Startled by the vehemence of poor Lazarus, I awoke. I am, Sir, etc. HYGEIOLATRY. The advance of physical science and the simultaneous retreat of religious faith threaten, among their numerous consequences, to introduce a new principle into morals. We may call it Doctor’s Doctrine,--not because it is by any means the exclusive property of the medical profession, or that all doctors can be supposed to hold it, but because it is more rife among them and tells more directly on their work than in the case of other men. It is indeed excusable for a physician to attribute to bodily health, wherewith this new principle is concerned, more importance than a poet, a preacher, or a soldier, is likely to concede to it; and to this natural tendency is added, pretty frequently perhaps, a tolerably defined materialism, which not merely connects but identifies genius, happiness, and virtue with physical soundness, and stupidity, misery, and crime with diseased organization. With such views, and deprived of that vista of an eternal future which alone gives to human things their true perspective, it is not wonderful that many should come to regard bodily health as the _summum bonum_, and thence to deduce the principle to which I desire to call attention as an innovation in ethics. Reduced as nearly as possible to a formula, that principle is as follows: _That any practice which, in the opinion of experts, conduces to bodily health or tends to the cure of disease, becomes_, ipso facto, _morally lawful and right._ I do not mean to imply that this principle has yet been clearly stated by any of its adherents, or that they are even generally conscious that they have adopted it. Possibly, many who have practically embodied it in their conduct for years may repudiate it on seeing it defined in words. Nevertheless, it may be traced as the substructure of innumerable arguments on all manner of subjects of public and private interest,--arguments which, if the principle were knocked from under them, would instantly be seen to fall baseless to the ground. It is, in short, the implied major term of a thousand syllogisms which we hear in every debate and read in every magazine and newspaper. Now, to measure the extent of the change which the adoption of this Doctor’s Doctrine must introduce into ethics, it is only necessary to cast a glance backward at the older view of the relation of duty to health which has hitherto prevailed in the world, and been taught pretty equally by moralists of every school, with the exception of ascetics on one side, and pure hedonists on the other. That older lesson--which we may for convenience call Divine’s Doctrine, since it is the general teaching of every Protestant theologian and moralist, may be summed up in the canon-- _Bodily health may not be lawfully sacrificed to our desire of pleasure or fear of pain. It may and ought to be sacrificed to the health of our souls, to the service of our fellowmen, or to fidelity to God._