THE TRIUMPH OF HEALTH IDEALS
"What is the body after all but the spirit breaking through the
flesh, or health but beauty in the organism?"
Every good emotion makes a health and life promoting change in the
body. Every thought is registered in the brain by a physical
change more or less permanent in the tissue cells.
The coming man will find it as easy to counteract an unfriendly,
vicious thought by turning on the counter thought to neutralize
it, as to rob the hot water of its burning power by turning on the
cold water faucet.
There is a divine something in man which never was sick and never
can be, that divine self, the image of the Creator, perfect,
unchangeable, indestructible, immortal, and which some time and
somewhere must drive out all trace of sin, disease and death in
mankind.
HUFELAND.
Even those who do not believe in Christian Science as a whole must be
impressed with the Scientists' wonderful religious optimism. Their
inspiring mental attitude, the hopeful way in which they face life,
always looking toward the light, toward health, toward prosperity,
toward success, and turning their backs upon the darkness, upon
everything which can mar their health, their efficiency, their
happiness, is creating a new world for thousands of discouraged souls.
Christian Scientists insist that since God has created everything that
is, and since He is perfect, is all-in-all, He could not possibly create
anything unlike Himself, such as disease, or anything else which is not
good for His children. God is harmony, they reason, and He could not
create discord. He is truth and He could not create error. God is love
and He could not create the opposite of love,--hatred, jealousy, envy,
selfishness, any evil emotion or passion. Hence all disease, all
discord, all the enemies of the race, all Satanic influences in the
world must be accounted for in some other way than as decrees of His
will, for Perfection could not have produced these imperfections. Love
could not create anything antagonistic to itself.
Scientists take a positive and vigorous stand against the admission to
their mind of any of the enemies of their health, their prosperity,
their happiness or their destiny. Not only is all thought of failure
and poverty banished, but they close the portals of their mind against
fear, worry and anxiety, against the ravages of jealousy, the poison of
hatred, envy, and selfishness. They try to keep their mental realm clear
of all black, forbidding pictures, of all sorts of distressing emotions
and unfriendly thoughts, while they open it wide to the things which
help, inspire and bring hope, the friend thoughts and emotions,--joy,
gladness, love, truth, and divine inspiration.
They believe that all human beings were not only made to be healthy but
also to be happy, successful, prosperous. They regard poverty, no less
than illness, as a mental disease, to be treated in the same manner as
bodily disease; and this cheerful religious optimism which they try
steadily to maintain is not alone a healing force, but is also a great
disease-resisting power.
Health, wholeness, is one of the most important and necessary factors
for the attainment of those things which every normal human being
desires,--peace, power, plenty, success and happiness. The Scientists'
religious optimism is a potent force for placing the mind in the most
favorable condition for the attainment of all these things. It removes
all hindrances to full, complete self-expression.
It is just as necessary to hold the victorious attitude toward health as
it is to hold the victorious attitude toward our career and everything
which affects it. It is just as necessary to get rid of our doubts and
fears regarding our physical well-being, as it is to get rid of our
doubts and fears regarding our ability to succeed.
If we would be strong and vigorous it is quite as important to visualize
health, to hold the health ideal, to keep the perfect health picture
constantly in the mind, as it is to keep the prosperity, the success
ideal in the mind when we are striving for an independence.
The habit of always holding a high ideal of our health, of thinking of
ourselves as well, vigorous, physically and mentally perfect, will go
very far toward building up a strong disease-resisting barrier between
ourselves and all our health enemies. On the other hand, people who
never think of themselves as whole, healthy, active and robust, but who
constantly hold in mind a picture of themselves as weak, ailing,
without vim or stamina, with little or no disease-resisting power, are
liable at any time to become victims of disease. The building up of a
strong health thought barrier, a vigorous health conviction between
ourselves and disease is the best sort of health insurance. Fearing
disease, thinking ill health, visualizing physical suffering, is the
surest way of attracting those things.
Physicians know that the awful incubus of doubt and worry in the minds
of patients, the fear that their disease may be fatal, is the greatest
obstacle to their recovery. We head toward our doubts, our fears, our
convictions regarding our health, just as we do toward our doubts, fears
and convictions regarding other things. If we are convinced that we are
not going to be strong, rugged, virile, if we fear that we are likely to
develop inherited weaknesses and disease tendencies, we are headed
toward these conditions, and will probably realize them. On the
contrary, if we hold the victorious attitude toward health, if we
visualize the health ideal, the health conviction, we head mentally
toward health, and what we head toward mentally is the pattern of that
which is continually being built into our life structure.
