I 7 8 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



Conversely, with a body weakened, no matter how 

 or why, most things become impossible, or, if not 

 actually unattainable, they are at least achieved with 

 difficulty and through pain and tribulation of spirit. 

 Sound health is the first condition for enjoying life ; 

 and, if we reflect upon the common causes of life's 

 failure in a social sense, we may easily prove that 

 much of the want of success is due to sheer physical 

 incapacity to enjoy existence. This incapacity, again, 

 largely arises from the lack of knowledge about health 

 and its laws. 



I may be pardoned for laying stress on this ignor- 

 ance, because I happen to be very practically associated 

 with a certain work and labour of diffusing such know- 

 ledge broadcast, and because I know how much work 

 yet lies ready to the hand of the reformer in things 

 sanitary. With thousands of units around and about 

 us, possessing weakened bodies and living under 

 conditions the reverse of sanitary and the antipodes 

 of cleanliness, freshness, and brightness ; and further- 

 more, with the clear and plain fact that such bodily 

 weaknesses are perpetuated onwards in increasing force 

 from one generation to the next, who can wonder that 

 life is decidedly not worth living or worth having at 

 the cheapest rate ? Do we need to go much further 

 than this very primary matter of health as an all- 

 sufficient cause for failure in most of the things, aims, 

 and aspirations which make up the Life Beautiful ? 



This, then, is my first contention. But there are 

 other points which deserve and demand consideration 

 at the hands of those who discuss the question at issue. 

 When the poet longs for the " simpler life," and for the 

 fuller existence, he is expressing a very real and crying 

 desire which many an earnest mind among us feels 



