The punishment of man for neglect of 

 the cosmic laws. 



Of all the animals upon earth man appears unques- 

 tionably the best executor of its will. As a creature 

 leading a social life he is best of all able to defend 

 himself and to arrange for the continuance and extension 

 of his species. In this direction the earth itself lends him 

 its aid. Look for instance at all those human actions 

 which embody tendencies destructive to the race : the 

 earth itself rises in all its potency against such, and gives 

 man to understand how repellent to her these are. For 

 example what can be more immoral than war, in which 

 all laws human and divine are trampled under loot? 

 And here we see with ten or twenty thousand slain on 

 the field of battle, five or ten times as many perish from 

 nature's wrath through visitations of disease - - dysen- 

 tery, cholera, plague and other infectious scourges. The 

 earth as it were arms itself against murder, and mows 

 down the man who lifts his hand against a brother man. 

 The same is observable in every-day life. In conse- 

 quence of slovenliness men sometimes dwell amongst 

 masses of decaying refuse, and in those cases sickness 

 is not slow in punishing the offender. But of all such 

 instances of disorderly life none prove so promptly pre- 

 judicial as those in which the living dwell amongst the 

 dead an infallible cause of epidemics. Plague, the 

 most awful of diseases centres chiefly round the Indian 

 cemeteries and is certainly of grave-yard origin. 



In India the rich are not buried in the earth nor 

 thrown into rivers as is done in the care of the poor, 



