Chap. II. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 87 



The fecond palliative of the mifchief is being much naked and 

 in the open air, as the Greeks were, exercifing in that way, and 

 making much ufe of fridion and anointing. This laft was prac- 

 tifed by all nations of old, barbarous and polite, and is ftill 

 pradifed by all barbarous nations, but is now univerfally difufed by 

 the nations of Europe, fop what good reafon I know not : But I 

 think I know, from my own experience, that it gives both ftrength 

 and agility ; and, if it had no other good efFedt, we are at leaft fo 

 long naked, and in a natural ftatc, while we are anointing ^'. 



The laft remedy for the mifchief is frequent bathing, by which 

 the cruft, that muft neceflaiily gather upon our bodies by living in 

 fo foul an air, is wafhed away, and our fkin, for fome fhort time, 

 reftored to its native purity f. Some vainly imagine they do this, 



by 



* We read of a man among the Pvomans, in the days of Auguflus Caefar, called 

 PoUio, who lived to the age of ninety, in perfect good health, and chiefly, as it is 

 fald, by the ufe of oil outwardly. See Hieronymus Mercurialisy de Arte Gpnnajiica, 

 lib. 5. cap. 1. p. 30. The reafon which Lucian, in that admirable dialogue of his, De 

 Gymna/iisy makes Solon give for the ufe of oil in the Greek Palaeftra, is, that it both 

 foftens the flcin, and makes it firmer, as well as more pliable ; for, fays he, it would be 

 abfurd to think that the fkins of dead animals, anointed with oil, fhould be ftronger, 

 and more difBcult to be cracked and broken, and fhould lafl much longer, and yet that a 

 living body fhould not be the better for it. If the learned reader is as great an admi- 

 rer of the ftile of Lucian as I am, he will be pleafed to read it in the original : At», 



w«» y«ij, ii rec Uiv a-KVTn vofAi^ejuiv^vTro rai £/«;&) ^aXuTTofiivx, Iva-^etyicrlt^x yiy*tir5^eci, yik^cc yi 

 y,5»] 6VTU ; TO S"< irt tfiin^ ^iTiy^ov euf^x i^vi tcv ecf^anov riyoifx,i^» vtto tov i>^xiov ^XTtfr,<n!^ui. (P. 



797. of the folio edition of Paris, 1615.) I had a black fervant from Senegal, who, 

 when I alked him, why his countrymen anointed their bodies, gave me the fame 

 reafon for it : * We think our fkins,' fays he, ♦ as much the better for being oiled, as 

 * you think your boots and fhoes are.' 



t The people of th« Caribbee or Antilles iflands, as the French call them, live 

 very indolently, and, at the fame time, are prodigious drunknrds, getting mortally 



drunk, 



