486 THE MOUNTAIN. 



art, inaugurated by the oracles of Fate, are as absolutely a 

 part of the inevitable, and as genuine a fragment of the 

 universe, as the beautiful "song of the stars." As the 

 creation of the human body is the first significant fact of its 

 history, its protection and preservation from the agencies 

 of change and destruction about it must certainly be the 

 second consideration of importance, scarcely less in its 

 grandeur, surely equally solemn in its end. The soul, in- 

 carnated once, demands immortality as a right of its own 

 being, and would ask it, also, for the body. What art so 

 grand, then, as the art of preserving and prolonging life, and 

 what so godlike in aspiration as the effort to restore man 

 to the splendor of his unfallen youth, and save him from the 

 tortures of pain and suffering, of disease and death ? 



All the races of men, but especially the cultivated and 

 dominant, have ever had a clear perception of this great 

 fact ; and through the darkness and ignorance of barbarous 

 tribes, and the light, culture, and science of the illuminated and 

 progressive nations, the professor of the art of healing has 

 ever been regarded as the possessor of the secrets of life and 

 death, and held in veneration and love, allied to the worship 

 of the supernals.* The scriptures of the races, sacred and 

 profane, record his achievements, and the history of his 

 miracles is embalmed in ejaculations of ceaseless wonder 

 and admiration. Their monuments of art have registered 

 the highest tidal waves of the progress and intellectual 

 growth of man, by associating his entire spiritual unfold- 

 ing, the advancement and perfection of his nature, with 

 the deities which preside over the fate and destiny of the 

 material world, and the physical salvation of humanity. 

 The wondrous intellect of the Greek has filled the horizon 

 of human vision for hundreds of years. With a physical 

 conformation perfect, and rendered godlike by a habitat in 



* Priest and physician were originally united in one functionary, 

 and should still be one. " The Asclepiadee were also regarded as an 

 order or caste of priests, and for a long period the practice of medi- 

 cine was intimately connected with religion." 



