Dr. Paley was accustomed to direct the particular attention of
travellers in foreign countries to the condition of the people as
respects cleanliness, and the local provisions for the prevention of
pollution. He was of opinion that a greater insight might thus be
obtained into their habits of decency, self-respect, and industry, and
into their moral and social condition generally, than from facts of any
other description. People are cleanly in proportion as they are decent,
industrious, and self-respecting. Unclean people are uncivilized. The
dirty classes of great towns are invariably the "dangerous classes" of
those towns. And if we would civilize the classes yet uncivilized, we
must banish dirt from amongst them.
Yet dirt forms no part of our nature. It is a parasite, feeding upon
human life, and destroying it. It is hideous and disgusting. There can
be no beauty where it is. The prettiest woman is made repulsive by it.
Children are made fretful, impatient, and bad-tempered by it. Men are
degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt
is,--for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where
the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must
be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an
affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers
have clearly made out that the dirty classes are the drunken classes;
and that they are prone to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and
opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul
conditions in which they live.
We need scarcely refer to the moral as well as the physical beauty of
cleanliness--cleanliness which indicates self-respect, and is the root
of many fine virtues--and especially of purity, delicacy, and decency.
We might even go farther, and say that purity of thought and feeling
result from habitual purity of body. For the mind and heart of man are,
to a very great extent, influenced by external conditions and
circumstances; and habit and custom, as regards outward things, stamp
themselves deeply on the whole character,--alike upon the moral feelings
and the intellectual powers.
Moses was the most practical of sanitary reformers. Among the eastern
nations generally, cleanliness is a part of religion. They esteem it not
only as next to godliness, but as a part of godliness itself. They
connect the idea of internal sanctity with that of external
purification. They feel that it would be an insult to the Maker they
worship to come into His presence covered with impurity. Hence the
Mahommedans devote almost as much care to the erection of baths, as to
that of mosques; and alongside the place of worship is usually found the
place of cleansing, so that the faithful may have the ready means of
purification previous to their act of worship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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