40 



DR. R. ANGUS SMITH ON ANCIENT AND 



entirely beyond the power of individuals to attain, there have 

 been no perfectly new truths discovered, no perfectly new 

 principles acted on, and perhaps we may add, no strikingly 

 new laws made. The laws have been' better defined, been 

 made more comprehensive and more easily carried out, and 

 known principles have had an extension, both expansively by 

 taking higher ground, and intensively by a care for smaller 

 objects. Yet in examining antiquity, we find it by no means 

 devoid of general laws, nor of clearly defined regulations 

 within certain limits; and we sometimes see indications of 

 great progress in sanitary habits, rising up especially in con- 

 nection with religious' feeling, when the purity of the soul and 

 of the body have been looked on as analogous, and have been 

 conjointly sought after. 



We have all some idea of the sanitary laws of at least a 

 portion of the ancients, the Jews, and in them we see no 

 vague ideas about cleanness, but exact and definite rules, the 

 value of which science may take in hand distinctly to prove. 

 But the whole East has more or less of a sanitary code also, 

 as may be seen from the baths of the Mahommedan to the 

 clean clothes and clarified butter of the Hindu. True, with 

 all these the mere form alone remains, having been originally 

 sufficiently important to have been introduced by more than 

 merely legal authority, and bearing amongst them the vene- 

 ration of a divine command. But this decay is in a great 

 measure owing to the decay of the several nations ; the same 

 personal habits cannot be kept up in a falling state. An age 

 of violence or of instability puts down all orderly actions, 

 the result of orderly thoughts ; whilst science, or the reasons 

 for acting, sinks, and the arts, each in their order, gradually 

 decline. 



On the other hand, a nation in actual warfare does not 

 need the personal habits of a nation at peace. We see, in 

 an unquiet period, that it becomes the glory of a man to 

 live simply and to want little, whilst, in other circumstances, 