A healthy body is healthy thought externalized.
Man's normal condition is that of robust health, vigorous vitality,
tremendous power of endurance. The Creator evidently intended the human
machine to run harmoniously, without friction, without weakness or
disability of any kind.
The created is a part of the Creator, an indestructible part of Him.
When we rise to a full consciousness of this we shall be victors over
disease instead of victims of it; we shall be conquerors instead of
slaves of conditions.
Nearly a century ago a celebrated German physician said that there is
something in man which was never born, is never sick and never dies, and
that it is this something, this omnipotent force within which in reality
heals our diseases. No matter what we may call it, this something that
repairs and renews is one with the Force that creates us. We may name it
variously the God principle, the Christ within us, the divine principle,
the omnipotent force or anything else we please; the name does not
matter. All mean the same thing, that is, the creative, the
all-sustaining Force that holds the universe in harmony.
There is something in you that is lord over your physical organs. There
is a power in you, back of the flesh, but not of it, which dominates the
flesh, and that is the real you. Your partner in that power is the
Intelligence that created you. You are indissolubly interlinked with
that Intelligence. You can no more be wiped out of existence than the
Creator who made you, because you are an immortal expression of Himself.
You are His masterpiece, and His work must partake of His qualities, of
His perfection, of His omnipotence, of His omniscience.
The trouble with us is we do not rise to the power and dignity of our
divinity. We do not half believe we are divine. We have a sort of vague
theory that we are mere puppets, thrown off as separate units into
space, without any vital connection with the Power that gave us life.
This false theory is the cause of our sufferings.
The reason why we are such shriveled, scrub oaks of human beings is
found in the dried-up, mean, stingy ideal of ourselves which we have
been taught to hold. We have been reared to think of ourselves as "poor
miserable worms of the dust," unworthy to come into the presence of our
Father-Mother-God, even though we are fashioned in His image. Instead of
carrying through life an ideal of our mental and physical perfection, we
carry an ideal of a defective, diseased, physically and mentally
imperfect, being. The mind being the molder of the body, the life-giving
processes within us build the sort of body that answers to the model in
the mind, the ideal which we hold of ourselves. What we really believe
ourselves to be, we tend to become. We keep our minds filled with all
sorts of discordant, sick pictures, and of course all of these mental
images reappear in the body, react upon the life.
On the other hand, every time we affirm that we are one with the
creative Force of the universe, that nothing can separate us from our
oneness with the One, we tend to build our bodies into the ideal state
of perfect health,--mental, physical, and moral wholeness. If we could
hold continually the ideal of our wholeness, and visualize ourselves as
perfect beings "even as He is perfect," and constantly try to live up
to our ideal, any tendency to imperfection, to discord, to disease would
be eliminated.
We are only just beginning to realize the tremendous import of the idea
that we really fashion our bodies to correspond with our thoughts, that
we are co-creators of ourselves with the Divine Power which is back of
the flesh, but not of it.
A prominent surgeon in speaking of infantile paralysis says that the
physician's mental attitude toward it has a great deal to do with its
cure, and that he should hold firmly in mind the idea that the disease
is curable.
Every physician should also be a metaphysician. He should be a profound
believer in the principle that the Power which created the patient can
re-create him, can repair damages, restore diseased or lost tissues. The
most advanced physicians do believe that at best they can but help
Nature in her healing processes. They realize that the same Power which
created the patient is present in the healing of every wound, every
broken bone and every hurt we suffer. The surgeon sets the bone,
dresses the wound, but the same Power that first created the flesh and
bone must do the healing.
The mental healer vigorously denies the reality of disease in the sense
that truth is a reality. To him "all is Infinite Mind, and its infinite
manifestation," as Mrs. Eddy says, and therefore all must be good. Only
the good can be real as God made all that is.
The persistent denial that anything could exist which the Creator did
not create, and that He could make anything unlike Himself, is one of
the fundamental principles of the Christian Science faith. To the healer
health is a vital, immortal principle, the everlasting fact, and
disease, although it seems painfully real to the sufferer, is but a
false belief.
