So much for the æsthetic side, which is important, because life is very largely an æsthetic phenomenon. But there are even more serious consequences than these. For instance, it is highly improbable that our vitality and intellectuality can fail to suffer depreciation when once normal functioning has been interfered with. So intricate and inter-dependent are the various parts and functions of the superior mammal’s body, that it is hardly possible to disturb the balance of one part or one function without impairing the whole. Thus it is not unlikely, in these latter days when ninety-nine per cent. of the population of highly civilized countries is suffering from some kind of defective function or bodily part, that all of us are sub-human in spirit as well as in body. It is even conceivable that the hopeless pass at which we are arriving in Western civilization is but the inevitable outcome of our chronic sub-normality or sub-humanity, and that nothing but a reform of our bodies can possibly help us out. Nor is it any longer valid to argue that this view is materialistic. We thank Dean Inge _en passant_ for his able reply to those who, objecting to the standpoint that has just been advanced, are ready to accuse those who hold it of materialism. At all events we can honestly deny that we are materialists, and do not believe that we are any the less religious or spiritual for having fought hard for our heterodox religious views through years of metaphysical study and thought. Secondly, we repudiate the suggestion that to preach the care and maintenance of the beauty and health of the body is necessarily material; for it is the invalid, the sick man, the man of this age, who calls himself “well,” who is constantly reminded of his body. A healthily functioning body can be forgotten. Thanks to its serenity, its muteness in efficiency, it allows its owner to indulge in every variety of spiritual exercise. While, therefore, we accuse the values which for centuries have cast a slur on life and the human body of being the cause of modern decadence, we do not thereby proclaim ourselves either irreligious or materialistic; for, let those who would too hastily presume both our irreligiosity and materialism remember that there are other religions besides that which first created the body-despising values to which we allude.