214 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



and not as that animal cats it, but prepared by fire, cooked, and dref- 

 ed ; — ufing alfo, by way of drink, fermented liquors, fuch as wine 

 and beer, and the mod unnatural drink that can be imagined, I mean 

 fpir'its^ which are fo far from being the natural drink of an animal, 

 that they are fuel for fire ; — likewife covering himfelf from the air, in 

 which and by which we live, and that not only by houfeS, but by 

 the clofeft covering that can be imagined, that is, by clothes in the 

 day time, and by fheets and blankets in which he is wrapped during 

 the night ; — 1 think it is impoflible, by the nature of things, that he 

 can live the time which God anc; ^Jature have deftined he fhould 

 live, and without difeafe, or that, after having lived that time, he 

 fliould die the death of Nature. My furprile therefore is, that we 

 live fo long as we -do, and that more of us are not years a-dying 

 of long and painful difeafes, and are not 9 _>.; ►•j- iJ-Zv'/////^, which 

 Othello, in Shakefpear, prays that lago may be. 



But it will be faid, is then fo fliort a life, and fo long and pain- 

 'ful a death, fo abfolutely necelfary, that they cannot be prevented 

 or alleviated by any thing we can do? And, I think, we may allevi- 

 ate them, firft by taking to the natural diet of vegetables, and then 

 by living more in the air than we do ; or, without making fo great 

 a change, by living as the anticnt Egyptians did, who ate flefh and 

 drank wine, and lived in houfes as we do, but lived, I am perfuaded, 

 much longer and much more free of difeafe, and died a much fhort- 

 cr and eafier death. And tlxis was by the conftant ufe of the cold 

 bath, four times in the twenty-four hours; and by phyfic, that 

 they took regularly once a month, which they thought neceffary 

 to prevent the bad effetfls of their unnatural diet : Both which prac- 

 tices I can recommend to the reader from my own experience *. — As 

 to the cold bath, I think it fo neceffary for men who live, as we do, 



in 

 * See what I have faid upon this fubjeiTt in Vol. V. p. 20. — where I h«ve fliown 

 that the Egyptian pradice of the cold bath was much bettci- than the warm bath ufevf 

 by the Greeks and RomaHs. 



