OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 261 



when mixed with earth, in favouring the process of vegeta- 

 tion. Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution 

 done away with, might we not also lose that important 

 quality which tends so largely to increase the food raised 

 from the ground? Perhaps (as has been somewhere sug- 

 gested) the noxiousness is even a matter of special design, to 

 induce us to put away decaying organic substances into the 

 earth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now man 

 has reason to enable him to see that such substances are 

 beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other. 

 He is, as it were, commanded to take the right method in 

 dealing with them. In point of fact, men do not always take 

 this method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to 

 gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers 

 and agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a 

 temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the 

 general tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper 

 measures. And these measures will probably be in time 

 universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases 

 will be altogether or nearly abolished. 



Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement 

 of our personal economy. Eating to excess, eating and 

 drinking what is noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which 

 is necessary for the right action of the functions of the skin, 

 want of fresh air for the supply of the lungs, undue, exces- 

 sive, and irregular indulgence of the mental affections, are 

 all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement of 

 the system in which disease consists. Here also it may be 

 said that a limitation of the mental faculties to definite mani- 

 festations (vulgo, instincts) might have enabled us to avoid 

 many of these errors ; but here again we are met by the 

 consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we should 

 have been only as the lower animals are, wanting that 

 transcendently higher character of sensation and power, by 

 which our enjoyments are made so much greater. In making 

 the desire of food, for example, with us an indefinite mental 

 manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it mainly is 

 amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means 



