achievement equal
to perfect health. What to it are nuggets or
millions?"--_Carlyle's Address to Students at Edinburgh._

"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood:
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty but kindly."

--"_As You Like It_," ii: 3.

IV

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER

Ancient society looked upon the human body with the utmost veneration.
The citizen of Thebes or Memphis knew no higher ambition than a
competency for embalming his body. Men loved unto death and beyond it
the physical house in which the soul dwelt. Every instinct of
refinement and self-respect revolted from the thought of discarding
the body like a cast-off garment or worn-out tool. In his dying hour
it was little to Rameses that his career was to be pictured on obelisk
and preserved in pyramid, but it was very much to the King that the
embalmer should give permanency to the body with which his soul had
gone singing, weeping and loving through three-score years and ten.
The papyrus found in the tombs tells us that the soldiers of that
far-off age did not fear death itself more than they feared falling in
some secluded spot where the body, neglected and forgotten, would
quickly give its elements back to air and earth. How noble the
sentiment that attached dignity and honor to hand and foot! Sacred,
doubly sacred, was the body that had served the soul long and
faithfully!

The soul is a city, and as Thebes had many gateways through which
passed great caravans laden with goodly treasure, so the five senses
are gateways through which journey all earth's sights and sounds.
Through the golden gate of the ear have gone what noble truths,
companying together what messengers of affection, what sweet
friendships. The eye is an Appian Way over which have gone all the
processions of the seasons. How do hand and vision protect man?
Hunters use sharp spears for keeping back wild beasts, but
Livingstone, armed only with eye beams, drove a snarling beast into
the thicket, and Luther, lifting his great eyes upon an assassin, made
the murderer flee. What flute or harp is comparable for sweetness to
the voice? It carries warning and alarm. It will speak for yo