346 LIFE AND DEATH. 



observation teaches us, on the other hand, that the 

 health of the body reacts on that of the mind; and 

 therefore man as a whole, moral and physical, is 

 affected by disease. Bacon described a diseased 

 body as a jailer to the soul, and the healthy body as 

 a host. Pascal recognized in diseases a principle of 

 error. " They spoil our judgment and our senses." 



I am not expressing a chimerical hope when I 

 predict that science will conquer disease. Medicine 

 has at last issued from the contemplative attitude 

 of so many centuries ; it has engaged in the 

 struggle, and signs of victory are already appearing. 

 Disease is no longer the mysterious power which it 

 was impossible to escape. Pasteur gave to it a body. 

 The microbe can be caught. In the words of 

 Schopenhauer, an alteration of the atmosphere so 

 slight that it is impossible to detect it by chemical 

 analysis may bring on cholera, yellow fever, the 

 black plague, diseases which carry off thousands of 

 men; and a slightly greater alteration might endanger 

 all life. The at once mysterious and terrifying spec- 

 tacle of the cholera at Berlin in 1831 had such an 

 effect on the philosopher that he fled in terror to 

 Frankfort. It has been said that this was the origin 

 of his pessimism, and that but for this he would have 

 continued to teach idealistic philosophy in some 

 Prussian university. L. Hartmann, another cele- 

 brated leader of contemporary pessimism, has also 

 said that disease will always be beyond the resources 

 of medicine. Facts have given the lie to these 

 sombre prognostics. The microbic origin of most in- 

 fectious diseases has been recognized. The discovery 

 of attenuated poisons and serums has diminished 

 their gravity. An exact knowledge of methods of 



