18 PROLEGOMENON. 



himself; that when men are sensible and sound they shall 

 affect the longevity of the patriarchs, and shoot the black 

 stream as quietly and sweetly as now they " walk the 

 waves of sleep/' instead of blundering through the grim 

 valley in an agonizing and protracted death-struggle, slowly 

 crushed by pain; and, finally, that the human family was 

 not created solely for evil and suffering, or eternally fore- 

 ordained to endure the curse of disease and pain ; that 

 health is the birthright of every created thing, from the 

 polypus to the man ; that the condition called normal 

 which means perpendicular is blessed Nature's aim and end. 

 "Heaven shortens not the life of man: it is man that does 

 it, by his own crimes." Consumption and dyspepsia, neu- 

 ralgia and gout, mumps and measles, bilious fever and small- 

 pox, are certainly not angels from heaven; and the inevi- 

 tability undodgable, and that forever inseparable connection 

 of violation of laws of life and health with pain and disease, of 

 the tax of suffering that must be paid for infraction of the 

 law by vicious indulgence, are written in the experiences of 

 every hour, in every gorged stomach, in every whisky- 

 deranged liver and brandy-boiled brain, in the slabbering 

 salivation of tobacco, or the reekings of its smoke from the 

 human mouth and nostrils, in bread forever sour, in meat 

 converted into indestructible sole-leather, in insane and 

 barbarous habits of life, or wicked murdering of the body 

 by the whole army of devils of Depravity and Vice under 

 the despotic drill of that savage Monkey-Queen of absurdi- 

 ties, Fashion, enthroned on her rocks of ages, " caste-keeping 

 and guild-preserving," and, worst of all, the eternizing of dis- 

 ease and defective development in the process of generation 

 profane and ungodly, presided over by the genius of 

 sin and death, true dust and ashes of the apples of 

 Sodom, the words "hereditary taint" having attained 

 a fearful significance. This i that sour curse of the "sins 

 of the fathers" followed by teeth upon edge and heritages 

 of woe in third and fourth generations. This is the true 

 opening of the box of Pandora ; this is that " rash hand 



