d. To abuse the body is to abuse
the mind. To enervate, irritate, or corrupt the body is to produce a
like effect upon the mind. To beat, bruise, and shatter the house in
which we live is to do violence to the dweller therein. Every pain in
the body, every weakness, every injury done to it, does a harm to the
mind. In ordinary life we do not receive this as true; yet in all severe
cases we know it is so. But there can be no doubt that it is true the
world over and life through. The mind is our principal care. And we are
to nurture our bodies as the present instrument of mental action. If the
instrument is shattered and diseased, the action of the mind will be
correspondingly imperfect and weak. The body is the instrument on which
the mind makes the music of life; and if we would have that music
harmonious and sweet, we must have a good instrument and keep it in good
tune. The wonderful genius of Ole Bull, whose strains seem almost
divine, and full of the mysterious and infinite depths of meaning that
belong to music in its highest power, could never make the notes of woe
or joy dance at his will like things of life, from the strings of a
broke and rickety instrument. He must have an instrument alive in every
nerve, sound in every limb, perfect in every part, sensitive to the
touch of the sounding bow, before his genius can revel in the melody of
music and charm the souls of others in the ecstasies of musical delight.
So it is with our bodies. They must be perfect in all their wonderfully
and fearfully made parts before the minds which use them can make
harmonious the music of life. This is no idle dream. It is the language
of philosophy, the utterings of experience, the voice of reason. A
sickly body will never do well the biddings of the mind.

It is so; it must be so; virtue can never be all she may be and ought to
be, in a sickly and fevered body. Reason can never wield her grandest
scepter of power on a shattered and trembling throne. Love can never be
that pure, constant, heavenly flame which is a proper symbol of divine
affection in a bosom racked with pain or oppressed with weakness. The
divine energies of humanity can never urge the soul to a realization of
its highest ideals of excellency in a frame overcome with disease,
relaxed with dissipation, or oppressed with unnatural burdens. Yes, the
body must be sound, healthy, perfect, to realize the highest mental
states of which we are capable. Feeble and sickly is