The healer holds in mind only what he desires to establish in his
patient's mind. He shuts out everything else. Health is what he wishes
to establish, and to do this he holds insistently and tenaciously the
health ideal. He refuses to see the sick, diseased man or woman, and
persists in visualizing the ideal one that God intended. To him the
defective, deficient, suffering being which disease and physical
discord have made is not the real man or woman. That being is only a
travesty of the ideal, perfect creature the Creator planned.
He does not allow himself to think of, or to picture disease symptoms.
To visualize the physical appearance of disease would be to acknowledge
its reality, and this would be to defeat his healing. He could not, for
example, cure cancer or tuberculosis while mentally picturing the
horrible symptoms of these diseases. He wishes to keep all such things
out of his mind because of their baleful suggestiveness. Visualizing
them would merely etch their reality deeper and deeper in his
consciousness, and the suggestion would be conveyed into the patient's
consciousness.
The mental healer's aim is to produce in the mind of the person he is
treating a consciousness of the scientific reality of health, and of the
unreality of disease. It does not matter how the disease symptoms may
contradict this principle, or how loudly pain may scream for
recognition, he persists in considering disease unreal and in holding
the scientific sense of health as the reality. He relies wholly upon
Divine Mind as the great healing potency, and steadily affirms his
patient's oneness with his Divine Source, and that disease cannot exist
in the Divine Presence.
At the very outset he encourages his patient by affirming that, however
real his physical discord or disease may seem to him, it cannot affect
the God image in him, because that is perfect, as God Himself is
perfect, and that in reality there can be no disease. Truth and harmony,
he asserts, are the great facts of life. Error is not a reality, but
merely the absence of truth; discord is not a reality, but merely the
absence of harmony. He assures him that He is God's child, and that
God's image cannot be sick, distressed or diseased. "Of course," he
says, "this seems very real to you, painfully real, but it is not
reality in the sense that truth is a reality." This is discord, the
absence of harmony, and divine harmony will antidote all discord just as
truth will neutralize error, and as love will neutralize all hatred,
jealousy or revenge, or as confidence, self-assurance will neutralize
fear, doubt, or self-depreciation.
The healer holds continually the healing suggestions, and concentrates
on arousing in his patient expectancy of relief by bracing his hope,
confidence, assurance and faith in Divine Mind that restores, renews and
heals. He tries to stimulate and to put into active operation the
healing potencies latent in him, to awaken in his mind the lost divine
image, and to impress upon him the idea that this divine image cannot
possibly be dominated or in any way affected by disease.
I have seen a chemist pour a few drops of liquid from different
crucibles into a jar of muddy water and in a few minutes the mud would
disappear and the water be as pure as crystal. This is in effect what
the mental healer does in treating a patient. No matter what the disease
is his great remedy lies in mental chemistry, in neutralizing,
destroying the error with its natural antidote.
The healer's constant affirmation that there can be no sickness, no
disease in God's image in man, is a powerful suggestion which tends to
weaken the grip of error in his patient's body. The very shutting out of
all fear, of the terror of disease and death, is a great step towards a
cure, because these things are depressing to all the bodily functions.
Everything that discourages, that makes the patient despondent, is a
great devitalizer, and constantly lowers his disease-resisting power.
The arousing of the belief that the healer is a sort of motorman who
puts up the patient's dropped trolley pole, thus making connection with
the wire carrying infinite power; or that he is a wireless operator who
is connecting him with his Divine Source, the source of health and
happiness, and that he is actually receiving the flow of divine force,
of peace, of immortal life, is of itself a tremendous healing agency.
When he has succeeded in establishing in the mind of his patient the
vigorous conviction that health is the everlasting principle, the great
fundamental inviolable fact, the healer has gone far toward establishing
a scientific consciousness of health, and has laid a most important
health foundation.
After a little practice a sick person can do wonderful things for
himself through the vitalizing force of auto-suggestion. He can be his
own physician. He can recover health and keep it by applying to himself
the same principles that the healer applies to his patient. In this way
he can keep himself in conscious union with the Divine Source of all
supply, of all good, all health.
There are sufficient latent potencies in every human being, if he would
only arouse and make them operative, to keep him in health and harmony.
We can all be our own healers if we will.
