THE ANIMATED CREATION. 275 



such a high relation to the mundane economy, and makes him 

 the vehicle of so many exquisitely delightful sensations it is 

 this which makes him liable to the sufferings of disease. It 

 might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of the 

 agencies producing disease might have been diminished or ex- 

 tinguished ; but the probability is, that this could not have 

 been done without such a derangement of the whole economy 

 of nature as would have been attended with more serious evils. 

 For example a large class of diseases are the result of effluvia 

 from decaying organic matter. This kind of matter is known 

 to be extremely useful when mixed with earth in favouring 

 the process of vegetation. Supposing the noxiousness to the 

 human constitution done away with, might we not also lose 

 that important quality which tends so largely to increase the 

 food raised from the ground 1 Perhaps (as has been somewhere 

 suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter of special design, 

 to induce us to put away decaying organic substances into the 

 earth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now man 

 has reason to enable him to see that such substances are bene- 

 ficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other. He 

 is, as it were, commanded to take the right method in dealing 

 with them. In point of fact, men do not always take this 

 method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to gather 

 close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and 

 agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a tem- 

 porary exception from the operation of mental laws, the general 

 tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper measures. 

 And these measures will probably be in time universally adopted, 

 so that one extensive class of diseases will be altogether or 

 nearly abolished. 



Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement 

 of our personal economy. Eating to excess, eating and drinking 

 what is noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary 

 for the right action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh 

 air for the supply of the lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular 

 indulgence of the mental affections, are all of them recognised 

 modes of creating that derangement of the system in which 

 disease consists. Here also it may be said that a limitation of 

 the mental faculties to definite manifestations (vulgo, instincts) 

 might have enabled us to avoid many of these errors ; but 

 here again we are met by the consideration that, if we had 

 been so endowed, we should have been only as the lower 

 animals are, wanting that transcendently higher character of 



