All civilized nations of which we have record, except the Chinese, have decayed after growing and flourishing a few centuries, usually about a thousand years or less. Many reasons are given for the decline and fall of nations. Rome especially furnishes food for much thought. However, look into the history of each known nation that has risen to prominence, glory and power, and you will find that so long as they kept in close contact with the soil they flourished. With the advance of civilization the peoples change their mode of life from simplicity to luxuriousness and complexity. Thus individuals decay and in the end there is enough individual decay to result in national degeneration. When this process has advanced far enough these people are unable to hold their own. In the severe competition of nations the strain is too great and they perish. There is a point of refinement beyond which people can not go and survive. From luxury nations are plunged into hardship. Then their renewed contact with the soil gradually causes their regeneration, if they have enough vitality left to rise again. Such is the history of the Italians. Many others, like the once great Egyptians, whose civilization was very far advanced and who became so dissolute that a virtuous woman was a curiosity, have been unable to recover, even after a lapse of many centuries. The degenerated nations are like diseased individuals: Some have gone so far on the road to ruin that they are doomed to die. Others can slowly regain their health by mending their ways. Nations, like individuals, generally do better in moderate circumstances than in opulence. Nearly all can stand poverty, but only the exceptional individual or nation can bear up under riches. Nature demands of us that we exercise both body and mind. Civilization is not inimical to health and long life. In fact, the contrary is true, for as the people advance they learn to master the forces of nature and with these forces under control they are able to lead better, healthier lives, but if they become too soft and luxurious there is decay of moral and physical fibre, and in the end the nation must fall, for its individual units are unworthy of survival in a world which requires an admixture of brain and brawn. Civilization is favorable to long life so long as the people are moderate and live simply, but when it degenerates to sensuous softness, individual and racial deterioration ensue. Among savages the infant mortality is very great, but such ills as cancer, tuberculosis, smallpox and Bright's disease are rare. These are luxuries which are generally introduced with civilization. Close housing, too generous supply of food, too little exercise and alcohol are some of the fatal blessings which civilized man introduces among savages. A part of the price we must pay for being civilized is the exercise of considerable self-control and self-denial, otherwise we must suffer.