That last advice seems very bold. To have the half naked child exposed
to the open air in a damp and variable climate, is, no doubt,
anticipatively, to lose the weak; but the strong will survive, and
their posterity will be the better brought up. Let us add that
business, and navigation, by earlier relieving the boys from school,
from the sedentary life of the young nobles at Oxford or Cambridge,
make them a new race.
In his ingenious book, guided only by popular tradition, Russell
doubtless was far enough from suspecting how, in a single century, all
science would come to the aid of his theory, and that each would aid
him in making of the Sea a perfect system of Therapeutics.
The most valuable elements of terrestrial life are abundantly in the
sea; and science may well say to us--"Hither! Hither, worn and wearied
nation, swinked laborer, failing woman, young child, fading because
your parents sinned; hither! to the Sea, and the Sea shall cure you!"
The universal base of life, the embryonic mucus, the living animal
jelly in which man continually takes and retakes the marrowy substance
of his being, is so abounding in the sea that we may call it the sea
itself. Of that mucus, both marine animals and marine vegetables are
made. Her generosity puts earth to shame. She is liberal to give, be
ye therefore, willing to receive.
"But," it maybe said, "we are attacked in the very foundation and
support of our being. Our bones bend, bow, and we are weak, and
tottering from their insufficient nurture." Well! The lime which they
need abounds in the sea; so abounds that her madrepores build islands
of it, and are at this moment building whole continents. Her fishes
carry it hither and thither in such vast quantity that, washed upon
every shore, it serves as a manure.
And you, young female, you who, visibly, are wasting into an early
grave, repair to the sea, where every breath you draw shall be a
restorative. That restorative iodine, is in every breath that blows,
in every wave that heaves, in every fish that swims. The Cod alone
have enough to iodise the entire earth.
Is it animal warmth that you lack? The sea affords you the most
perfect, the most equable, the most widely diffused warmth; warmth so
great, in fact, that were it not diffused, it would melt the earth
from Pole to Pole, and make each Pole another Equator.
The rich, warm, red blood, is the triumph of the Sea; by it she has
animated and armed with mightiest strength her giants, so much
mightier than mightiest giants of the earth. She has made that
element, and she can remake you, poor, pale, drooping flower. She
abounds, superabounds, in that rich red blood; in her children it so
abounds that they give it forth to every wind.
And there is the revelation of the whole mystery. All the principles,
pale mortal, that are combined in you, she has in separation. She has
your bone, your blood, your sap and your heat--in one or the other of
her creatures, she has them all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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