THE ARREST OF THE BODY 139 



organs made of iron and steel rather than of 

 wasting muscle and palpitating nerve. For these 

 can be kept at no physiological cost, they cannot 

 impede the other machinery, and when that finally 

 comes to the last break-down there will be the 

 fewer wheels to stop. 



So great indeed is the advantage of increasing 

 mechanical supplements to the physical frame rather 

 than exercising the physical frame itself, that this 

 will become nothing short of a temptation ; and 

 not the least anxious task of future civilization 

 will be to prevent degeneration beyond a legitimate 

 point, and keep up the body to its highest working 

 level. For the first thing to be learned from these 

 facts is not that the Body is nothing and must 

 now decay, but that it is most of all and more 

 than ever worthy to be preserved. The moment 

 our care of it slackens, the Body asserts itself. It 

 comes out from under arrest — which is the one 

 thing to be avoided. Its true place by the ordained 

 appointment of Nature is where it can be ignored; 

 if through disease, neglect, or injury it returns to 

 consciousness, the effect of Evolution is undone. 

 Sickness is degeneration; pain the signal to resume 

 the evolution. On the one hand, one must "reckon 

 the Body dead " ; on the other, one must think 

 of it in order not to think of it 



