The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1871-10-13
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GOOD
HEALTH.
From scribner's Monthly for October.

he deals with his teeth. In youth, and
while they are sound, he values them
somewhat-in name, and for their uses
and their comeliness-but does all he
can to iniure them. When they ache
and torture him. he cannot extract and
throw them away fast enough. But
when there only remain TO him two OF
three old snags, mere apologies for teeth,
which it were better for him to be with.
out, he treasures them as if they were
invaluable possessions-s;bylline books,
to knowledge Of whose inestimable
qualities he has only come too late.
1t is so with life In the first periods,
when we seem TO tread Elysian fields,
and dance like blossoms in the zephyrs
of a perpetual spring, full of vigor
that we think is unfading, we cannot
live too fast. We sail for every shore,
and landing, burn our ships behind US.
Life is thing of no account, and, should
disappointments and troubles come, we
often think Of putting it away, as a
thing of no value. But when the years
increase, when age draws nigh, and, in
its ever lengthening and deepening
shadows, strength fails and functions
decay, and the sparkling fountain is
wasted to slow, trickling rill, what a
change comes DER the spirit Of our
dream, and how tenaciously we cling to
the last poor fragmentary leaves of the
dog-eared volume! And at last, when
decrepitude lies prone upon Us, when
we have received the "three sufficient
warnings" and are come to the last
scene Of all in the eventful history"
friendless, alone, deaf, lame, and bent
like sickles, sans eyes, sans teeth, sans
everything, how sordidly, eagerly, des-
perately we cling to the worthless
moclery of life, as if, as DR.. Rush ob.
served, the simple habit Of living had,
by being long INDUCED, grown into a
passion for existence!
So also do we deal with health, the
attribute and privilege Of youth. There
is nothing we fling away so recklessly
while we possess it: there is nothing we
strive so desperately to secure when our
follies have put it beyond our reach.
How strange it seems that we should
never come to estimate good health for
what it is worth until it has almost or
quite forsaken us. There is not an in.
valid anywhere but would make any
sacrifices and yield up his dearest pos,
sessions to recover what he might have
made his own with scarcely an effort had
he felt its value at the proper time.
Y ct it is not strange, either, for man is
not capable Of approaching what it has
cost him no labor to secure. Even lib
erty itself is no treasure save where it
has been purchased by battle and priva.
ton. How shall man know what health
is until he has lost it, when he has no
consciousness even Of his nerves, until
some shock has impaired or preternatu
rally aggravated their action?
evertheless, health is more than a
blessing to man-it is a necessity. 1t is
indispensable to almost every form Of
human enjoyment; it is the grant aux
iliary Of usefulness; and should a man
love the Lord his God with all his heart
and soul and mind and strength, he
would have ten times moro heart and
soul and mind and strength to love Him
with in the vigor OF health than under
the palsy of disease" Man, in fact
society, the living world in which we
pursue our activities, is but an aggre-
gate of individual men, and if the
members be unhealthy, doubt not but
the body will be unhealthy likewise.
He was not an unwise philosopher who
said that domestic happiness owed more
to digestion than to morality. Indeed,
morality itself takes its hue, its tone,
its spirits, from the sanitary condition
OF the moralist, just as a dyspeptic or
bilious ruler may become the cause of
"woesunnumbered" to those over whom
he is placed. Science, philosophy, art,
all are colored by the state of health of
individuals chosen to develop them; and
we as naturally associate the RANT, Joy.
Gus, serene loveliness Of Raphael's can
vases with a state Of equable good health.
us we seek the causes of Salvatore say
age shadows, or Carravaggios brutal
realism. in disordercd liver, or an un-
happy digestion.
There is an indissoluble lien between
health and the highest state Of mental
vigor and activity. A badly cooked leg
of mutton cost Napoleon the crucial
battle of Leipsc. Newton, while he
was composing his TriHctpia, lived upon
bread and water and the lightest vege-
table diet. The critic Gifford's savage
and murderous propensities towards all
hedgling bards were the palpable fruit
of torturing disease engendered in
feeble, crooked, and neglected body;
while Cornaio, the apostle of regimen,
has boldly affirmed it as his experience
that neither melancholy nor any other
passion can hurt a temperate life
Temperance indeed, says man en-
titled to know, who was Incorporate in
his thoughts, his passions, in his life,
and most wretched in his death, item
perance is necessary virtue for great
men; since it IS the parent of that ease
and liberty which are necessary for the
improvement Of ;he mind, and which
philosophy allows to be one of the great
est feliclties of life.
So far as the individual man is con
cerned, life itself, without health, and
without its congener, happiness, is mere
duration, not living. Life without en-
joyment is life without motive, a mere
nightmare, shadow that marks but does
MOI copy the thing of which il is the
reminder. No pleasure OF the sense, no
pleasure of the soul, can have any true
zest without the accompaniment of
good health. The stomach, as Aretmus