16 
WALDEX. 
are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, 
while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impos¬ 
sible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the 
intellectualness of the civilized man ? According to 
Liebig, man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which 
keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold 
weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat 
is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death 
take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or 
from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of 
course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; 
but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from 
the above list, that the expression, animal life , is nearly 
synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while 
Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the 
fire within us, —and Fuel serves only to prepare that 
Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addi¬ 
tion from without, — Shelter and Clothing also serve 
only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed. 
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep 
warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we 
accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, 
and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night¬ 
clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to pre¬ 
pare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its 
bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The 
poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; 
and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer direct¬ 
ly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some cli¬ 
mates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. 
Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the 
sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently 
cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more vari- 
