Brute animals are evidently taught cleanliness by instinct; and
can there be a stronger proof of its being essentially necessary
to their well-being and happiness?--But if cleanliness is
necessary to the happiness of brutes, how much more so must it be
to the happiness of the human race?
The good effects of cleanliness, or rather the bad effects of
filth and nastiness, may, I think, be very satisfactorily
accounted for. Our bodies are continually at war with whatever
offends them, and every thing offends them that adheres to them,
and irritates them,--and through by long habit we may be so
accustomed to support a physical ill, as to become almost
insensible to it, yet it never leaves the mind perfectly at peace.
There always remains a certain uneasiness, and discontent;--
an indecision, and an aversion from all serious application,
which shows evidently that the mind is not at rest.
Those who from being afflicted with long and painful disease,
suddenly acquire health, are best able to judge of the force of
this reasoning. It is by the delightful sensation they feel,
at being relieved from pain and uneasiness, that they learn to
know the full extent of their former misery; and the human heart
is never so effectually softened, and so well prepared and disposed
to receive virtuous impressions, as upon such occasions.
It was with a view to bring the minds of the poor and unfortunate
people I had to deal with to this state, that I took so much
pains to make them comfortable in their new situation. The state
in which they had been used to live was certainly most wretched
and deplorable; but they had been so long accustomed to it, that
they were grown insensible to their own misery. It was therefore
necessary, in order to awaken their attention, to make the contrast
between their former situation, and that which was prepared for
them, as striking as possible. To this end, every thing was done
that could be devised to make them REALLY COMFORTABLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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