--The report that a city is to be built in England on strict sanitary
principles, in which man may, if he will, live to a hundred and fifty
years of age, will give additional interest to this address[T] in which
Dr. Richardson develops the project. The address was delivered a year
ago, when the Doctor was president of the Health Department of the
Social Science Association. It deserves attention because it indicates,
pretty nearly, the goal toward which all the conscious and unconscious
improvement in our living for centuries has tended. Whether man can
obtain such control over the duration of his life depends very largely
upon whether he finds himself able to submit to the discipline and
self-abnegation without which the mechanical improvements made will have
only partial success. Perfect living is not merely a thing of
appliances. These are necessary, but the subjection of the will to the
requirements of orderly conduct is equally necessary. However, Dr.
Richardson says that "Utopia is but another word for time," and it is
certain that his ideal of public and private life will be at least
approached by the slow progress of small improvements. Some people have
objected that they don't want to live a century and a half, and that a
city where men two hundred years of age might occasionally be seen
walking about is just the place they would most carefully avoid. But we
can none of us escape our fate. If society is progressing toward that
end, let us accept it, and even allow the men of science to hurry up
matters a century or two. It is, perhaps, significant that this change
in man's estate comes just at the time when a reduction in the rate of
interest is taking place, and it seems likely that a man will have to
live to a hundred years in order to accumulate enough to buy him a
house. When he has it, he will need another half century to enjoy it. At
all events read this ideal, extraordinary, and learned exposition of the
health of the future.
--The idea of collecting in one volume a concise statement of modern
theories of the mode in which we receive impressions is excellent, and
it has been well carried out by Prof. Bernstein.[U] Touch, sight,
hearing, smell, and taste are treated from an anatomical and
experimental point of view, and the researches of Helmholtz, Weber, and
the numerous band of investigators who have in late years devised so
many ingenious modes of testing the operation of these senses are well
represented. The book contains probably as much exact and accurate
information, and as thorough a treatment of the subject, as can be
contained in a volume of this size. It is an advanced treatise that
places the reader in possession of the latest theories on these occult
subjects. Of necessity it is not new; but this treatment and the facts
here given will be found novel by most readers.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote K: "_A Point of Honor._" By MRS. ANNIE EDWARDS. 16mo, pp. 325.
New York: Sheldon & Co.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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