the
weight of the bodies of those mental dwarfs. Run this train of reason
back for a few hundred or thousand of years,--this degenerating force,
bearing upon the offspring, and is it a wonder that we have physical and
mental wrecks all over the country?

MENTAL DEGENERATION MAKES IT UNPLEASANT FOR THE ORIGINAL THINKER.

Now if we have been mentally degenerating, killing our best men back for
a few thousand years time, and still have a few left who are fairly good
reasoners, what was their mental powers then, compared with now? They
could think from native ability; we only through acquired ability by our
methods of education. Should an original thinker occasionally appear
from the crippled and maimed, he will have much that is unpleasant to
contend with, unless he is generous enough to credit the cause to an
effect produced by the lack of mental and physical forces in the sires
just described. A man or woman who is able to reason, cannot afford to
wear out his or her physical and mental forces by spending time in
tiresome discussions with such blank masses, who are very fortunate to
have intelligence enough to make a living under the methods that require
the least mental action.

It would not be manly nor lady like to allow a feeling of combattiveness
to arise and spend your forces on such persons. Pre-natal causes have
dropped them where they are, and a philosopher knows he must submit to
the conditions, and he is sorrowful in place of vengeful and
vindicative, and all that is left for him to do is to trim his lamps and
let the lights defend themselves.

ORIGINAL THINKERS OF THE ANCIENTS.

On this line we have much to think of. Anciently they did think: Great
minds existed then, as is evidenced by the architecture displayed in
constructing temples and pyramids. As in philosophy, chemistry, and
mathematics, they stand to-day as living facts of their intelligence. In
some ways we are equal and even surpass the ancients. Before the
establishment of religious and political governments, national and
tribal creeds, to sustain which the powerful minds and bodies of
thousands and millions have been slain and their wise councils
prohibited by death. Reason says under the circumstances we must kindly
make and do the best we can in our day and time. No doubt their religion
was better than ours, before they began to fight about their gods and
governments.

METHODS OF HEALING.

Some evidence crops out now and then tha