_Mr. Forester._ The multiplication of diseases, the diminution of strength, and the contraction of the term of existence, keep pace with the diminution of the stature of men. The mortality of a manufacturing town, compared with that of a mountain village, is more than three to one, which clearly shows the evil effects of the departure from natural life, and of the coacervation of multitudes within the narrow precincts of cities, where the breath of so many animals, and the exhalations from the dead, the dying, and corrupted things of all kinds, make the air little better than a slow poison, and so offensive as to be perceptible to the sense of those who are not accustomed to it; for the wandering Arabs will smell a town at the distance of several leagues. And in this country the cottagers who are driven by the avarice of landlords and great tenants to seek a subsistence in towns, are very soon destroyed by the change.[93] And this hiving of human beings is not the only evil effect of commerce, which tends also to keep up a constant circulation of the elements of destruction, and to make the vices and diseases of one country the vices and diseases of all.[94] Thus, with every extension of our intercourse with distant lands, we bring home some new seed of death; and how many we leave as vestiges of our visitation, let the South Sea Islanders testify. Consider, too, the frightful consequences of the consumption of spirituous liquors: a practice so destructive, that if all the devils were again to be assembled in Pandemonium to contrive the ruin of the human species, nothing so mischievous could be devised by them;[95] but which it is considered politic to encourage, according to our method of raising money on the vices of the people.[96] When these and many other causes of destruction are considered, it would be wonderful indeed if every new generation were not, as all experience proves that it is, smaller, weaker, more diseased, and more miserable than the preceding. _Mr. Fax._ Do you find, in the progress of science and the rapid diffusion of intellectual light, no counterpoise to this mass of physical calamity, even admitting it to exist in the extent you suppose? _Mr. Forester._ Without such a counterpoise the condition of human nature would be desperate indeed. The intellectual, as I have often observed to you, are nourished at the expense of the animal faculties. _Mr. Fax._ You cannot, then, conceive the existence of _mens sana in corpore sano_? _Mr. Forester._ Scarcely in the present state of human degeneracy: at best in a very limited sense. _Mr. Fax._ Nevertheless you do, nay, you must acknowledge that the intellectual, which is the better part of human nature, is in a progress of rapid improvement, continually enlarging its views and multiplying its acquisitions.