most healthful of
houses. Where our lives are oppressed, there can be no health for us,
even though we eat of princely banquets or in splendid buildings.

* * * * *

=With man the life of the body depends on the life of the
spirit=.--Physiology gives an exhaustive explanation of the mechanism
of such phenomena. Moral activities have such an exact correspondence
with the functions of the body that it is possible to appreciate by
means of these the various emotional states of grief, anger,
weariness, and pleasure. In _grief_, for instance, the action of the
heart becomes feebler, as under a paralyzing influence; all the
blood-vessels contract, and the blood circulates more slowly, the
glands no longer secrete their juices normally, and these disturbances
manifest themselves in a pallor of the face, an appearance of
weariness in the drooping body, a mouth parched from lack of saliva,
indigestion caused by insufficiency of the gastric juice, and cold
hands. If prolonged, grief results in mal-nutrition and consequent
wasting, and predisposes the debilitated body to infectious diseases.
_Weariness_ is like a rapid paralysis of the heart; it may induce
fainting, as expressed in the popular phrase "dead tired"; but a
reflex action will nearly always restore the sufferer, like an
automatic safety-valve; thus a yawn, that is to say, a deep, spasmodic
inspiration, which dilates the pulmonary alveoli, causes the blood to
flow to the heart like a suction pump, and sets it in motion again. In
_anger_ there is a kind of tetanic contraction of all the capillaries,
causing extreme pallor, and the expulsion of an extra quantity of bile
from the liver. _Pleasure_ causes dilatation of the blood-vessels; the
circulation, and consequently all the functions of secretion and
assimilation are facilitated; the face is suffused with color, the
gastric juice and the saliva are perceptible as that healthy appetite
and that watering of the mouth which invite us to supply fresh
nourishment to the body; all the tissues work actively to expel their
toxins, and to assimilate fresh nourishment; the enlarged lungs store
up large quantities of oxygen, which burn up all refuse, leaving no
trace of poisonous germs. It is an injection of health.

In Italy, where after the abolition of the death penalty the
punishment of solitary confinement was substituted, we have a proof
even more eloquent of the influence of the spirit upon the function