IIYGEIA. 561 



selves workers, by Him whom nature clothes, vails, and 

 manifests, to be workers. To work, to do, loas that for which 

 ive were called forth to be." Cease to dream, man! 

 thou gorgeous loafer, of celestial lubber-lands where eternity 

 shall be dozed away with cigars, and nothing to do.* 



On the specially preventive and curative powers of particu- 

 lar kinds of work over special states and individual organs, 

 much has been suggested, and an essay of the most signifi- 

 cant import might be written from facts already on record, 

 in connection with the physiology of organs, on the prophy- 

 lactics and therapeutics of exercise. Estimate by critical 

 analyses the life-giving processes of ploughing and sowing, 

 digging and delving, wood-chopping and fence building, 

 with the ambrosial recreation of making hay, together with 

 the useful mechanical arts that are making the earth comfort- 

 able, and civilized life endurable, and see the result. Then, 

 there is wonderful virtue in the walk, the great voluntary 

 act of locomotion ; man, the sublime, with upturning im- 

 mortal eyes, CcatOpuofpty) moving in the erect attitude. Is 

 there not sanitary significance in the dreamy stroll of the 

 philosopher and poet, the soul erect also, and walking in 

 thought ; in the enchanting excursion of the botanist col- 

 lecting plants, and the "tug and tussle" of the geologist, 

 hammer in hand, climbing and dissecting his mountains ? Of 

 the exercise and gymnastic virtues of swimming, too high a 

 commendation cannot be given ; it is bold work and purify- 

 ing ablution combined. Are there not positive and absolute 

 powers in the hunt, man's return again to the original game 

 of life and death, with the animal kingdom about him? 



Long have the refreshing and life-renewing influences of the 

 fishing, or piscatorial art, been celebrated and sung; and Izaak 

 Walton was a poet, and a prophet of health. Then we are 

 presented with the great passive forms of exercise the sail, 

 the drive, the horseback ride. In horseback traveling is 

 achieved the highest results of passive motion, the last 

 issues of jactitation, or churning of viscera, of pounding 



* Idleness is the largest gate of perdition now open. 



