t one that causes such miserable torture and unbearable suffering
from the slightest defect!

If Nature saw fit to give us a mouth, she should have given us a perfect
one; one that would perform all the functions of perfect speech; not one
that is so liable to harm and so susceptible to dumbness, when speech is
of such paramount importance to Life!

If Nature saw fit to give us teeth, she should have given us perfect
ones; not those which ache and pain with such fearful intensity that the
mind is almost distracted!

If Nature saw fit to give us arms, legs, and organs, she should have
given us perfect ones; not a body whose tenderness makes it an
instrument of such menacing torture; not a body of crippled bones and
crippled joints, where suffering results from everything it does!

If Nature saw fit to give us a brain, she should have given us one
strong enough to withstand all the rebuffs of life, and one capable
enough to utilize all the forces under command. Each person should be a
mental Hercules capable of solving his own problems and directing all
matter to its greatest material uses.

Instead of the human body being the marvelously constructed instrument
we are wont to believe it, we now find it to be nothing but a common
machine, imperfectly made, and subject to innumerable changes and
radical improvements.

Every person acquainted with the anatomy of the body can give you a list
of imperative improvements that it needs, and without which it will
continue to function imperfectly and continue to cause pain and
suffering to its possessor.

It were a great deal better, after a full summary of life, were we to be
created utterly devoid of feeling, equally impervious to joy and sorrow,
pleasure and pain. We should be manifestly benefited, for the greater
part of our life is now full of sorrow, anxiety, fear, pain,
disappointment and worry.

A small portion of our life is a matter of indifference. A portion
might be termed satisfaction, and a minute balance, an infinitesimal
part, termed--if there is such a thing in life--joy.

And yet, the joy we may experience to-day will not be present to-morrow
to cheer and comfort us, but the pain that we feel to-day will pinch us
more strongly to-morrow, and will remain as an ever-poignant memory.

Joy and pleasure are of a transitory nature only, while pain and sorrow
are of a permanent and accumulative character. Is _all_ of life worth
the sorrow, the agony and fear