560 THE MOUNTAIN. 



On the subject of clothes, as preventives of disease, volumes 

 might be written, as it embraces considerations of the en- 

 tire organization of man, and its connection with all ele- 

 ments of the external world. On the true philosophy of 

 clothes the race is profoundly asleep, in an ignorance 

 of Egyptian blackness ; but in the ordinary stupid and 

 besotted worship of fashion in dressing, it is so entirely 

 insane, that the guardian spirits of the earth have forsaken 

 it in disgust. Its fearfully destructive and tragical bearing, 

 not only on the passing generation, but on the health 

 and destiny of unborn millions, is not to be computed by 

 mathematics. 



Profoundly, very profoundly we must penetrate to ex- 

 haust the hygienic significance of dress ; and to a very 

 exalted height we must soar, to transcend entirely the influ- 

 ence of the mud-swamp in which we wriggle like polliwogs, 

 on the subject of clothes ; and long, very long, it is to be 

 feared, we must "gnaw at this slave's chain," and pray to 

 God for deliverance from ignorance and barbarism, before 

 what we wear, and how we wear it, shall be arranged by 

 science, reason, taste, and health and comeliness shall appear 

 as the shining consummations of the achievements of the soul, 

 and " Use be the suggestor of Beauty." 



WHAT WE DO, AND HOW WE DO IT. 



This must embrace the hygiene of work, the whole chap- 

 ter of exercise, physiological, pathological, or the work, the 

 calling, how we do it. This will suggest the law of work 

 for the life of the organ, and also the lesson; that is, never 

 to use a defective bolt or screw ; never work with an imper- 

 fect implement ; never tax a diseased organ, or overwork 

 an organ threatened with disease. The reason is obvious 

 without a dissertation. The power of work to prevent dis- 

 ease is almost limitless. And here the gymnastics of human 

 industry take their attitudes as life preservers by a divine 

 polarity. "We are created by the craft of nature to be our- 



