450 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



friend. No man can do his very best as an intellectual, moral, spirit- 

 ual, being without employing his physical part in its very best estate 

 in the work. Defect of body means, always, defect in the work of the 

 man, either in quality or in quantity. 



The physical frame is a machine, a transformer of natural energies. 

 It is at once a home for the soul and a wonderful, an intricate and 

 mysterious prime mover, an engine of which the motive forces are as 

 yet undetermined and unmeasured. We know that its perfection is 

 essential to the perfection of the humanity which it encloses and of 

 which it is the vehicle ; we know that the display of the intellectual and 

 the spiritual power, the genius, of humanity is dependent upon the pro- 

 vision of ample stored physical energy and of efficient means of kinetiz- 

 ing and applying it to the purposes of the mind as well as of the body ; 

 we know that the animal machine is not a heat-engine; we think it is 

 not an electrical generator; we are coming to believe that it is some 

 form of chemical motor possibly one in which the vital, the physical, 

 and especially the chemical and electrical, energies find common source 

 and origin in a common point of emanation. We know that, whatever 

 its nature as a motor, it has an inherent efficiency far superior to that 

 of any heat-engine yet devised and constructed by man. We know that 

 it requires certain well-ascertained elements as its fuel or food that 

 it must be kept well within the requirements of certain well-established 

 physical laws ; that, to maintain and promote its best and highest work, 

 it must be cared for with scrupulous attention to certain definite hygi- 

 enic laws. We know that the best possible, the highest possible, can 

 only be attained by man when this curious and mysterious and insep- 

 arable vehicle of the soul is thus maintained in its best estate. 



The building of the body which means the building of the brain, 

 always, and just as absolutely the construction of the physical side 

 of the man, is actually a problem in architecture and engineering and 

 one, like all such problems, capable of a good or a bad or an indifferent, 

 but never of a perfect, solution in any actual case. The building is 

 carried on by mysterious and unknown forces within it and we can 

 never touch them or their work without embarrassment or injury to 

 both. We do, however, know positively certain laws and their action 

 and certain rules of procedure in the adjustment of exterior conditions, 

 favorably or unfavorably, and in supplying the necessaries of whole- 

 some life. We know, in a general way, what should be the methods 

 of life, of diet, of exercise, of use of powers of body and of mind. We 

 know enough to make the difference, in most cases, between health and 

 disease, success and failure of the physical man, and, in consequence, 

 thus largely to determine the success or the failure of the real, the 

 intellectual and spiritual, man. 



The materials of the builder and their preparation for use are, on 



