(i) All this has an important bearing on the subject of health and disease. We are all influenced by our environment for better or worse. The material and visible conditions of life, our home, our friends and associates, our country, our daily occupations, contribute to make us what we are. Life is defined by Herbert Spencer as ‘the continuous adjustment of internal relations.’ It may be difficult or even impossible to attain to the stable equilibrium of perfect goodness, perfect health, perfect happiness; and, in fact, neither science nor religion encourage us to expect such a consummation within the limits of this earthly existence. But there may be a ‘continuous adjustment’; and it must be the practical aim alike of religion and of science to mould the individual by the environment which will best harmonise his personal good with the good of the whole. We have to elevate the conditions of human existence. The individual has not only to adapt himself to his environment, in the temper of _laisser faire_, but to adapt it to the satisfaction of his highest good. ‘Great religious consciences have taken their post, confronting society, as representing in themselves truth and right, because behind them was God, while behind existing societies there is only man, nature, and circumstances. Far from consenting to identify himself with the social conscience, the religious conscience disposes man to oppose the rights of God to those of Cæsar, the dignity of the human person to public constraint.’[72] In the language of religion, ‘No man hath seen God at any time: if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.’ That is the ideal of the Christian Society, the Body of Christ, actuated by the great principles of faith, hope, and love. And much might have been said of the duty of a Christian State to secure to all its members the elementary conditions of a healthy, useful citizenship. Most of our disease is a disgrace to our Christian civilisation, because it is preventable. The ancient poet rightly associates the spectres of Care, Hunger, and Fear with the grim forms of Disease at the portals of his Inferno: [72] Emile Boutroux, _Science et Religion_, p. 206. Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae: Pallentis qua habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus, Et Metus et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas.[73] [73] Virg. _Æneid_, vi. 273 sq. ‘Right in front of the doorway and in the entry of the jaws of hell Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there dwell wan Sickness and gloomy Eld, and Fear, and ill-counselling Hunger, and loathly Want.’--J. W. Mackail.