ANIMAL AND HUMAN HEALTH, 343 



CHAPTER VII. 



HEALTH. 



Among the functions of human life, the presentation of ideals 

 in mind, body and estate, is one which influences all motion and 

 sensation, and gives faculty its direction and play. It seems as if 

 inertia were so tied to motion, pain to pleasure, and imperfection 

 to perfection, that they tend to run out of themselves, and to seek 

 something beyond them to which we give the general name of health. 

 How we come to think that we have a right to be healthy — at least 

 that this is our proper nature, is a problem admitting different solu- 

 tions ; but that our bodies feel disease as a grievance, admits of no 

 doubt whatever. Shall we say, according to the last Chapter, that 

 it is one of the functions of the human form (p. 322), to subject 

 us to ideals, and to put us under this air-pump of wholeness and 

 happiness, that we may gasp to fill its limits ? However this may 

 be, the fact remains, that through all disease we look wistfully after 

 soundness; from the depth of incompetency aspire to strength, and 

 long to be icell through our little day, that duty and pleasure may 

 not be stunted in our hands, but enjoy their legitimate proportions. 



We seem to know sentimentally what that general health would 

 be which we desire. To fill our places in the world, and to love to 

 fill them, are the best ends of our aspirations : to be so organized, 

 or so minded, which you will, as to be spontaneously able and cheer- 

 ful in our labors, at the same time that those labors are not only 

 our choice, but the wants of the time. This includes the rapid di- 

 rection of every muscle to the private in the public service; the 

 bending of sense straight to the objects in hand ; the limitation of 

 sensibilities to the occasion, or the running of life in the pipes of 

 duty ; and finally the control of the all-controlling mind under a 



