Aridity

“ So many writers as admit contraries among first causes, constitute the Vital Principle out of contraries, and so many as admit only one contrary, whether hot or cold, or other analogous contrast, make the Vital Principle to be that one. Hence, led by the terms, some maintain that Vital Principle is heat, because from heat the term life has been adopted; and others affirm that it is cold, because from cold, through respiration, the term Vital Principle has been derived. ”

“ You have quenched one thirst; ought you not to excite another—a thirst which is not to be slaked in the whiskey shop, but in the library or lecture-room—a thirst for knowledge? The human mind is never idle, least of all will it be idle when healthful action is no more impeded by the paroxysms and depressions of intemperance. ”

“ There is no nourishment in ardent spirits. The strength they produce in labour is of a transient nature, and is always followed by a sense of weakness and fatigue.
But are there no conditions of the human body in which ardent spirits may be given? I answer, there are. 1st. When the body has been suddenly exhausted of its strength, and a disposition to faintness has been induced. Here a few spoonsful, or a wine-glassful of spirits, with or without water, may be administered with safety and advantage. ”

“ First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things) ; both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. ”

“ But, whatever be the precise manner in which the effect is produced, the fact is certain; for every day's experience bears witness to its truth. As that which caused the Fall in the beginning—namely, self-love and disobedience to the Divine laws,—is still every day causing a yet deeper fall, or confirming the evil effects of the original fall, in man's mind,—so is that which produced disease at first, still and continually operating to produce disease. ”

“ Thus, naked, sick, exhausted with fatigue and fasting, drenched with wet, and unable to lie down, our misery might be supposedsupposed to be incapable of increase. But, alas! where are the bounds which we can set to human woe?——Thirst, that most dreadful of pains, occasioned by the drenching with salt water, seized us: we begged, we entreated, we clamoured for water; but the inhuman wretches, deaf to the groans and screeches of their fellow-creatures, (for some grew delirious with the agony of thirst) , refused them even the cheap and miserable indulgence of a drop of water! ”

“ But once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing what healthful improvement takes place,—how the poor heart, before starved and stinted of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts into bloom and fruit. ”

“ Add to this labor lessons to prepare in the evenings, a constant feeling of inanition, especially during winter, cold feet and thin clothing, with no object in the world in my lessons to interest me, and it may well be conceived how the state of sin and misery brought on man by the fall was to me a palpable, undeniable, experienced reality. A few explanations will throw light on the causes of these sufferings. Too much cerebral action, and a close, ill-aired bedroom, with three besides myself in it, made me in the morning low, listless, irritable, and without appetite. ”

“ Many years later the study of physiology revealed to me my sin, and carried instruction with it. The organism of the animal was injured and rendered miserable by the dirt, and nervous irritability, akin to insanity, was the result. This example I subsequently applied to the case of the human poor, and saw in the deleterious physical condition in which many of them habitually live the cause of some of their sufferings and crimes. ”

“ Others have maintained, as did Critias, that the Vital Principle is blood, from their assuming that the most peculiar property of blood is feeling, and that feeling is imparted to us through the nature of blood. All the elements, in fact, have had their partisans, excepting earth; and no one has adopted it, unless such an opinion may be attributed to those who have derived the Vital Principle from all, or made it to be all the elements. ”

“ The circumstances in which Heaven has cast me, have disciplined my circumstances in which Heaven has cast me, have disciplined my body to obey my mind in all things; and, therefore, when the motives for exertion are strong within me, it is long, very long, before I feel hunger, thirst, or drowsiness. ”

“ In truth, the mental strain, bred of our gloomy surroundings and of the dread of starvation that had possessed us, had taxed our physical strength more severely than our mountain climbing and our lack of nourishment. ”

“ My physician himself told me that, for the first three years, my life was in imminent danger, and if in the last three I was less exposed to death at every step, as it were, the giving way of my stomach, the weakness of my chest, were such that all my days were filled with bitterness, and new crosses were laid upon me. ”

“ How ought we to bear our illnesses?
When the need arises for each separate judgement, we ought to have it ready; at lunch our judgements about lunch, at the bath our judgements about a bath, in bed our judgements about a bed. ”

“ Great distress and trouble supposed: My flesh and my heart fail. Note, Others have experienced and we must expect, the failing both of flesh and heart. The body will fail by sickness, age, and death; and that which touches the bone and the flesh touches us in a tender part, that part of ourselves which we have been but too fond of; when the flesh fails the heart is ready to fail too; the conduct, courage, and comfort fail. [2.] Sovereign relief provided in this distress: But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. ”

“ That the nervous impulse produces, as a consequence, an increase in the flow of blood, and a better nutrition for the organ in play, is a positive biological fact. In my opinion, then, adaptation is most frequently an act of the will, and not the result of qualities accidentally acquired. It has as premise the clear perception and representation of the external causes of the feelings of discomfort, and a keen desire to escape from them, or, again, that of procuring feelings of pleasure, i.e., an inorganic appetite. ”

“ They pass through a physiological period of incubation, marked by palpitations and vaso-motor disturbances, rushes of heat to the head, headaches, præcordial anxiety, insomnia, agitation, fatigue, malaise, and undefined suffering. 2. The entrance into the psychological period is marked by the appearance of a fixed idea. Why one rather than another? This question will be examined later. The fixed idea, reigning as a tyrant in the consciousness, gives an aim to the tendency, determines its orientation. ”

