lobe and provinces from
one another; leads one stream to another and discharges them upon a sandy
desert, changed thereby into smiling meadow; three quarters of the globe
he plunders and transplants them into a fourth. Even climate, air, and
weather acknowledge his sway. While he roots out forests and drains the
swamp, the heaven grows clear above his head, moisture and mist are lost,
winter becomes milder and shorter, because rivers are no longer frozen
over." And the mind of man is refined with the refining of his clime.

The state occupies the citizen in the necessities and comforts of life.
Industry gives the state security and rest from without; from within,
granting to thinker and artist that fruitful leisure through which the
age of Augustus came to be called the Golden Age. The arts now take a
more daring and untrammelled flight, science wins a light pure and dry,
natural history and physical science shatter superstition, history
extends a mirror of the times that were, and philosophy laughs at the
follies of mankind. But when luxury grows into effeminacy and excess,
when the bones begin to ache, and the pestilence to spread and the air
becomes infected, man hastens in his distress from one realm of nature to
another, that he may at least find means for lessening his pains. Then
he finds the divine plant of China; from the bowels of the earth he digs
out the mightily-working mercury, and from the poppy of the East learns
to distil its precious juice. The most hidden corners of nature are
investigated; chemistry separates material objects into their ultimate
elements, and creates worlds of her own; alchemists enrich the province
of physical science; the microscopic glance of a Schwammerdam surprises
nature in her most secret operations. Man goes still further; necessity
or curiosity transcends the boundaries set by superstition: he seizes the
knife, takes courage, and the masterpiece of nature is discovered, even
man. Thus did it behoove the least, the poorest, to help us to reach the
highest; disease and death must lend their aid to man in teaching him
Gnothi seauton ("Know thyself!"). The plague produced and formed our
Hippocrates, our Sydenhams, as war is the mother of generals; and we owe
to the most devastating disease that ever visited humanity an entire
reformation of our medical system.

Our intention was to show the influence upon the perfecting of the soul
through the temperate enjoyment of the pleasure