always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper measures. And these measures will probably be in time universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases will be altogether or nearly abolished. Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of our personal economy. Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for the right action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for the supply of the lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence of the mental affections, are all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement of the system in which disease consists. Here also it may be said that a limitation of the mental faculties to definite manifestations (_vulgo_, instincts) might have enabled us to avoid many of these errors; but here again we are met by the consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we should have been only as the lower animals are, wanting that transcendently higher character of sensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made so much greater. In making the desire of food, for example, with us an indefinite mental manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it is amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means of deriving far greater gratifications from food (consistently with health) than the lower animals appear to be capable of. He has also given us reason to act as a guiding and controlling power over this and other propensities, so that they may be prevented from becoming causes of malady. We can see that excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to moderation. We can see that all the things which we feel inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to avoid what are pernicious. We can also see that a cleanly skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the proper performance of some of the most important of the organic functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right ventilation of our parlours and sleeping apartments. And so on with the other causes of disease. Reason may not operate very powerfully to these purposes in an early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore have been endured from disease in past ages; but these are not necessarily to be endured always. As civilization advances, reason acquires a greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and avoided; and disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass. The experience of our own country places this in a striking light. In the middle ages, when large towns had no police regulations, society was every now and then scourged by pestilence. The third of the people of