On the other hand, it is certainly as true as ever, that the gods still cancel a sense misused, and, if we leave out of account for the moment the cases in which cancer seems due to developmental error――and who can say whether even then a child does not suffer vicariously for some physiological transgression by its parents?――the doctrine that cancer is due to irritation, whether produced by a clay pipe, hot drinks, constipation, or crude paraffin, does not really tell us much more than _that_. The difficulty is this: _How_ to walk in the way of physiological righteousness, and _how_ to preach it, without falling into a dogmatism as stupid as unbelief? Mr Wright tells us how, in medieval times, the Church declared cancer of the tongue to be sometimes a judgment on sinners for their blasphemy. Well, I for one, am not prepared to limit the “misuse” that entails physical disease and suffering to misuse in the material, or physiological sense. Organs, through the nerves of the “sympathetic”, are directly connected with the play of emotions and of feeling-states. I am not sure that investigation would not shew a correlation――sometimes――between certain persistent and voluntary mental states (_morbid_ mental states, that is) and the development of cancer in certain organs. The “argument” that cancer is infrequent in lunatic asylums, where the majority are mindless rather than wrongly thoughtful, evades the question. The quest for a single causal factor, whose “discovery” will lead us to “abolish cancer”, is then, it would seem, just one more hunt for the philosopher’s stone. Yet, to use the formula of “right living” does not seem to be merely a verbal solution of the difficulty. If we agree that to live rightly is the best insurance we can make against cancer, we are probably stating, as compendiously as possible, _all_ we do and shall ever know, in respect of the causation of cancer. It is then our duty to ascertain how to live rightly in every sense of the word, and we may so come to realise that almost every one of what we call the blessings of civilisation has been purchased at the expense, in some respect, of right living. For this, heavy interest has to be paid, and even the efforts of science to put matters right seem too often not more than the borrowing of fresh capital to pay off old debts. It is right to call attention to the fact that certain “uncivilised” races, who live healthily and naturally in respect of food, drink, and sexual activity, do not suffer from cancer. But it is wrong to suggest that therefore we should adopt either their dietetic or their sexual customs. What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Adjustment to our surroundings, right living _here and now_ is what we need. Though Papuans and Sikhs may be very properly adjusted in _their_ contexts, it is not their adjustments that may best suit our cases.