396 PHYSIOLOGY AND HEALTH. 



expended, and leave the capital unimpaired ; but any excess, 

 however small, like an excess of expenditure of money over 

 the income, must be taken out of the constitution. All 

 failure in the building up, all privations of nutriment, of 

 sleep, or of due exercise, or bathing, however small, in- 

 asmuch as the body is thereby strengthened less, produce 

 so much less income, and create a deficiency of the vital 

 power. 



941. The excess of expenditure of strength, in every way, 

 over the daily income, and all deficiency in strengthening, 

 then, wear upon the constitution. In these many ways, the 

 deterioration may be very slight and imperceptible at the 

 time ; the evil consequences may not be great enough to 

 call our attention to them ; yet the power of life is dimin- 

 ished, there is less energy in the action of the organs, and 

 less power to resist causes of disturbance. Each one of 

 these errors diminishes the capital of life in proportion to its 

 extent. One takes a li'ttle, and another a little, and yet the 

 loss is unnoticed until the whole, added together, weakens 

 the constitution, impairs the health, and wastes the strength 

 so much, that some other cause creates a perceptible dis- 

 order or pain, and this we call disease. This may be fatal, 

 not because of its own force or violence, but because the 

 vital force had been previously so much reduced, that it 

 could not resist this cause of disturbance. Thus the system 

 is not only laid open to attacks of disease, but its power of 

 overcoming it is lost ; as men's affairs are sometimes embar- 

 rassed apparently by a new debt or loss, but really because 

 their capital had been diminished so much by previous mis- 

 fortune or mismanagement, that the new obligation is an 

 insupportable burden. 



942. The natural and artificial varieties of human con- 

 stitution are variously affected by education, habits, cir- 

 cumstances, employments, and localities. These influences 

 may be so used as to diminish, and often remove, these in- 

 equalities, or, on the contrary, to increase and establish them. 

 ff they are carefully regarded in the training of children 



