THE HEALTH INSTINCT 85 



pots of the Pharaohs and the jolly admonition to the banqueters to 

 " eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow ye die." 



In the realm of muscular activity the health seeker may be told by 

 the specialist that what he needs is more exercise, and that if he will 

 only take a sufficient amount he will attain unto physiological perfec- 

 tion; while on the editorial pages of one of our dailies he reads that 

 any exercise done in a perfunctory manner is positively harmful. One 

 advises ten-mile walks, and another tells him that walking is the poorest 

 of exercises. On the other hand, there is a numerous company of those 

 who would have us attain the kingdom of health through faith rather 

 than works. Truly, leading in the realm of the physical is as absurdly 

 sectarian and dogmatic as it ever was in spiritual affairs. All can not 

 be wholly right; nor all altogether wrong. Happily there is a Virgil 

 to pilot one through the shades of half-truth expressed by the exercise 

 cult, the chew-long circle, the low-proteid faith, or the Eddyite sister- 

 hood. The guide is an old one — good sense — good animal sense of 

 one's condition for work ; in other words, instinct brought up to date. 



From the lowest forms of life up, there are but three sets of 

 activities, each depending on the others for its existence and condition 

 — the consciousness of his needs, the ability to supply those needs, and 

 the power to assimilate what has been secured. Life is but a continu- 

 ous round of these, and there are no more and no less in man ; the three 

 functions are a bit more complicated, but they are at bottom the same. 

 Among our animal ancestors each was dependent on himself, and his 

 consciousness never failed to tell him just what and how much food to 

 take, and how much and what kind of exercise he needed, to keep him 

 in best fighting and hunting trim. If this consciousness (instinct) 

 failed him, he went by the board. He took no exhausting walks to add 

 to his energies, he knew better than to get drunk or stuff himself un- 

 necessarily and so render himself a prey to his foes, and he had too 

 much else to do to upset his bodily machinery by morbid introspection. 

 Health magazines are hardly needed by a fox or a bear. 



Civilization has brought with it dependence on others, and more time 

 than the average man-animal knows what to do with. The man-child 

 may go on a spree, knowing he will not be devoured piecemeal by his 

 neighbors and that if he gets sick some one will take care of him, and 

 so he goes on a spree, and so he is otherwise careless of his conduct. 

 His instinct for health is blunted and rendered of less use through his 

 dependence and his pleasure-of-the-moment excesses. Appetite, tem- 

 porary pleasure and laziness, get the upper hand, though the con- 

 sciousness of what is physically good or bad is still present and can be 

 partially or wholly restored to controlling power. ^Ye once heard a 

 young woman who delighted in breaking all the laws of health, re- 

 mark, after hearing a lecture on the sin of disobedience to such laws, 



