Speaker 1: Bodily conditions. There are to day scores of distinct schools
devoted to the healing of the body, a fact which
shows the great prevalence of physical suffering, as the hundreds
of religions devoted to the comforting of men's minds prove
the universality of mental suffering. Each of these schools has
its place in so far as it is able to
relieve suffering, even where it does not eradicate the evil.
For with all these schools of healing, the fact of
disease and pain remains with us, just as sin and
sorrow remain in spite of the many religions. Disease and pain,
like sin and sorrow, are too deep seated to be
removed by palliatives. Our ailments have an ethical cause, deeply
rooted in the mind. I do not infer by this
that physical conditions have no part in disease. They play
an important part as instruments, as factors in the chain
of causation. The microbe that carried the black death was
the instrument of uncleanliness, and uncleanliness is primarily a moral disorder.
Matter is visible mind, and that bodily conflict which we
call disease has a causal affinity to that mental conflict
which is associated with sin. In his present human or
self conscious state, man's mind is continually being disturbed by
violently conflicting desires, and his body attacked by morbid elements.
He is in a state of mental in harmony and
bodily discomfort. Animals in their wild and primitive state are
free from disease because they are free from in harmony.
They are in accord with their surroundings, have no moral responsibility,
in no sense of sin, and are free from those
violent disturbances of remorse, grief, disappointment, et cetera, which are
so destructive of man's harmony and happiness, and their bodies
are not afflicted. As man ascends into the divine or
cosmic conscious state, he will leave behind and below him
all these inner conflicts, will overcome sin and all sense
of sin, and will dispel remorse and sorrow. Being thus
restored to mental harmony, he will become restored to bodily harmony,
to wholeness health. The body is the image of the mind,
and in it our trace the visible features of hidden thoughts.
The outer obeys the inner, and the enlightened. Scientists of
the future may be able to trace every bodily disorder
to its ethical cause. And the mentality, mental harmony, or
moral wholeness makes for bodily health. I say makes for it,
for it will not produce it magically, as it were,
as though one should swallow a bottle of medicine and
then be whole and free. But if the mentality is
becoming more poised and restles, if the moral structure is increasing,
then a sure foundation of bodily wholeness is being laid.
The forces are being conserved and are receiving a better
direction and adjustment. And even if perfect health is not gained,
the bodily derangement, whatever it may be, will have lost
its power to undermine the strengthened and uplifted mind. One
who suffers in body will not necessarily at once be
cured when he begins to fashion his mind on moral
and harmonious principles. Indeed, for a time, while the body
is bringing to a crisis and throwing off the effects
of former in harmonies, the morbid condition may appear to
be intensified. As man does not gain perfect peace immediately
he enters upon the path of righteousness, but must except
in rare instances pass through a painful period of adjustment.
Neither does he with the same rare exceptions at once
acquire perfect health. Time is required for bodily as well
as mental readjustment, and even if health is not reached,
it will be approached. If the mind be made robust,
the bodily condition will take a secondary and subordinate place,
and will cease to have that primary importance which so
many give to it. If a disorder is not cured,
the mind can rise above it and refuse to be
subdued by it. One can be happy, strong, and useful
in spite of it. The statement so often made by
health specialists that a useful and happy life is impossible
without bodily health is disproved by the fact that numbers
of men who have accomplished the greatest works, men of
genius and superior talent in all departments, have been afflicted
in their bodies, and today there are plenty of living
witnesses to this fact. Time the bodily affliction acts as
a stimulus to mental activity and aids, rather than hinders
its work. To make a useful and happy life dependent
upon health is to put matter before mind, is to
subordinate spirit to body. Men of robust minds do not
dwell upon their bodily condition. If it be in any
way disordered, They ignore it and work on live on
as though it were not. This ignoring of the body
not only keeps the mind sane and strong, but it
is the best resource for curing the body. If we
cannot have a perfectly sound body, we can't have a
healthy mind, and a healthy mind is the best route
to a sound body. A sickly mind is more deplorable
than a disordered body, and at least to sickliness of body,
the mental invalid is in a far more pitiful condition
than the bodily invalid. There are invalids every physician knows them,
who only need to lift themselves into a strong, unselfish,
happy frame of mind to discover that their body is
whole and capable. Sickly thoughts about one's self, about one's
body and food should be abolished by all who are
called by the name of man. The man who imagines
that the wholesome food he is eating is going to
injure him needs to come to bodily vigor by the
way of mental strength. To regard one's bodily, health and
safety as being dependent on a particular kind of food,
which is absent from nearly every household, is to court
petty disorders. The vegetarian who says he dare not eat potatoes,
that fruit produces indigestion, that apples give him acidity, that
pulses are poison, that he is afraid of green vegetables,
and so on, is demoralizing the noble cause which he
professes to have expoused, is making it look ridiculous in
the eyes of those robust meat eaters who live above
such sickly fears and morbid self scrutinies. To imagine that
the fruits of the earth, eaten when one is hungry
and in need of food, are destructive of health and
life is totally to misunderstand the nature and office of food.
