SAINTS, AND: THEIR BODIES 9 
case of the superhuman efforts often made by 
delicate women. And besides, there is a point 
beyond which no mental heroism can ignore 
the body,—as, for instance, in sea-sickness 
and toothache. Can virtue arrest consumption, 
or self-devotion set free the agonized breath of 
asthma, or heroic energy defy paralysis? More 
formidable still are those subtle influences of 
disease which cannot be resisted because their 
source is unseen. Voltaire declared that the 
fate of a nation had often depended on the 
good or bad digestion of a prime minister ; and 
Motley holds that the gout of Charles V. 
changed the destinies of the world. 
But part of the religious press still clings 
to the objection, that admiration of physical 
strength belonged to the barbarous ages of the 
world. So it certainly did, and thus the race 
was kept alive through those ages. They had 
that one merit, at least; and so surely as an 
exclusively intellectual civilization ignored it, 
the arm of some robust barbarian prostrated 
that civilization at last. What Sismondi says 
of courage is preéminently true of that bodily 
vigor which it usually presupposes: it is by 
no means the first of virtues, but its loss is 
more fatal than that of all others, “Were it 
possible to unite the advantages of a perfect 
government with the cowardice of a whole 
