260 Public Establishment for 



essentially necessary to their well-being and happiness ? 

 But if cleanliness is necessary to the happiness of 

 brutes, how much more so must it be to the happiness 

 of the human race ? 



The good effects of cleanliness, or rather the bad ef- 

 fects of filth and nastiness, may, I think, be very satisfac- 

 torily accounted for. Our bodies are continually at war 

 with whatever offends them, and every thing offends 

 them that adheres to them and irritates them ; and 

 though by long habit we may be so accustomed to sup- 

 port a physical ill as to become almost insensible to it, 

 yet it never leaves the mind perfectly at peace. There 

 always remains a certain uneasiness and discontent, 

 an indecision and an aversion from all serious applica- 

 tion, which shows evidently that the mind is not at rest. 



Those who from being afflicted with long and painful 

 disease suddenly acquire health are best able to judge 

 of the force of this reasoning. It is by the delightful 

 sensation they feel at being relieved from pain and un- 

 easiness that they learn to know the full extent of their 

 former misery; and the human heart is never so effect- 

 ually softened^ and so well prepared and disposed to 

 receive virtuous impressions, as upon such occasions. 



It was with a view to bring the minds of the poor 

 and unfortunate people I had to deal with to this state, 

 that I took so much pains to make them comfortable in 

 their new situation. The state in which they had been 

 used to live was certainly most wretched and deplorable ; 

 but they had been so long accustomed to it that they 

 were grown insensible to their own misery. It was 

 therefore necessary, in order to awaken their attention, 

 to make the contrast between their former situation and 

 that which was prepared for them as striking as pos- 



