EXPLANATION OF TABLES 75 



our children, but failing to make use of it we are to detract 

 thereby from our children's chance of gaining immortality. 

 Or else God uses ill-health as a means of punishment for past 

 offences, and as a means to caution us to make greater efforts 

 to use, not to abuse these gifts of bodily strength in the 

 future, for the evil of ill-health is not sickness, but death, 

 in the same way that the evil of crime is intemperance or 

 misuse of opportunities to do good or the failure to use them 

 to the best advantage, not total abstinence from sin or defect, 

 for it is better to attain virtue and merit reward, than to be- 

 come a useless saint devoid of all virtue, for good acts per- 

 formed simply because we have no inclination to do wrong 

 do not fit us to perform any acts of real virtue requiring self- 

 control above the common. In just the same manner if we 

 never had any sickness there are very few of us who would 

 take sufficient care of our bodies, or use them so that they 

 would ever be fit for any extraordinary acts of endurance. 



Sickness also performs a very important function from 

 time to time by acting as a safety valve for the removal of 

 the impurities of past carelessnesses or excesses. And the 

 work and study of future physicians must be rather how to 

 prolong his life by removing causes of sickness around and 

 within him, than how to cure disease to prevent, rather than 

 to cure. For until man had evolved the power of correct 

 understanding, or how to know the truths of nature and revela- 

 tion, it was not advisable that the lease of man's life should 

 be a long one, a short life being better suited to hasten his 

 advancement; but after he has acquired the knowledge of 

 understanding, this will not apply to the same extent, for 

 when mankind shall have learned how to use, not abuse the 

 talents God has allotted to his care, the next stage of his 

 advancement will be the third and final advancement from the 

 beaten track of evolution that is to prolong his life into immor- 

 tality. But so as not to lose the sequence or issue that forms 

 the Hypothesis of this treatise, I must try and avoid as far 

 as possible all side issues, and only glance at those which are 

 necessary to the clear elucidation of my subject, for in this 

 treatise I am endeavouring not to do more than glance through 

 the portal of evolution. I may say I feel like one who has 

 come through a very dark passage and then opened the door 

 into a brilliantly-lighted saloon, and who tries to make a rapid, 



