Natural body

“ It is evident, now, how suitable to nature are the parts of our body, and the whole general figure, form, and stature of it; nor is there any doubt what kind of face, eyes, ears and other features are peculiar to man. But certainly it is necessary for them to be in good health and vigorous, and to have all their natural movements and uses; so that no part of them shall be absent, or disordered, or enfeebled; for nature requires soundness. ”

“ The natural world is so constituted that it can provide the material necessary for the formation of the body; materials for the skin, the bones, the flesh and blood, the nerves, and the nervous fluids. ”

“ According as the body is constituted and composed, as it is influenced by heredity, race, and [pg 285] selection, by nutrition, mode of life, climate, and other circumstances, there are developed in a hundred different ways what we call the natural disposition or character, inclinations, virtues or vices, passions or temperaments. Even the names given to the different temperaments emphasise this dependence of what is innermost in us, the deepest tendencies of our being, on the bodily organisation and the nature of its physiological constitution. ”

“ Every organized natural body, in the provisions which it contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies a care, on the part of the Creator, expressly directed to these purposes. We are on all sides surrounded by bodies wonderfully curious, and no less wonderfully diversified. ”

“ What is true of the body will be found true of the mind. Bodily form and sense are but the manifestation, in this outer world, of the body and senses that exist in the inner world. And if around the natural body there exist a sphere by which the natural senses may determine its quality of health or impurity, in like manner is there around the spiritual body a sphere of its quality, that may be discerned by the spiritual senses. ”

“ Not until every man and every woman becomes a physiologist, understanding the structure and composition of his or her own organism, and learning of that wisdom which says: “Partake of nothing but what assimilates with the component parts of your body, or satisfies the natural demands of nature.” ”

“ It seems in the highest degree probable that all the bodily senses that we possess now will be wonderfully intensified and enlarged when this "natural body" passes off, and the "spiritual body" is taken on. ”

“ Thus we have seen that the human body is vital blood, transformed and solidified. Now, blood is food transformed; food consists of primary elements prepared and changed by nature; hence, man himself is primary matter transformed and vivified. ”

“ It must be remembered that when these notions originated, comparatively nothing was known of the nature of the human body, its organic needs and the desirability of rational control of the natural functions of the organism. ”

“ Abounding health and strength—wholeness—is the natural law of the body. The Life Force of the body, acting always under the direction of the subconscious mind, will build, and always does build, healthily and normally, unless too much interfered with. It is this that determines the type of the cell structure that is continually being built into the body [Pg 53] from the available portions of the food that we take to give nourishment to the body. ”

“ There are conditions that favor the development of the body beautiful. These we must analyze, thinking of bad conditions only long enough to learn how to make them good. Our model for our drinking water must be the water of an unpolluted mountain stream; for our air, the air of the open country; for our exercise, the varied movements of “the natural man” in his efforts to secure food; for our food, that which the man eats whose surroundings favor physical vigor. ”

“ When we look at a human body we see that every limb and organism belonging to it ministers to the well-being of the whole frame, and thus to the comfort of the [p. 758] living soul that inhabits it. This we recognise to be a natural and fitting state of things—just what we should have expected to find before experience. ”

“ The truth is, if you desire to have the truest expression of animate and inanimate matter, you cannot find it better then in the definition of Nature, when I say, Nature is an infinite self-moving body; where by the body of Nature I understand the inanimate matter, and by self-motion the animate, which is the life and soul of Nature, not an immaterial life and soul, but a material, for both life, soul and body are and make but one self-moving body or substance which is corporeal Nature. ”

“ But, when the Sensitive and Rational Corporeal Motions are regular, and move sympathetically, then the Body is healthful and strong, the Mind in peace and quiet, understands well, and is judicious: and, in short, there are perfect Perceptions, proper Digestions, easie Respirations, regular Passions, temperate Appetites. ”

“ The doctrine30 that the individual body was evolved by the forces of life, acted on and directed by natural selection, as guardian and transmitter of the germ-plasm, assumes a less paradoxical character when we perceive with what unfailing art Nature has constructed and devised the body and the mind for their function. We flatter ourselves hugely if we suppose that even our most enjoyable and apparently most personal attributes and appetites were designed by Nature for us. ”

“ Through this cultivation the "spiritual body" becomes equipped with new instruments of perception and new organs of activity, just as, out of indeterminate living matter, the natural forces have fitted the physical body with the various organs so well known to the physical senses. ”

“ and as the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things. ”

“ To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: ”

“ The more we learn about the marvellous mechanism which performs our vital functions, the more wonderful and beautiful does it appear—beautiful, I say, for true beauty is the perfect adaptation of the means to the end, and the organs of the body are by nature perfectly adapted to the production of healthy life. ”

“ It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body; ”

“ Internally it reproduces the mould of all the organs which constitute the framework of the human body. We see it, in short, move, speak, take nourishment; perform, in a word, all the great functions of animal life. ”

