506 THE MOUNTAIN. 



born on Christmas night, was thus, by an eternal edict, or 

 law of foreordination, made the recipient of that rarely-con- 

 descended compliment of the supernals, creative genius. 

 Entirely innocent of the crime of any species of knowledge, 

 having never tasted of the apples of any forbidden trees, and 

 consequently left to wander in unprofaned paradises, on "the 

 high hills and sunny lawns where men and angels meet," his 

 sacred mission was to reveal the unspeakable virtue and 

 amazing power of cold water. Gods of waters there had been 

 in the old mythologies Neptune and Triton and goddesses 

 of brooks and rivers Nymphs and Naiades but the secrets 

 of hidden springs and rivers were still kept, and the gods 

 and naiads maintained an unbroken quiet. At last the old 

 silences brooding over the faces of the waters were broken, 

 and the new evangel, the glad tidings of great joy, the 

 doctrine of physical regeneration for man through cold water 

 alone, was proclaimed, and the German peasant stood, the 

 wonder of the hour. Just what the primordial idea of 

 the water-cure was, deep down in the soul of Priessnitz ;* 

 just what he finally announced as the scientific basis of his 

 system of medication, and gave as the rock of safety, 

 around which should be left the floating chaos of destroyed 

 medical theories, or the Ararat upon which obsolete Noah's- 

 arks of systems must finally repose, being wholly surrounded 

 by water, the sages have yet to declare, the happy initiated 

 have yet to reveal. Taking certain doctrines of anatomy, 

 physiology, and pathology to be true, namely, that the human 

 creature is an amphibious animal, a magnificent frog or 

 lizard, a water-biped without feathers or scales, and neces- 

 sarily aquatic from his organization, requiring, like ducks and 

 sponges, zoophytes and fishes, the constant application of 

 water to live at all ; that all diseases are simply an extensive 

 variety of dirts, bodily pollutions, stickings and stuffings-up of 

 tissues and organs ; that man, being an absolute water- walker, 

 all you have to do, is to pass him through a sufficiently di- 

 versified series of washings and soakings, dashes and splashes, 



* See note, page 535. 



