THE ARREST OF THE BODY. 109 



it already that one shrinks from contemplating a 

 future race having to keep in repair an apparatus 

 more involved and delicate. The practical advantage 

 is enormous of having all improvements henceforth 

 external, of having insensate organs made of iron and 

 steel rather than of wasting muscle and palpitating 

 nerve. For these can be kept at no physiological cost, 

 they cannot impede the other machinery, and when 

 that finally comes to the last break-down there will be 

 the fewer wheels to stop. 



So great indeed is the advantage of increasing me- 

 chanical supplements to the physical frame rather 

 than exercising the physical frame itself, that this will 

 become nothing short of a temptation; and not the 

 least anxious task of future civilization will be to pre- 

 vent degeneration beyond a legitimate point, and keep 

 up the body to its highest working level. For the 

 first thing to be learned from these facts is not that 

 the Body is nothing and must now decay, but that it 

 is most of all and more than ever worthy to be pre- 

 served. The moment our care of it slackens, the Body 

 asserts itself. It comes out from under arrest — which 

 is the one thing to be avoided. Its true place by the 

 ordained appointment of Nature is where it can be 

 ignored; if through disease, neglect or injury it re- 

 turns to consciousness, the effect of Evolution is un- 

 done. Sickness is degeneration ; pain the signal to 

 resume the evolution. On the one hand, one must 

 " reckon the Body dead " ; on the other, one must think 

 of it in order not to think of it. 



This arrest of physical development at a specific 

 point is not confined to Man. Everywhere in the 

 organic world science is confronted with arrested 



