reason, for its victims in modern Christendom are
seldom of sound mind--but equally by needless and wanton exposure to peril.
Such exposure is frequently incurred in reckless feats of strength or
daring, sometimes consummated in immediate death, and still oftener in
slower self-destruction by disease. There are, no doubt, occasions when
self-preservation must yield to a higher duty, and humanity has made no
important stage of progress without the free sacrifice of many noble
lives; but because it may be a duty to give life in the cause of truth or
liberty, it by no means follows that one has a right to throw it away for
the gratification of vanity, for a paltry wager, or to win the fame of an
accomplished athlete.

The duty of self-preservation includes, of course, *a reasonable care for
health*, without which the uses of life are essentially restricted and
impaired. Here a just mean must be sought and adhered to. There is, on the
one hand, an excessive care of the body, which, if it does not enfeeble
the mind, distracts it from its true work, and makes the spiritual nature
a mere slave of the material organism. This solicitude is sometimes so
excessive as to defeat its own purpose, by creating imaginary diseases,
and then making them real; and the number is by no means small of those
who have become chronic invalids solely by the pains they have taken not
to be so. On the other hand, there is a carelessness as to dress and diet,
to which the strongest constitution must at length yield; and the intense
consciousness of strength and vigor, which tempts one to deem himself
invulnerable, not infrequently is the cause of life-long infirmity and
disability. Of the cases of prolonged and enfeebling disease, probably
more are the result of avoidable than of unavoidable causes, and if we add
to these the numerous instances in which the failure of health is to be
ascribed to hereditary causes which might have been avoided, or to
defective sanitary arrangements that may be laid to the charge of the
public, we have an enormous amount of serviceable life needlessly wasted
for all purposes of active usefulness; while for the precious examples of
patience, resignation, and cheerful endurance, the infirmities and
sufferings incident to the most favorable sanitary conditions might have
been amply sufficient.

There are, no doubt, such wide diversities of constitution and temperament
that *no specific rules of self-preservation can be l