“ They were taught to bear severe pain unmoved, to endure heat and cold, hunger and thirst, to walk barefoot on rugged ground, to wear the same garment summer and winter, to suppress all display of feeling, and in public to remain silent and motionless until action was called for. ”

“ Everything that is animate and living must, from its birth to the time of its decay, possess the soul which we describe as nutritive: because whatever has been born must exhibit the phenomena of growth, maturity, and dissolution, and this it cannot do apart from food and nourishment Thus, then, the nutrient capacity must be inherent in all objects that are marked by growth and by decay. ”

“ The members of the Body rebelled against the Belly, and said, "Why should we be perpetually engaged in administering to your wants, while you do nothing but take your rest, and enjoy yourself in luxury and self-indulgence?" ”

“ While watching the progress of my malady, seeing day by day the advancing steps of the disease that never sleeps, I recognise in myself a strange adaptation in my mind and feelings to the more developed condition of my illness. ”

“ In the group of mental operations by which the crystal is recognized the particular feeling of pain is conspicuous; but in the operations by which the water is discovered, the beating of light does not cause a feeling as a pleasant or as an unpleasant effect. ”

“ I have no doubt that my physical health during my whole life has been affected by that splendid air, and that the inexhaustible store of energy which I have enjoyed is to some extent drawn from the same source. It was mental and spiritual stagnation, or even worse, for there is a coarsening effect in so circumscribed a life with comrades who were fine, brave fellows, but naturally rough and wild. ”

“ No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than this thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar, familiar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the spirit. ”

“ Laying his head down on his folded arms, with one short but fervent ejaculation of thankfulness hovering on his parched lips, the man whose iron frame had hitherto seemed almost impervious to fatigue, and proof against the ordinary ills that flesh is heir to, grew gradually insensible to outer things, losing all sense whether of joy or sorrow, in the heavy and lethargic slumber which is too often the precursor of serious illness. ”

“ In most cases where for a longer or a shorter time any organic action has been embarrassed, sleep banished or disquieted, and the patient irritated and exhausted to the last degree; by aid of the fomentations, in a brief time organic calm takes the place of organic tumult, ease succeeds to agitation, and the whole apparatus feels to work normally and with renewed alacrity. ”

“ Where natural expression of a need is checked, it breaks out in a disordered form, just as arrested perspiration and circulation of the blood produce fever. If all recognition of supersensible existence be denied, the assertion that it does, has its place, and makes its demands on us, will call forth, if not a wholesome, then a diseased expression. ”

“ With every new change, therefore, of organic form, or addition of organic parts, I suppose a new kind of irritability or of sensibility to be produced; such varieties of irritability or of sensibility exist in our adult state in the glands; every one of which is furnished with an irritability, or a taste, or appetency, and a consequent mode of action peculiar to itself. ”

“ The pain of hunger and thirst, then, and, in general, every internal pain arising from a state of the bodily organs,—and distinct from the subsequent desires which they occasion,—are as truly sensations, as any other sensations; and the desires that follow these particular sensations, are as truly desires, as any other desires of which we have the consciousness. ”

“ The jaded, overworked, faithful heart will bear no more; it has run its course, and, the governor of the blood-streams broken, the current either overflows into the tissues, gradually damming up the courses, or under some slight shock or excess of motion, ceases wholly at the centre. ”

“ If fatigue of body or brain were in every case followed by desistance; if the oppression produced by a close atmosphere always led to ventilation; if there were no eating without hunger, or drinking without thirst ”

“ At present I feel divested of all energy—heartless and almost hopeless.”
“I see how it is,” said Francis Ardry, “you have overworked yourself, and, worst of all, to no purpose. Take my advice; cast all care aside, and only think of diverting yourself for a month at least.” ”

“ By infirmity is meant disease accompanied by weakness; and by disease is meant a fond imagining of something that seems desirable. And as in the body there are tendencies to certain maladies such as colds and diarrhoea, so it is with the soul, there are tendencies like enviousness, pitifulness, quarrelsomeness, and the like. ”

“ In the first place, artists, sportamen, and bon-vivants, know comparatively little of the nature and extent of the suffering caused by lacerations of the living tissues, or the production of morbid conditions, while the physiologists understand the matter to a nicety, and have the most perfect acquaintance with every pain which they cause—nay, whose causation is often the immediate object of their ingenious exertions. ”

“ And again when some malignant fever seizes upon the body and corrupts the currents of the blood, how do the poor disordered thoughts dance about wildly, driven by the lash of the distemper; how does the use of stimulants besot the intellect, so that every higher power is deadened ”

“ Thus, the infirmities of age are attributable, not to the Vital Principle having been in aught affected, but to its recipient suffering, as it does from drunkenness or maladies. Thus, too, thought and reflexion languish when any thing within the body has been destroyed, but that which thinks is impassive. ”

“ Some modern physiologists regard sensibility, others irritability, as the characteristic of life, and define life as the faculty of responding, by some sort of change, to an external stimulus. As in the case of movement, we have found by more attentive observation that this faculty also is universal in nature. ”

“ As the biologists tell us, the atrophy of an organ, which we call degeneration, is itself a step in the progressive adaptation of the organisation to new conditions of life, and, as the moralists remind us, in the ethical sphere a “fall” is, in its way, an upward step. ”