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358 woman-hood, the fewer diseases appear, and less harm be derived from change of climate, unwholesome diet, laying aside flannels, severe mental labor, sedentary habits, heated rooms, and all the et cetera of physiological rules based on man as a structural thing, whose life is at the mercy of circumstance. The scriptural warning against “knowledge” ought to be heeded, but it is not; the stronger constitutions of our forefathers compared with this age, should furnish a hint, but they do not; the difficulty lies in our nameless theories; sin, sickness, and death, all over the land, are the fruits of the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter.

The simple food our forefathers ate would not cure dyspepsia to-day; with rules of health in the head and the most digestible food in the stomach, there would be dyspeptics; the effeminate constitutions of this period will never grow robust until the science of being takes the place of materia medica, physiology, etc. The ignorance of our forefathers of the knowledge that to-day walks to and fro in the earth, made them more hardy than our physiologists, and more honest than our politicians. We by no means deprecate learning, deep research, original thought, history, observation, invention, science and understanding; it is the scheming barbarisms of learning, the mere doctrine, theory, or nauseous fiction, we deplore. Novels, remarkable only for exaggerated pictures of depravity, works on materia medica, hygiene, or laws of health, remind you of Æsop's mountain in labor with a mouse; introduce but a scandal and humbug and you please society. What I wish to know is, if this taste be not a fault of our systems of thinking and writing. All is mechanical; nature is suffocated;