Religion And Health

live. From this it has come to mean, to quote the Century Dictionary, "The act of subduing the passions and appetites by penance, abstinence or painful severities inflicte

rtification of the fleshly woorkes" in just this signification. After all our recent Poet Laureate, when in "In Memoriam" he summed up so much of the current thou

ore than life itself" when he said, "'T is better for the soul's sake to suffer death than to lose the soul for the love of this life." Socrates had said before him, "A wise man ought to look as carefully to his soul as to his body", and Plato, going straight to the point, declared, "Whoso desireth the life of his soul ought to mortify the body and give it trouble in this world." No one knew better than Plato that the de

t hath bound himself to follow his fleshly delights is more bound than any caitiff", which after all, is only another way of wording Plato's expression, "the worst bondage is to be subject to vices." Seneca, five centuries aft

ly one of the good old ways of life evolved in an earlier day when men were less capable of judging of the significance of things than they are now, but which humanity ought to set definitely back in the lumber room of discarded notions, now that an era of really rational development of humanity has come. The old-fashioned idea that in this way the passions can be controlled is looked upon as a sort of worn-out

on themselves with no other purpose in view than to curry favor with the Almighty quite as if they felt that the Creator delighted in the suffering of His creatures. They do not seem to realize at all that the real reason why the older peoples thought such self-inflicted suffering might be looked upon with favor from on

egardless of the consequences to others. One of his famous parables is that of the soft coal and the diamond. The soft coal is heard complaining to the diamond, "We are brothers, why then do you scratch me?" and the diamond replies, "Since we are brothers how is it that I can scratch you; why are you not as hard as I am, and then all would be well between us?" and Nietzsche's conclusion was, "For I preach to you a new doctrine; be ye hard." As Germany had more profes

of self-repression, though they may cost effort and suffering, which so many thoughtless people are ready to express. Professor William James, who was surely not at all a medievally minded i

u would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come

he old Greeks and his liking even for the Olympian religion, did not hesitate to say {152} that the most important thing in the world for a man was self-denial. Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren. "You must deny yourself, must deny yourself." Th

ome of the strongest men who have ever lived have recognized the necessity for the insurance policies of little acts of supererogation that require real will power to accomplish in order to keep their strength of character at its top notch of efficiency. Probably few men in history have ever had a stronger character than Sir Thomas More. All his life he was noted for the absolute purity of his motives and the thoroughgoing righteousness of his life. He is the only man in the history of England who ever cleared the docket of the Court of Chancer

ich every Lord Chancellor for a hundred years afterward yielded; but More went farther, and when it was a question of conscience he died for what he felt was the right. It did not matter to him that others had been able to compound with their consciences; he even told the jury that condemned him that he hoped to meet them in heaven, but right was right and even d

rather than give up to the king the rights of his people and the Church; this great scholar, professor of Oxford that he was and leader among men, who might have had all sorts of favors from the king had he yielded, spent fifteen years in poverty and hardships rather than yield a point of conscience. He tells that when he and his elder brother went off to the university, where they were to be gone for four or five years, their mother packed with their clothes a hair shirt for each of them. She asked them to wear them occasionally for her sake and to remember that they had to stand many things in life in order to keep on the right path. This London tradesman's wife of the early thirteenth century knew as well as any city mother in modern times the dangers her boys were going to encounter and which they would hav

ielding to such temptations is to have them practice self-denial in little things. Mortifications of one kind or another are to be undertaken, and the young folks build up self-control by the doing of things which are hard, though not obligatory, with the one idea of enab

ecrease but to increase power. The ascetic exercises his will power so that he will be able to follow the straight path that he wants to tread, no matter how many difficulties present themselves to him. {156} No matter how steep the hills, he will not turn aside to the pleasanter paths that lead so gently downward because he wants to "carry on." Professor Foerster said: "Asceticism should be regarded, not as a negation of nature nor as an attempt to extirpate natural forces, but as practice in the art of

rious matter of sex temptation which has become so prominent a social feature in r

