CAUSES OF HUMAN DECAY. 315 



human constitution, resulting from the very nature of man; 

 they are an inevitable sequence of his physical structure, 

 and his intellectual life. To avoid them implies absolute 

 perfectability in every attribute, and that makes him a god. 

 Until man shall have become infinite in wisdom, as well as 

 immaculate in purity, he will continue to indulge, to a 

 greater or less extent, in excesses of some sort, and those 

 excesses will always be an overmatch, when superadded to 

 the natural law of decay, for the recuperative efforts of 

 science. You must create a radical reform in every depart- 

 ment of life; in business, in social habits, in the fashions, 

 in the mode of living, in everything, before you can hope to 

 reach the Utopia of which you speak. The outrages perpe- 

 trated upon nature by the conventionalities of the world 

 alone, would be an insurmountable barrier to the realization 

 of your idea. The necessity for excessive labor to satisfy 

 artificial wants hews away at one end of society, and the 

 indulgence of idleness and ease, at the other. Exposure to 

 the elements, to heat and cold, buries its millions; and too 

 great seclusion, in pursuit of comfort in heated rooms, and 

 a confined and corrupted atmosphere, buries its millions 

 also. Lack of wholesome food fills thousands of graves, 

 and the results of abundance fill other thousands. Lack of 

 appropriate clothing, fitted for the constitution and the sea- 

 sons, engenders disease and death; and an excess of the 

 same article, fashioned as stupendous folly only can fashion 

 it, engenders vastly more disease and death. There are ele- 

 ments of decay and death' furnished to men and women, 