The stream must be as pure as its fountain head unless contaminated
later, and there is where we humans come in. We contaminate the health
stream with our thought poisons. Our doubts, our fears, our unbeliefs,
our brutal passions, our selfishness, our greed, our hatreds, our
jealousies, our revenge, our ingratitude for life, for the blessings we
enjoy,--all of these things tend to pollute the stream which we receive
pure as it flows from the crystal fountain, the divine source of the All
Good.
But the practice of divine chemistry will enable us to clear up our
muddy life streams. We have in ourselves the remedies which will
neutralize the vicious poisons we have allowed to flow into and befoul
our life stream. We can by the right use of our powers purify it as the
chemist purified the jar of muddy water. By right thinking we can
neutralize the poison sewage of our bodies, just as chemists can take
the foul sewage water which flows out from a city and by the help of
chemicals neutralize all the filth, making it absolutely pure again. By
applying their antidotes we can neutralize the poisons of disease, the
results of wrong thinking and living, which sap and embitter our lives,
which make us suffer from all sorts of ills and leave us unable to
accomplish one-tenth of what we might if we had that splendid physical
and mental vigor which is normal to humanity.
We must offer the same uncompromising opposition to the reality of all
kinds of disease, mental and physical, that the mental healer does. We
must see ourselves as he sees his patient, in the wholeness, the
completeness, the Creator intended. It is the ideal man or woman we must
visualize, never the one weakened, deformed by horrible diseases or
their symptoms. By recognizing only the real man or woman, unaffected by
wrong thinking, we cut off the vicious effects of the mental enemies
which are fighting to perpetuate disease or other unfortunate
conditions.
The constant holding of the health ideal, of the truth thought, the
health and prosperity thought, the optimistic thought, the kindly,
cheerful, helpful thought and the shutting out of all their opposites,
not only help to restore health, but also increase tremendously the
disease-resisting power. Right thought is a health, efficiency, and
happiness tonic.
The vital thing in establishing health is to adopt the victorious
attitude toward it as toward every other good thing we desire. If we
wish to have abounding health (and who does not?) we must cultivate
implicit faith in health as our birthright, in the truth that, being the
children of Perfection, we must partake of the qualities of perfection,
and hence be free from the imperfection of disease or sickness.
Without faith in our wholeness we are not, and cannot be, whole. Without
faith in the healing power of Divine chemistry no healing is possible
either by patient or healer. The patient may not always have a conscious
faith, but the healer has, and a similar faith is aroused in the patient
later, as he begins to feel the divine healing power operating and
working like a leaven in his nature.
There is no one thing that is emphasized so much in the Bible, and
especially in Christ's teachings as faith. Every benefit, every healing
depends for its efficacy on the sufferer's faith. In all of His healing
this one condition of faith was imperative--"_According to thy faith be
it unto thee._"
When the disciples told their Master that they could not heal certain
cases He rebuked them, and told them that they failed because of their
lack of faith. "_According to thy faith be it unto thee_," he reiterated
constantly. He recognized the great healing power of faith, and
impressed upon His followers the truth, that without it no healing was
possible.
Every physician knows that his patient's faith in his power to cure him,
in the efficacy of the remedies he applies, are curative agencies. Faith
in medicinal remedies is what makes them effective. It is faith that
furnishes the potency of thousands of so-called remedies, which have no
intrinsic value whatever.
We all know how the visualizing of disease and the fear of it affect the
mind in undermining the health ideal. Confidence in our health is
really its sustaining and buttressing power, for the moment we destroy
this we lessen our resisting power and invite disease.
The image perpetually held in the conscious mind becomes indelibly
etched in the subconscious mind and the body conforms to the thought. To
attain perfect health we must hold the image of physical perfection, we
must constantly keep in mind this ideal state. We must build ourselves
thought pictures of a superb body in all its strength and wholeness; we
must relentlessly strangle every image of weakness or disease, every
sick suggestion that would blur the picture of perfect wholeness and
harmony into which we wish to grow.
What a revolution we would make in our lives if we could only learn to
live this health ideal instead of its opposite, the disease ideal!
Every child should be reared to _think_ health instead of disease;
should be made to realize that _health is the everlasting fact_, that
disease is not a necessary evil, and was not intended for us, that it
was not intended we should suffer. If the young mind were saturated from
infancy with health ideas and ideals it would build up a strong
disease-resisting power that would make it immune to all health
enemies. If every child were trained to believe that he was a god in the
making, that he had within him the embryo of divinity which ought to
develop into a God-like being, we should not have so many mental and
physical Lilliputians.
