alth.

This early school of sanitarians endeavored to "get behind fate, to
the causes of sickness." The modern socionomist is, by a study of the
mental conditions of communities, endeavoring to get behind the causes
of poverty and consequent suffering to the reasons for _fatal
indifference to dirt_.

It is well recognized that in severe sicknesses of many kinds the will
to get well is more powerful than drugs, that something which we call
nerve force acting upon the physical machine sends a vital current
through the arteries, coerces the heart to renewed pumping action, and
life comes again to the blanched cheek and glazing eye. This more
often happens by a mental stimulus than by any medicine. In like
manner the improvement of the body's shell, the home, like that of the
soul's shell, the body, comes more often from an inward impulse than
from outward coercion.

Appeal to the loving but listless parent will reach the heart quickest
through love for the child. Therefore stress should be laid on the
child, its habits, its surroundings, its ideals. By ideals is meant
the very real stimulus to action coming from within. Action must come
through the material things which ideals control and through which
they express themselves.

Certain notions which have crept into popular currency need to be
corrected before the individual can free himself from bondage
sufficiently to attempt constructive advance and improvement.

Only a small percentage of adults obtain the full efficiency from the
human machine--the only means they have of living, working, enjoying.
They permit themselves to stand and walk badly, they breathe with only
a portion of their lungs, and so fail to furnish the blood stream with
oxygen. They dress unhygienically. They eat wrongly. They exercise
little. In short, they subject their bodies to abusive treatment which
would ruin any machine. Because retribution does not instantly follow
infraction of Nature's laws, they become callous and unbelieving.
Economy and efficiency in human time and strength is one of the
lessons to be taught the young people, so that they may not waste
their patrimony.

The youth feels as rich in his fifty years to come as he does with a
legacy of $50,000 in the bank. The years, however, can yield only
small variations from the established rate of interest. The human
machine can manufacture only a limited amount of energy. It remains to
utilize that quantity to the best advantage