Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



his fires, and trembles at the crackHng of a twig 

 beneath his feet — so the traveller through this 

 world, comforter in one hand and physic-bottle 

 in the other, must pick his way, fearful lest at 

 any time he disturb the sleeping legions of death — 

 thrice blessed if by any means, steering now to 

 the right and now to the left, and thinking only 

 of his personal safety, he pass by without discovery 

 to the other side. 



Health with us is a negative thing. It is a 

 neutralisation of opposing dangers. It is to be 

 neither rheumatic nor gouty, consumptive nor 

 bilious, to be untroubled by head-ache, back-ache, 

 heart-ache, or any of the " thousand natural shocks 

 that flesh is heir to." These are the realities. 

 Health is the mere negation of them. 



The modern notion, and which has evidently 

 in a very subtle way penetrated the whole thought 

 of to-day, is that the essential fact of life is the 

 existence of innumerable external forces, which, 

 by a very delicate balance and difficult to maintain, 

 concur to produce Man — who in consequence may 

 at any moment be destroyed again by the non- 

 concurrence of those forces. The older notion 

 apparently is that the essential fact of life is Man 

 himself ; and that the external forces, so-called, 

 are in some way subsidiary to this fact — that they 

 may aid his expression or manifestation, or that 

 they may hinder it, but that they can neither create j 

 nor annihilate the Man. Probably both ways of | 

 looking at the subject are important ; there is a I 

 man that can be destroyed, and there is a man that } 



30 



