Page:Return to Nature!.djvu/28

Rh organs of sense (seeing, tasting, hearing, etc.) and such sure instinct as to readily recognize all danger and all things harmful to them.

These primitive people recognize, for instance, quite plainly every poisonous plant without ever having studied botany or indeed anything else.

Civilized mankind, consisting of the more highly developed human race, originally also followed the only safe guiding stars on the sea of life, and escaped all suffering and disease as long as they persisted in this course. But there lurked a danger for them in their higher intelligence.

Man is gifted with intelligence that he may recognize, in contradistinction to the animals, his connection with God, God's goodness and love, and enter into filial relation with God and lead a higher life. His intelligence constitutes his highest excellence.

But man used his intelligence for the purpose of separating himself from nature; he early refused to listen to the voices of nature, and followed the inspirations of his reason. He wished to be teacher and law-giver on his own part, and made of himself "the little God of the earth." With the aid of his reason, his intellectual "faculties," he engaged in special, arduous studies and researches, on which he reared a system of laws according to which he arranged his life, his food, his clothing, his labor, education, etc. Civilization began.

Out of this false use of his reason grew science. In this way science rests on error and is followed by disaster.

We shall here especially consider the science of medicine, with its teachings and demonstrations in chemistry, anatomy, physiology, etc.

The voices of nature have always been true to man, but science is the cunning serpent in paradise which deceived man from the start, led him astray, and gave him false instruction.

The more man listened to the teachings of science, especially of medicine, the more he became a victim of disease and misfortune, although science was extolled from the beginning as the