Since the time of the Stoics, the world has been told by the God-Man Jesus of Nazareth, that living means growing, that true happiness is gained only through works in the service of something, that the necessary attribute of perfect manhood is spontaneous altruism, and that there is no other road towards growth, refinement, spirituality and happiness than along the way made easy by consistent altruism. During the time that has passed since the power and glory of Hellas began to wane, mankind has had experience with the forces of nature and the efficacy of machinery to teach the great universal law of compensation, which is also the law of happiness. This great law prescribes that there shall be no balance without support or motion, no poise without alertness, no life without growth, and no happiness without service. Learning a wise lesson from the law of compensation, man has come to appreciate the value of a wormless and weedless soil, but he has learned to plant in it trees that bear altruistic fruit, instead of the poppy of sloth and indifference, which is now classed as a poisonous weed; he has learned to clean and polish the journals of his engines and has invented balance wheels to regulate, and ball bearings to accelerate, their power; but not for the purpose of idleness. The decadence of Greek manhood was not the result of culture, but the result of the uses to which it was put, and hence we should not condemn culture, nor cultivate friction, as an antidote for decadence, because Greek civilization did not defend itself against assault and decay, but, rather, let us emulate the good they achieved, and cultivate the power they attained, and use them as _a beginning and not as an end_. APPENDICES. APPENDIX A. THE INFLUENCE OF FEAR IN DISEASE. BY DR. WM. H. HOLCOMB. Our sanitarians are doing a good work in exploring the physical causes of disease, and endeavoring to protect the individual and the public health. But there is a higher and larger sphere of causes which they have seldom penetrated, and of whose existence even many of them seem to be ignorant. I allude to the extraordinary influence of affection and thought, or of emotion and ideas, in the causation and prevention of disease. The body is a mirror, in which all the states of the soul are reflected. We are familiar with the wonderful effects of the will, the passions, the emotions, of the imagination, sympathy, hope, fear, faith, and confident expectation upon the physical system. We are accustomed to regard the phenomena as illustrations of the fact that the soul can, under certain circumstances, act powerfully upon the body, with the tacit assumption, however, as a general rule, that the body executes all the functions by chemical or mechanical law, without the necessary intervention of any mental influences whatever. This is the great illusion of the materialist.