It is one of the conditions of civilization, that man must everywhere accept the social system within which he lives. Whether a dweller in detached cottages and farm-houses, or congregated into townships and villages; collected in masses, as in towns and cities, his endeavour is to protect his dwelling from all that is offensive and from whatever may prove injurious to the health of himself and family. An ancient adage tells us not to act contrary to nature; but as nature reveals nothing to us, as her intentions can only be read by the lights of science and reason, or science based on observation and experiment, whence human reason draws deductions conformable with its power, so is it most difficult for man to say what is best to be done under all circumstances. When a man builds a cottage, a house, or a palace, after duly attending to the surface-drains, he constructs near his dwelling, sometimes beneath it, a cesspool and a dead-well, the former intended to receive the more solid excreta, the latter the soil-water of the kitchen--the water, in fact, used in the domestic economy of the house. If the dead-well or pit dug to receive the soiled water of the house be sufficiently deep, it filters through the soil, and thus requires no clearing out--if not, it overflows the court or garden, and speedily renders the place uninhabitable. The cesspool, if deep enough and properly secured, remains for many years unknown and unperceived, until filled; it may even be forgotten altogether, and its very existence remain unknown, until disclosed by accident; but whatever be its age or condition, so soon as its contents are exposed to the air, it is found to have continued unaltered; and if spread on the fields, as I have seen done, renders the vicinity for some time unendurable, thus proving the sagacity of the Jewish legislator in his instructions to that people to whom he gave laws and regulations to serve them for all time to come.[34] [34] Deuteronomy xxii. 12.