The office of food is to sustain and preserve the body,
not to undermine and destroy it. It is a strange delusion,
and one that must react deleteriously upon the body that
possesses so many who are seeking health by the way
of diet. The delusion that certain of the simplest, most natural,
and purest of viands are bad of themselves, that they
have in them the elements of death and not of life.
One of these food reformers once told me that he
believed his ailment, as well as the ailments of thousands
of others, was caused by eating bread, not by an
excess of bread, but by the bread itself. And yet
this man's bread food consisted of nutty, homemade, whole meal loaves.
Let us get rid of our sins, our sickly thoughts,
our self indulgences, and foolish excesses before attributing our diseases
to such innocent causes. Dwelling upon one's petty troubles and
ailments is a manifestation of weakness of character. To so
dwell upon them in thought leads to frequent talking about them,
and this, in turn impresses them more vividly upon the mind,
which soon becomes demoralized by such petting and pitying. It
is as convenient to dwell upon happiness and health as
upon misery and disease, as easy to talk about them,
and much more pleasant and profitable to do so. Let
us live happily, then, not hating those who hate us.
Among men who hate us, let us dwell free from hatred.
Let us live happily, then, free from ailments among the ailing.
Among men who are ailing, let us dwell free from ailments.
Let us live happily, then, free from greed among the greedy.
Among men who are greedy, let us dwell free from greed.
Moral principles are the soundest foundations for health as well
as happiness. They are the true regulators of conduct, and
they embrace every detail of life. When earnestly expoused and
intelligently understood, they will compel a man to reorganize his
entire life down to the most apparently in significant detail,
while definitely regulating one's diet. They will put an end
to squeamishness, food fear, and foolish whims and groundless opinions
as to the harmfulness of foods. When sound moral health
has eradicated self indulgence and self pity, all natural foods
will be seen as they are nourishers of the body
and not its destroyers. Thus, a consideration of bodily conditions
brings us inevitably back to the mind and to those
moral virtues which fortify it with an invincible protection. The
morally right are the bodily right to be Continually transposing
the details of life from passing views and fancies without
reference to fixed principles is to flounder and confusion. But
to discipline details by moral principles is to see with
enlightened vision all details in their proper place and order.
For it is given to moral principles alone, in their
personal domain, to perceive the moral order. In them alone
resides the insight that penetrates to causes, And with them
only is the power to at once command all details
to their order in place as the magnet draws and
polarizes the filings of steel. Better than curing the body
is to rise above it, to be its master, and
not to be tyrannized over by it, not to abuse it,
not to ponder it, never to put its claims before virtue,
to discipline and moderate its pleasures, and not to be
overcome by its pains. In a word, to live in
the poise and strength of the moral powers. This, better
than bodily cure, is yet a safe way to cure,
and it is a permanent source of mental vigor and
spiritual repose.