"Finally, I have one advice which is of very great importance. You are to consider that health is a thing to be attended to continually, as the very highest of all temporal things. There is no kind of an achievement equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets or millions?"--_Carlyle's Address to Students at Edinburgh._ "Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty: For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood: Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty but kindly." --"_As You Like It_," ii: 3. IV THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER Ancient society looked upon the human body with the utmost veneration. The citizen of Thebes or Memphis knew no higher ambition than a competency for embalming his body. Men loved unto death and beyond it the physical house in which the soul dwelt. Every instinct of refinement and self-respect revolted from the thought of discarding the body like a cast-off garment or worn-out tool. In his dying hour it was little to Rameses that his career was to be pictured on obelisk and preserved in pyramid, but it was very much to the King that the embalmer should give permanency to the body with which his soul had gone singing, weeping and loving through three-score years and ten. The papyrus found in the tombs tells us that the soldiers of that far-off age did not fear death itself more than they feared falling in some secluded spot where the body, neglected and forgotten, would quickly give its elements back to air and earth. How noble the sentiment that attached dignity and honor to hand and foot! Sacred, doubly sacred, was the body that had served the soul long and faithfully! The soul is a city, and as Thebes had many gateways through which passed great caravans laden with goodly treasure, so the five senses are gateways through which journey all earth's sights and sounds. Through the golden gate of the ear have gone what noble truths, companying together what messengers of affection, what sweet friendships. The eye is an Appian Way over which have gone all the processions of the seasons. How do hand and vision protect man? Hunters use sharp spears for keeping back wild beasts, but Livingstone, armed only with eye beams, drove a snarling beast into the thicket, and Luther, lifting his great eyes upon an assassin, made the murderer flee. What flute or harp is comparable for sweetness to the voice? It carries warning and alarm. It will speak for you, plead for you, pray for you. Truly it is an architect, fulfilling Dante's dictum, "piling up mountains of melody." Serving the soul well, the body becomes sacred by service. Therefore man loves and guards the physical house in which he lives.