age over us. And we know to-day that even
the living things in the vegetable kingdom suffer alike from the fearful
tortures and penalties of the world. They follow almost the identical
routine of life that we follow. Birth, life, reproduction, and death are
their lot as well as ours; so that, if man were only to practice the
idealism of his cramped and feeble brain he would starve to death!

V

If the world is the result of an established plan, as some say, it must
be the conception of a hideous monster whose three cardinal principles
are Disease, Despair and Death. But this much we can say: Though God
created us a savage, fortunately man is civilizing Nature's brute and is
making him a Man.

Disease is one of Nature's cardinal forces. So, to attain health, we
struggle against disease; but health only means the guarding of it
through fear. "With all the ills the flesh is heir to," true health is a
chimera, an existing state unknown to man.

To be "well" is such a precious condition, that Nature cautions us
against expecting to retain health too long, by instructing us, through
experience, to prepare for a siege of illness. Thus, disease and illness
would seem to be the natural states, and health the artificial
condition under which Nature permits us to live. No one goes to his
grave without suffering the tortures of some disease and paying the
penalty of living. No one is exempt from the inflictions Nature imposes.

The greater portion of our life consists in devising means and
medication to relieve us of our states of ill health and disease.
Sanitation and all the methods we are capable of discovering and
inventing are becoming universally applied to kill and to destroy the
menacing germs that God causes to inhabit the air, and that breed and
multiply in the fertile flesh of our bodies.

And finally, we are so utterly ignorant of how even to eat, sleep, walk,
breathe, stand or sit, that the slightest infringement of the simplest
rules of life can, and does, cause us irreparable harm.

If we did not move to help ourselves, Nature would have us live in filth
and stagnation.

We seek, discover, or invent all kinds of methods to build health and
to remain perfectly strong throughout our lives, and yet, despite it
all, we are puny and sickly beings. In fact, I do not think there is
such a thing as perfect health. What we may do to correct, insure or
perfect our healthy tissues will have a detrimental effect