yself!"). 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 pleasures held out by the senses;
and how marvellously has the matter changed, even while under our hands!
We found that even excess and abuse in this direction have furthered the
real demands of humanity; the deflections from the primitive end of
nature--merchants, conquerors, and luxury--have, undoubtedly, tended to
hasten a progress which had otherwise been more regular, but very slow.
Let us compare the old world with the new! In the first, desire was
simple, its satisfaction easy; but how mistaken, how painful was the
judgment passed on nature and her laws! Now, the road is made more
difficult by a thousand windings, but how full the light that has been
shed upon all our conceptions!

We may, then, repeat: Man needed to be an animal before he knew that he
was a spirit; he needed to crawl in the dust before he ventured on a
Newtonian flight through the universe. The body, therefore, is the first
spur to action; sense the first step on the ladder to perfection.

ANIMAL SENSATIONS ACCOMPANY MENTAL SENSATIONS.

S 12.--Law.

The understanding of man is extremely limited, and, therefore, all
sensations resulting from its action must of necessity be also limited.
In order, therefore, to give these sensations greater impulse, and with
redoubled force to attract the will to good and restrain it from evil,
both natures, the spiritual and the animal, are so intimately connected
with each other that their modifications, being mutually interchanged,
impart strength to one another. Hence arises a fundamental law of mixed
natures, which, being reduced to its primary divisions, runs thus: the
activities of the body correspond to the activities of the mind; that is,
any overstraining of a mental activity is necessarily followed by an
overstraining of certain bodily actions,--just as the equilibrium, or
harmonious action, of the mental powers is associated with that of the
bodily powers in perfect accord. Further: mental indolence induces
indolence in the bodily actions; mental inaction causes them to cease
altogether. Thus, as perfection is ever accompanied by pleasure,
imperfection by the abs