One of our great health troubles lies in the fact that we have been
accustomed from childhood to lay too much emphasis on matter, on the
support of the body. As a matter of fact, the mind is everything. But
mind is not confined to the head alone. We are all mind. We think all
over. We live all over. Our sensations are the intelligent expression of
all the cells of the body.
The body is a great coöperative institution composed of billions of
cells. Some of these cells have a higher functioning quality than
others, but they all have their appointed places. Every cell is an
important member of the body corporation and has a voice in the
government of the whole. When we are wounded or diseased, for instance,
billions of these tiny cell repairers, healers, renewers, health
builders, rush instantly to the wounded part to repair and restore the
injured tissues.
We are all conscious that there is continually going on within us these
repairing, renewing, reinvigorating, as well as healing, processes. We
feel that there is a marvelous and beneficent intelligence ever working
miracles within us, a power which heals our wounds and cures our hurts.
Whence comes the intelligence which governs and directs the work of
these little builders and repairers? It comes from the Within of us, for
our objective mind is comparatively passive in the process. But the
great Intelligence back of the flesh, which keeps the heart beating, the
lungs breathing, and all of the various bodily functions in activity,
never ceases working, and never leaves us for an instant. It permeates
every atom of the body, illuminating each separate cell with a
reflection of its own light.
Scientists are making marvelous discoveries regarding the location of
the seat of intelligence,--mind. Until recently it was supposed to be
confined solely to the brain. But now we know the mind, the brain, or
the thinking part of us, extends the entire length of the spinal cord,
that there is gray brain matter everywhere in the sympathetic nervous
system. In fact recent experiments indicate selective power in the cells
all through the body.
Regular gray matter has been found in the finger tips of deaf, dumb and
blind people, thus showing that wherever there is a need there is
intelligence. We know what marvels blind and deaf mutes perform by their
sense of touch, in distinguishing colors, even fine variations of shades
in delicate fabrics, in correctly sensing denominations of paper money
and coins, and accurately describing statues and other forms from merely
running their fingers over them. This shows that intelligence is
everywhere in the body.
Some of our foremost scientists now believe that the cells composing
each organ form a sort of coöperative community intelligence which
presides over that particular organ. They hold that the bodily organs
have what may be termed minds of their own, and are vitally connected
with the so-called spinal column brain and the solar plexus brain, as
well as with the brain proper. This theory is borne out in fact. We know
how quickly the stomach sympathizes with the mental attitude, how it
responds to our thoughts, our emotions; also how quickly the heart, the
kidneys respond to our mental states--fear, worry, joy, anxiety, love,
hate, jealousy, whatever emotion dominates us.
If there were not a very intimate connection between the brain and the
stomach (and the same principle applies to the heart, the kidneys and
other organs) the digestion would not be affected so seriously by our
changing moods and emotions. Inasmuch as it is so affected, is it not
reasonable to assume that the stomach cells are influenced by the
thought which you project into them? Is it not reasonable to assume that
by sending into these cells black, gloomy, discouraging pictures of
indigestion and dyspepsia you injuriously affect them? If these cells
have intelligence, and if they respond instantly to our different mental
states, as we know they do, isn't it natural that they should be
correspondingly affected by our opinion of them, by our lack of
confidence in them, our suspicion of their ability to digest our food
properly, by our constant complaining of our stomach and our miserable
digestive apparatus?
Give a dog a bad name and you might as well kill him, is an old saying.
In the same way, impress, force home on your stomach, your heart, your
liver, or any other bodily organ the conviction that it is inefficient,
weak, good for nothing, and in addition swallow a mouthful of mental
dyspepsia with every mouthful of food, and, sooner or later, it will
accept your verdict and be just what you claim it is.
In other words, instead of handicapping them by wrong thought, we must
give our bodily organs a fair chance to do their legitimate work. If we
expect them to act perfectly, as the Creator intended they should, we
must treat them as we would treat our children. We must by right
thinking help them to be normal instead of making them abnormal by
doubting, being suspicious of them. We must visualize them as our
co-workers, our partners, our friends, not as our enemies, our
tormentors.
