It is just these natural laws--simple, severe, inexorable--against which the majority chafe, for which some magic pill or potion is offered as a substitute. Temperance, cleanliness, activity, are the three cardinal virtues of the body, as faith, hope, and charity are of the soul. As tithes of mint, anise, and cumin are easier to render than the observance of law, justice, and judgment, so burnt-offerings of drugs are offered to the Goddess Hygeia in place of obedience to her regimen. After the excesses of the carnival came the brief rigours of the Lenten retreat, and after the Fat Tuesday of gluttony comes the short atonement of the "Cure" at some mineral spring, where the priests of health are yielded a complete but passing submission. It is easier to repeat incessant formulæ of prayer than persistently to keep one's self unspotted from the world, and it is easier for fat old sinners to paddle about barefoot in the dew at a Kneippe cure than to abandon at once and forever their little darling sins of greediness or indolence. One hears a constant cry of "Lo, Here!" and "Lo, There!" and all the world rushes to sit hopefully under blue glass or swathe itself in pure wool in the ever-renewed belief that some substitute may be found for the fatiguing necessity of obedience to the three rules. Even yet ill health is considered as a sort of supernatural visitation rather than a certain result of the infringement of plain laws. I remember reading once a clever book, less popular than it deserved to be, which told of a country in the heart of the Andes in which the intelligent inhabitants looked upon crime as the unfortunate result of congenital temperament; a disease demanding sympathy and treatment; but ill health aroused only condemnation as a wilful infringement of wise and well understood laws. A bronchial case caused arrest and imprisonment, and friends of the family considered it rude to cough in the presence of the criminal's unfortunate family; but a severe attack of embezzlement was cause of polite condolence, and cards were left upon the invalid with kind inquiries as to whether he was receiving the best moral attention. An idea less whimsical than it may seem. Paracelsus--who was accused of magic because his cures were effected by such simple means--always asserted that if he were allowed to absolutely direct a child's diet from its birth he could build up a constitution which might without difficulty be made to last out a century in undiminished vigour; and there are those who are prepared to accept literally the age of the antediluvian patriarchs, on the ground that as at that time bread had not been discovered, digestions never called upon to struggle with starch found no difficulty in sustaining life to Methuselah's term.