it is a great deal more important, however, that they should make their children acquainted with what Sailer called 'the strategy of the Holy War', that they should trai

ex functions, but an introduction to the inexhaustible power of the human spirit {

thirty years of age is capable of successfully resisting the allurements of a beautiful wom

h a way as to be able to get a sight of them, may cause the most serious epidemics. One of these ultramicroscopic microbes is probably the cause of infantile paralysis, which we know to have been in existence over five thousand years, because the mummy of a princeling of one of the early dynasties in Egypt shows that its possessor suffered from it as a child. Another of th

e time of {158} the Greeks, one of the greatest architects who ever lived, perhaps the greatest decorative artist in all history, as the Sistine Chapel demonstrates, and he wrote sonnets of the highest quality.

h time and labor." There is a famous sonnet of his in which he begs pardon of his Crucified God if he had ever attributed to himself any of the glory which he ought to have given to his Maker. If ever a man lived who had the right to have some conceit of himself it was Michelangelo. When we look aroun

hing that their neighbors have, that {159} the principal efforts of life are expended in "keeping up with the Smiths", or with some other utterly insignificant people who happen to be making a display. I suppose that every physician in a large city has known people who actually denied themselves some of the necessaries of life in order to wear a little better clothes, and of course every physician everywh

, up to Como in the summer, had a house at Ostia as well as a palace in Rome. It is easy to understand that the people then as now failed to comprehend how any one could p

as it was mainly the young men who did it, they influenced deeply a series of generations. The sons of the nobility as well as of professional classes were represented among {160} these reformers who believed first in reforming themselves, but along with them were y

e for markets and favored nations among whom to distribute surplus industrial products so that certain nations might go on piling up money. This is so badly distributed that serious social disorders are impending. Men spend their lives getting money and then leave it to their children, to hu

gs and who depended on the {161} work of their hands and the beneficence of the public to enable them to continue their work. Their motto was plain living and high thinking, and it is surprising how much they accomplished. The spirit which made St. Francis of Assisi choose the Lady Poverty for his bride and delight to call himself Il poverello di Dio, "the little poor man of God", would seem to be entirely too impracticable and utterly idealistic

said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Certainly there is no straighter road to heavenly peace than that, for a man may have great possessions and yet be poor in spirit because he is detached from t

ames, who did not hesitate to declare just when money had come to be apparently the most important thing in modern life: "Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments; the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we

human beings, the Divine Master, felt that He had to use them. There can be no doubt at all, however, about the benefit to be derived from enduring hard things. Every trainer who hopes to have a winning team in any department of athletics knows that he has to put them through hard things in order to enable them to acquire power and make their energies available when they ar

that the most important element in the formation of character-and on character depends destiny-is the having to go through hard things when one is young. In the chapter on Suffering I have quoted Thucydides in this matter and it

s delivered on the Harris Foundation of the Northwestern University and afterwards at Princeton, and w

s. Probably the inheritance in these last-named cases was no better than in the former, but the environment was better. 'Good environment' usually means easy, pleasant, refined surroundings, 'all the opportunities that money can buy', but little responsibility and none of that self-discipline which reveals the hidd

he most {165} important formula for life, and it is certainly as valuable for the physical as for the moral side of humanity. The repression of the natural tendencies is an extremely valuable practice for the prevention of the many excesses which have so much to do with the undermining of health. The man who controls him

at they must deny themselves and their inclinations and work out their ideas in lonely vigil and by hard work. Nothing that is easy counts. Wh

of the morning killed by the fall of a stand at a spectacle and found beneath her bridal robes a penitential garment. He was so deeply impressed that he became a Franciscan and subsequently the author of the famous hymn. Certai

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nial and self-control, the most important element in education at all times. We have unfortunately been neglecting it, but that neglect is the real trouble with our modern education. Nearly every one who talks about education has some mental panacea for it; but

h he brings this out very well. Almost needless to say Huxley was the farthest possible from being medievally minded, and {167} yet he placed the es

equal strength and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her opera

ad a liberal education; for he is, as comple

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