But the ordinary denizen of civilization has a most ridiculous ideal of physical capability, namely, that the savage--a being altogether “physical”--was able to retain a healthy body till ripe old age without attention either to sanitary surroundings or to the hygienic functioning of his system of organs. The “civilizee’s” fancy picture of the noble savage is not based upon verifiable fact. It is true that we have a few attractive myths concerning savages that had survived appalling hardship; but we are just learning of the innumerable host that have perished periodically of various contagious diseases, and of the countless number (infants, youths, and adults) that have suffered from all sorts of ailments. Alas! how little we know--or, for that matter, how little we seem to care--of the great multitude of “civilized” fellow-creatures whose lives are all jangled and out of tune through subjection to the many ills that flesh seems heir to; ills that have arisen through either ignorance or the voluntary _ignoring of the light of accessible knowledge_! In another aspect the human race is like an army that concerns itself with its immediate and imperative duties and has no time or thought to bestow on those that fall out of the ranks. But slaves to stern duty offend against Nature’s normality as do slaves to desire; and the former little suspect that their retirement also is near at hand. In health we seldom or never think of the conditions for the maintenance of health. That these conditions should receive our prime attention is obvious when we contemplate for a moment (1) our race of invalids, and (2) the growing unsanitary condition of modern industrialism, involving, as industrialism perforce must, the unsanitary life of the factory, workshop, office, and hothouse home. Again, with the advance of high-pressure civilization and culture human beings are developing a more highly sensitive physical organism, pitched to finer issues. How urgent the necessity for a greater safeguarding of that organism! If it be claimed that many of us do live up to our knowledge of health conditions, and that we are notwithstanding unwell, I would answer that our knowledge now is very disconnected, and that when the time shall come that our itemistic information shall have coalesced and formed a system of principles, we will then have trustworthy rules for the acquisition of health habits and become completely normal physical beings. At present most of us are intemperate in one or more ways. We eat too much or too little--too rich or too poor food. So it is with our drinking, our sleeping, our sporting, our enjoyment of this or that excitement--the quantity or the quality of each of these is not well adapted or proportioned to the conditions of normality.