554 THE MOUNTAIN. 



animal is but a man in disguise. Hence the grandeur of 

 this " earthen cup," the stomach and its laws, and from the 

 universality of its affinities, comes the multitudinous world of 

 horrors in the shape of diseases, to which the infraction of those 

 laws introduce the unhappy creature, man. Is this humble 

 earthen-cup the veritable vessel of Pandora ? " When Pro- 

 metheus had stolen the fire from heaven, Zeus in revenge 

 caused Hephaestus to make a woman out of earth, who by 

 her charms and beauty should bring misery upon the human 

 race. Aphrodite adorned her with beauty, Hermes gave 

 her boldness and cunning, and the gods called her Pandora, 

 as each of the Olympians had given her some power by which 

 she was to work the ruin of man. Hermes took her to 

 Epimetheus, who forgot the advice of his brother Prome- 

 theus, not to accept any gift from Zeus, and from that mo- 

 ment the fatal vessel of gifts of the gods was opened, and 

 all miseries came down upon men, the blessings having 

 escaped irrecoverably." Mournful consummation ! And have 

 the gifts of the Olympians all escaped on the wings of the 

 wind, through disease and infirmity, only the fatal power re- 

 maining "to work the ruin of man?" Is this cave of the 

 vital forces wholly surrendered to the destroyers ? Once 

 the magical grotto from which the golden currents of life 

 rushed to the remotest atoms of the body, is it now a bale- 

 ful lake of Avernus, over whose dismal waters the birds 

 dare not fly, and in whose poisonous bosom the fabulous 

 Proteus alone can swim ? 



Catalogues of diseases of the stomach, their causes and 

 treatment, make volumes. Alas ! for the base of the Pyra- 

 mid Man ! Alas ! for the magazine of his powers, the 

 fountain of the rivers of his body ! Tantalus is no fable : 

 it means the impossibility of eating anything that will not 

 nauseate and rebel ; for your stomach is diseased, " broken 

 the goblet and wasted the wine."* This great substratum of 



* "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of 

 hell, a hell of heaven." Not so while in the body, which also "is 

 its own place." Thus the man diseased, makes his clay a colored 



