312 WlSCONSI]!i STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
conduct, or purity of heart in the mass of its adherents. If a dog¬ 
matic and coercive religion had been enough to secure the highest 
well being of the race, mankind would have been, long centuries 
ago, oh the highway to the zenith of its power. It is not intended 
to undervalue the beneficence of religion upon mankind or the indi¬ 
vidual, especially of Christianity; for to deny its triumphs for good 
would be to falsify history and common observation. 
Nor is it intended to deny that heights of moral grandeur are 
sometimes attained by the very ignorant, that stand forth a prophecy 
and hope to the race; but what is meant and insisted on is, that any 
formulated statement of religious or theological truth, the accept¬ 
ance of which is made alike obligatory upon all minds and all con¬ 
sciences, plants in the very center of both mind and conscience 
vitiated seed that must in the end eventuate in partial loss of men¬ 
tal and moral health; and, more than this, all organizations, whether 
political or civil, whether social or religious, whether open or secret, 
that do not make the highest practical development of every indi¬ 
vidual soul their chief corner stone, will ultimately fail of good re¬ 
sults, and the highest possible good. 
FOODS AND DOMESTIC BEVERAGES. 
BY O. G. SELDEN, M. D., TOMAH, 
Member of the State Board of Health. 
The importance of taking such food, and only such, as is proper 
for us, will become manifest when we consider that our whole being 
is nourished by the ingestion of the nutritive principles of what we 
eat. Much also depends on the time and manner of taking food 
and the quantity taken at a given time; also, on the nutritive quality 
of the food itself. After adult age the quantity of food should com¬ 
pare as nearly as possible to the waste of the body; and for this 
reason the man of active habits will, all things being equal, require 
more food than those who live a sedentary life. 
In this bustling age of ours, where the man of business grudges 
the expenditure of minutes as a miser does his pennies, many evil 