Just think of the horrible pictures of their various organs people get
from medical books, which describe minutely symptoms of diseases which
they imagine they have! Many people never visualize a normal picture of
themselves. They never think of themselves as the perfect beings God
intended them to be. What they hold constantly in mind is a picture of
an abnormal, diseased, weak, defective creature. They picture their
stomach, their liver, their kidneys, their heart in a diseased,
imperfect condition. Instead of regarding them as friends, as members of
the same family, they look on them as malicious enemies who cause them
constant suffering. "Oh," they cry out, "I've got such a miserable
stomach! I can't eat anything. Everything I eat hurts me." "My
treacherous old heart, how it pumps. I can't walk or do any of the
things I like because of it." "My liver is all upset. I seem to be out
of kilter everywhere. My kidneys are affected, my back troubles me, and
really I might as well be dead!"
Such horrible visualizing and belittling of the hard-working bodily
organs would ruin the health of the best trained athlete. If you would
be a friend to yourself, you must be a friend of your organs, which are
so intimately and sympathetically connected with your brain-mind--the
central station of your body. You must believe in their perfection, in
their normal functioning. You must picture them trying to help you to
carry out your great life purpose instead of working at cross purposes
with you. You must have confidence in them, think of them as your
friends instead of enemies handicapping your success and ruining your
chances in life. Replace the pictures of diseased organs with their
opposites, pictures of their wholeness, their completeness, their
soundness, and you will find yourself coming into health and power.
Assume the victorious attitude, and think of yourself as an absolutely
perfect being, divine, immortal, possessing superb health, a magnificent
physique, a vigorous constitution, a sublime mind.
Every morning when you rise, before you go to bed at night, and whenever
you think of it during the day, stoutly affirm the fact of your
perfection physically, mentally and morally. Constantly assert mentally,
and, when alone, orally, "I am health because I am of God. God is my
life, He is the great creative Power that sustains and upholds me every
instant. This Power is perpetually re-creating me, and trying to keep me
up to the ideal, the original plan of my being when I was created. I
shall coöperate with it to-day, and every day. I shall aim to be
perfect, even as my Father."
There is a great restorative power in the mere resolve to be well,
strong and vigorous, in affirming and tenaciously holding the perfect
ideal of ourselves which the Creator had in His plan of us. There is a
re-creative force in the realization that any departure from this ideal
means departure from God, from perfect health, from the reality of the
perfect physical, mental and moral being planned by Him.
You will be surprised to see how this mental attitude, this visualized
physical ideal, will be reproduced in the body.
The mind is the body builder, the great health sculptor, and we cannot
surpass our mental model. If there is a weakness or flaw in the thought
model, there will be corresponding deficiencies in the health statue. As
long as we think ill health, doubt our ability to be strong and
vigorous, as long as we hold the conviction of the presence of inherited
weaknesses and disease tendencies, look upon ourselves as victims
instead of conquerors of ill health, in short, as long as the mental
model is defective perfect health is impossible.
Joyous, abounding health can be established just as anything else can be
established, by right thinking and right living, by thinking health
instead of disease, thinking strength instead of weakness, harmony
instead of discord, thinking true thoughts instead of error thoughts,
love thoughts instead of hatred thoughts, health thoughts, upbuilding
thoughts instead of destructive tearing down thoughts.
A great many regular physicians now, and all soon will, show patients
how they can make use of the great healing, medicinal power of thought,
the miracle of right thinking, which unites them with the Force back of
the flesh. They will show each patient what attitudes of mind, what
affirmations and what auto-suggestions will tend to keep him in harmony;
they will teach him the healing use of suggestion. The physician of the
future will use largely for his remedies, ideas, mental attitudes, and
suggestions.
The time will come when parents and teachers will realize the tremendous
force, the character-building power in the affirmation of health,
wholeness, completeness, harmony. They will teach children to exert this
power that will drive out discord and dispel disease. They will impress
upon the young that affirmation of perfect ideals, holding in mind the
model of a perfect man, a perfect woman, not the one marred, crippled,
shorn of strength and beauty by violation of mental law, or by vicious
living, will protect them from all assaults from without and from
within.
If that mind was always in us which was in Christ, the mind that gives
health, peace and happiness, that perpetuates harmony, truth and beauty,
we should never know discord of any kind. Perfect health would be the
rule and not the exception, because we should never transgress the laws
of our being.