ss or, perhaps, experience. When from time to time the country gets
alarmed about its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such
as influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which is
you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but you can
by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a
state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether
favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the
vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable
number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden
drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to
exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound:
it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition
possible and you will run the minimum chance of being ill."

The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and
mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice--an
ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. We are exposed to
temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare
ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of
self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under
control. Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists
in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be
sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the
elimination of the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God
is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on,
not the weeds.

Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the
powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do. And
one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions
obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will. If
they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand
in some time of crisis. If they are broken in to the dominion of
spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they
are incited to act. Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual
denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity.
I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I
do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of