234 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



frauded, negatively and positively: negatively, by the 

 privation of that ** sweetness and light' ' which is the nat- 

 ural concomitant of good health; positively, by the inser- 

 tion into life of cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand cor- 

 roding anxieties which good health would dissipate. We 

 fear and scorn "materialism." But he who knew all about 

 it, and could apply his knowledge, might become the 

 preacher of a new gospel. Not, however, through the 

 ecstatic moments of the individual does such knowledge 

 come, but through the revelations of science, in connection 

 with the history of mankind. 



Why should the Koman Catholic Church call gluttony 

 a mortal sin? Why should fasting occupy a place in the 

 disciplines of religion? What is the meaning of Luther's 

 advice to the young clergyman who came to him, per- 

 plexed with the difficulties of predestination and election, 

 if it be not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain, 

 when wisely applied, there is moral and religious virtue 

 even in a hydro-carbon? To use the old language, food 

 and drink are creatures of God, and have therefore a 

 spiritual value. Through our neglect of the monitions of 

 a reasonable materialism we sin and suffer daily. I might 

 here point to the train of deadly disorders over which 

 science has given modern society such control disclosing 

 the lair of the material enemy, insuring his destruction, 

 and thus preventing that moral squalor and hopelessness 

 which habitually tread on the heels of epidemics in the 

 case of the poor. 



Eising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg, 

 and the ecstasy of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of 

 that psychical condition, obviously connected with the 

 nervous system and state of health, on which is based 



