The Secret Life: Being the Book of a HereticBisland, Elizabeth
Philosophy
The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic
Bisland, Elizabeth
Diaries
Eating his due amount of food and attaching no mystical significance
to anything, man tore his way through the heart of mountains, flashed
his thoughts under the wastes of ocean, sent his voice across a
thousand miles, sailed into the teeth of the wind, devoured space with
steam, reared palaces more lofty than Aladdin dreamed of, and--his own
Kobold--dived into the darkness and fetched up gold and gems more than
the fairy tales ever knew. He made himself lord of the visible earth,
of time, of distance, of wave and wind. He laid his hands upon all the
forces which had awed his childhood and forced them to work miracles
beside which the fables of the Kabbalists seemed tame and feeble. And
in spite of this there remain men and women who are more awed by a
banjo flying through a dark room than by the telephone; who find the
untying of knots in a cabinet, or the clutches of damp hands when the
lights are turned down, more important than the automobile. It is the
attitude of mind of a child, who is more interested by rabbits coming
out of a conjurer's hat than by wireless telegraphy.
There is as great an inequality in the inheritance of health as in
the heirship of wealth or brains. Some are born with a fortune of
vigour and soundness so large that not a lifetime of eager squandering
will leave them poor, and others enter the world paupers of so dire a
need that no charity of medicine will ever raise them to comfort; but
most of us have just that mediocre legacy of vitality which makes us
indistinguishable units in the mass. It lies in the hands of each to
improve or waste that property as he chooses, for there are self-made
men physically as well as financially, and spendthrifts of health
come to as sorrowful an end as prodigals of gold. The body is a realm
where a wise ruler brings happiness as surely as a foolish one ensures
distress, and wisdom here, as elsewhere, lies in the observance of
natural laws.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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