“ Thus will be accomplished that which organic nature can accomplish; thus will the work of nutrition and of reproduction prosper. So happy a concord between animal nature and the will cannot but be favorable to architectonic beauty, and it is there that we can observe this beauty in all its purity. But the general forces of nature, as every one knows, are eternally at warfare with the particular or organic forces, and, however cleverly balanced is the technique of a body, the cohesion and the weight end always by getting the upper hand. ”

“ I have preferred to cultivate physiology in a more philosophic way, recognizing the eternal man who inhabits the body, as well as the transient physical form, and discovering a new class of facts which render our chemical and anatomical physiology far more philosophic and intelligible. What a blind groping in the dark rigidly materialistic physiology appears to one who has gained that full knowledge of our complex constitution which constitutes our anthropology! ”

“ Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped,
natural, gay; ”

“ The body itself, what we term the physical body, whatever may be the facts regarding a finer spiritual body within it all the time giving form to and animating and directing all its movements, is of material origin, and derives its sustenance from the food we take, from the air we breathe, the water we drink. ”

“ By means of the special sensations, a knowledge of the physical surroundings of the body is gained, and through the organic sensations the needs of the body and the state of the various organs are indicated. ”

“ With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the day gone by showed us a science that was but a skeleton—little but dry bones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the day that is now, have been desirous to show us a living, breathing, and moving body—to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and its spirit. ”

“ And if we avoid what is unseemly, both in the condition and motion of the body, why may we not on the other hand pursue beauty? And we also desire health, strength, and freedom from pain, not merely because of their utility, but also for their own sakes. For since nature wishes to be made complete in all her parts, she desires this condition of the body, which is most according to nature, for its own sake: but nature is put into complete confusion if the body is either sick, or in pain, or destitute of strength. ”

“ Now, to aid this, the whole organic structure must be taken into consideration—the limbs, senses, lungs, stomach, and above all, the condition of the spine; for each and all of those organs must be in a perfectly healthy state, and must perform their functions properly, or the brain will not be in a condition to receive and retain the impressions transmitted to it.
Nature is always beneficent, and is ever striving to correct and amend the evils inflicted upon the body by the vicious habits which are almost universally indulged in. ”

“ For just as food, dispersed through all the pores Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame, Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff For other nature, thus the soul and mind, Though whole and new into a body going, Are yet, by seeping in, dissolved away, Whilst, as through pores, to all the frame there pass Those particles from which created is This nature of mind, now ruler of our body, Born from that soul which perished, when divided Along the frame. ”

“ This, then, we may take for granted, that all the ills which flesh is heir to arise from one simple cause—ignorance, and the consequent indulgence and imbecility of mankind—for Nature is beneficent in all her operations, both in the construction of the body, and in its relations and adaptation to the external circumstances by which it is surrounded. ”

“ Sound, Touch, Form, Taste and Smell. These Principles work through their counterpart-organs of the physical body which is composed of the five remaining Principles, viz., the Five Elements—Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth.
Now let us see how the physical body is composed of the five Elements. The vigor of our father and the blood of our mother, of which our physical body is made, are formations of assimilated food. Every kind of foodstuff, vegetable or animal, is but condensed form of earth's juice; earth-juice is earth. ”

“ These are called the base of all things, and upon this base the four bodies of man are raised, each from its own element. Thus the physical body is raised from the earth. The vital body is raised from the water, the emotional body from the fire, and the mental body from the air. ”

“ We never see that nature passes from a system with tracheæ to a system with lungs.
“It is not the organs, i.e., the nature and form of the parts of the body of an animal, which give rise to the special habits and faculties, but, on the contrary, its habits, its mode of life, and the circumstances in which individuals are placed, which have, with time, brought about the form of its body, the number and condition of its organs, finally the faculties which it possesses. ”

“ Let us consider the physical body of man and its mechanism, as a plant and, indeed, it is akin to the life of the plant in its nature. What does the plant require to bring it up from seed to sprout, from sprout to plant, with flower, seed and fruit? The answer is simple—fresh air, sunlight, water, and nourishing soil—these things, and all of them, must it have in order to grow to healthy maturity. And Man's physical body requires just the same things—all of them—in order to be healthy, strong and normal. ”

“ The life of his body, and of every fibre of his body, the life that was the very substance of his body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a plant urges it toward the sun. ”

“ These parts being expanded, furnish the arms, the hands, the fingers, the nails, and the hair; the other gives the thighs, the legs, the feet, etc., which form the support and balance of the body. All this is surprising, but not more so in man than in any other animal, or even in vegetation; the same luxury of Nature shines throughout. ”

“ We have found it necessary to first explain to you in the terms of Western physiology the various functions of the body, and then to indicate Nature's plans and methods, which one should adhere to as far as possible. ”

“ THE HUMAN BODY
The world is compounded of the five elements,—earth, water, air, fire, and ether. So too is our body. It is a sort of miniature world. Hence the body stands in need of all the elements in due proportion,—pure earth, pure water, pure fire or sunlight, pure air, and open space. When any one of these falls short of its due proportion, illness is caused in the body. ”