CONTENTS. 63 



PAGE 



attaining age of patriarchs ; gist and soul of the fable of An- 

 tasus ; stick to Mother Nature; recitation of the records who 

 lived longest, how, why, from Methuselah down: modern 

 tables approach ancient; table of Easton of Salisbury, Eng- 

 land; several lives 185; regular record of courts, and Har- 

 vey's post-mortem ; habits of life all point in one direction ; 

 nature ; open air ; fishing, swimming ; daily-labor ; digestive 

 organs treated with consideration by them all; modern patri- 

 archs, sailors, soldiers, workers-of some kind; hopeful record; 

 only condition indispensable, touch the earth ; material side of 

 question all in this ; soul, or spirit side of question through 

 the sire of Antaeus. Poseidon, who was a " personification of the 

 fertilizing power of water" a symbol of thought, spirit, genius 

 creator of the horse, and great water-god ; on the side of 

 spirit what comes of the fable ; same story from philosophers, 

 saints, anatomists, poets, moralists, especially physicians ; tem- 

 perance and virtue absolutely the only conditions of PHYSICAL 

 REGENERATION ; perfect rectitude a preventive for smallpox 

 and ague ; the life of man may become cleaner, brighter, 

 sweeter, and certainly LONGER ; the sum total of all prophe- 

 cies, of all philosophies, of all religions, all sciences, natural, 

 supernatural, is the body of man a perfectly sound implement, 

 absolutely plastic clay in the FINGERS of the PURE, INTELLI- 

 GENT, LOVING SOUL; secret of the universe told; great problem 

 of nature solved by the physical regeneration and salvation of 

 the human race; the Mountain the first shore; the first LIFE- 

 THEATRE ; the sun first kisses, dawn first bathes the Moun- 

 tain; lo ! for the Son of Man, is it coming day? 567 



CHAPTER II. ' 



PAN A SYMBOL OF THE UNIVERSE. 



Is nature a unit? ancient atomic theory; strange coincidence; 

 modern atom ; what has the intellect done for the atom, from 

 Leucippus to Dalton? souls of great dreamers identical in 

 their instincts ; logic of nature ; primordial types ; fascination 

 of the atom; temptation to brave spirits to exhaust ; struggles 

 from Democritus to Schleiden ; ancient " atom impenetrable;" 

 modern cell ; all organisms necessarily microscopic in struc- 

 ture ; all organisms come from infusoria ; everything must 

 flow; Descartes' vortices celestial; Cuvier's vortices terres- 

 trial; perpetual motion of the cell: life and death dance; 

 motion motion everywhere ; organic, inorganic, imponder- 

 able; organs, functions ; metamorphoses; immaterial essence; 

 naturel history; supernatural history; the atom, the soul; 

 silent gliding ; heavenly soaring ; what is pain ? what is dis- 

 ease ? of the sound cell ; diseased cell ; physiology, pathology ; 

 atom sound; atom morbid and morbific; origin of evil; the 

 cell and general pathology; great functions, great lesions; 

 in nature all things united ; the cell the imponderable ; old 

 actors in the tragedies of life and death ; the ether, the heat, 

 the light; normal, abnormal life; jokes of nature; eternal 



