580 THE MOUNTAIN. 



What are his relations to her now ? A lover of leeks and flesh- 

 pots, hurried on to hideous morbid growths in hot-beds of 

 vice and luxury, and boiled in the caldrons of towns and 

 cities, has his back been so long turned upon God, that the 

 flaming sword is inexorably fixed between him and the 

 heaven of physical soundness ? Can he never enter again 

 the Paradise of sound digestion, and taste the sensuous joys 

 of hilarious youth ? Is the divine crucible, that body of his, 

 broken, and does the world, with mountains of the golden 

 ore of health and happiness, gleam in mockery around him, 

 torturing to phrenzy ? 



The first critical question, the truly essential problem, is, 

 has the human race actually degenerated physically* in 

 modern times, for, morally and spiritually, it seems to be 

 admitted, that it has wilted and withered almost to death. 



" For many centuries past we have had numerous writers 

 and preachers on the moral degeneracy of mankind, and 

 many still are asserting, on spiritual grounds, the increasing 

 laxity and gradual decline of morals, and the growing dis- 

 regard of strict principles of religion and rectitude. But it 

 must strike us forcibly, that though PHYSICAL DEGENERACY 

 has also been making equally rapid strides, and pro- 

 gressed hand and hand with moral decay, it was not until 

 very lately that those who are the properly constituted 

 guardians of health, have raised their voices, or taken up 

 their pens, to arrest its progress. That this degeneracy 

 (physical) actually exists, and is still progressive, is not 

 a subject of controversy, but capable of easy demonstra- 

 tion. A. glance back at the history of the world, and the 

 contrast that presents itself between the mental, moral, and 

 physical condition of society in ages long past, and its con- 



* "Two-fifths of all who are born die under five years of age, 

 the remainder all die prematurely, a fearful mortality. Half die 

 of fevers ; one-fourth of consumption and scrofula ; the rest of other 

 diseases, all die of violence, no such thing known, in modern days, 

 as natural death, a death from mere old age. But is not the length of 

 human life increasing ? It was so till recently ; chronic diseases are 

 multiplying," etc. etc. ALCOTT. 



