The system of nourishment that Nature has imposed upon the world is not
only stupid and malicious, but also of a cannibalistic character.
We, as frail human beings, are horrified and shocked to think that our
ancestors trafficked in and delighted in eating the flesh of their race,
and even to-day we are making a strenuous effort to discourage the
barbarous custom of killing animals to eat their flesh, yet it seems a
dictate of Nature that forces us to uphold that custom. Just think of
it! Nourishment and life-sustaining forces are derived from eating the
cooked flesh of a dead animal, the unborn fowl, the bowels of the lamb,
and the eggs of the fish!
Can you imagine the wildness of life in such a jungle of cannibalism? No
wonder the savage instinct is so deeply implanted in us.
To get a fair idea of the food we eat to sustain life and to please and
satisfy our palates, we need but take a casual glance at any of our
modern butcher shops. Although to-day you will not see human limbs on
display and for sale, as they were years ago, you will be impressed with
the following morsels put there to tempt your appetite: In our modern
butcher shops you will find pigs' feet, calves' brains, ox tongues,
breasts and legs of lamb, chicken livers, dogs ground to bits and sold
as sausages, live and dead fish of all kinds and varieties and
innumerable other portions of animal flesh.
Fortunately we have got beyond the point where we eat the entrails of
these animals, although we use their hoofs to make glue, their bones for
powder, and we string our delicate musical instruments with their
vitals.
The things we consume, in turn consume the living forms that they
capture and subdue.
The lion, the tiger and the leopard will devour us more quickly, and
with less ceremony and with more delight, than we devour other animals.
We, being "civilized," boil the animal's flesh and season it with weeds
that Nature allows to grow, to give it zest and flavor, while our wilder
brothers eat us in the raw, natural manner, only removing our civilized
clothes.
Really, if getting nearer to God is getting back to Nature, the beasts
of the fields have an advantage over us. And we know to-day that even
the living things in the vegetable kingdom suffer alike from the fearful
tortures and penalties of the world. They follow almost the identical
routine of life that we follow. Birth, life, reproduction, and death are
their lot as well as ours; so that, if man were only to practice the
idealism of his cramped and feeble brain he would starve to death!
V
If the world is the result of an established plan, as some say, it must
be the conception of a hideous monster whose three cardinal principles
are Disease, Despair and Death. But this much we can say: Though God
created us a savage, fortunately man is civilizing Nature's brute and is
making him a Man.
Disease is one of Nature's cardinal forces. So, to attain health, we
struggle against disease; but health only means the guarding of it
through fear. "With all the ills the flesh is heir to," true health is a
chimera, an existing state unknown to man.
To be "well" is such a precious condition, that Nature cautions us
against expecting to retain health too long, by instructing us, through
experience, to prepare for a siege of illness. Thus, disease and illness
would seem to be the natural states, and health the artificial
condition under which Nature permits us to live. No one goes to his
grave without suffering the tortures of some disease and paying the
penalty of living. No one is exempt from the inflictions Nature imposes.
The greater portion of our life consists in devising means and
medication to relieve us of our states of ill health and disease.
Sanitation and all the methods we are capable of discovering and
inventing are becoming universally applied to kill and to destroy the
menacing germs that God causes to inhabit the air, and that breed and
multiply in the fertile flesh of our bodies.
And finally, we are so utterly ignorant of how even to eat, sleep, walk,
breathe, stand or sit, that the slightest infringement of the simplest
rules of life can, and does, cause us irreparable harm.
If we did not move to help ourselves, Nature would have us live in filth
and stagnation.
We seek, discover, or invent all kinds of methods to build health and
to remain perfectly strong throughout our lives, and yet, despite it
all, we are puny and sickly beings. In fact, I do not think there is
such a thing as perfect health. What we may do to correct, insure or
perfect our healthy tissues will have a detrimental effect upon some
other part of our body. What we do to build up must also tear down. What
we do to produce health will, after a certain point, produce disease.
This, it seems, is the law not only of life, but also of the universe.
It is regrettable that God did not possess the magnanimity of an
Ingersoll and make health contagious instead of disease.
Physical pain and mental suffering are the mysterious sorrows that we
must experience and pay to a tyrant God for the existence we bear. It is
incontrovertible that no realization is given us by Nature of the
fearful pains and tortures that we are capable of suffering and still
sustain ourselves, only to repeat over and over again the unending
torment in exchange for the consciousness of a worthless life.
We, with our limited intellects, with our puny strength, with our
inability to utilize all the materials in our possession, are still
superior to the workmanship and the justice of God.
Tyrant is no name for such a God, who creates a living organism
purposely and maliciously to torment and torture it.
A poor creature is a God who makes his suffering playthings more
powerful than "he," and compels them to bear their existence under the
lash of inexorable laws of sorrow and suffering, pain and penalty.
And yet we are satisfied with so little. We ask for a crumb only. We are
pleased with the slightest favor. A toy delights us; a little trinket
elicits from us warm gratitude; a breath of balmy air is drunken with
keen and pleasurable delight; a "fine" day is celebrated with
exultation!
But what a mockery is life!
We writhe in pain and bear the brunt of an arrogant tyranny from
whatever force that created and controls us. We must daily bathe our
bodies, wash our hair, brush our teeth, change our clothes and perform
other necessary physical functions to feel freedom from the filthy
conditions that Nature imposes upon us and surrounds us with.
If Nature saw fit to give us eyes, she should have given us perfect
ones; not those which, upon the slightest contact with a minute foreign
substance, cause unutterable pain and possible loss of sight, in a world
where sight is so imperative!
If Nature saw fit to give us ears, she should have given us perfect
ones; not those which are capable of such frightful pain, with the
possibility of becoming totally deaf, when it is so necessary to hear!
If Nature saw fit to give us a nose, she should have given us a perfect
one; not one that causes such miserable torture and unbearable suffering
from the slightest defect!
If Nature saw fit to give us a mouth, she should have given us a perfect
one; one that would perform all the functions of perfect speech; not one
that is so liable to harm and so susceptible to dumbness, when speech is
of such paramount importance to Life!
If Nature saw fit to give us teeth, she should have given us perfect
ones; not those which ache and pain with such fearful intensity that the
mind is almost distracted!
If Nature saw fit to give us arms, legs, and organs, she should have
given us perfect ones; not a body whose tenderness makes it an
instrument of such menacing torture; not a body of crippled bones and
crippled joints, where suffering results from everything it does!
If Nature saw fit to give us a brain, she should have given us one
strong enough to withstand all the rebuffs of life, and one capable
enough to utilize all the forces under command. Each person should be a
mental Hercules capable of solving his own problems and directing all
matter to its greatest material uses.
Instead of the human body being the marvelously constructed instrument
we are wont to believe it, we now find it to be nothing but a common
machine, imperfectly made, and subject to innumerable changes and
radical improvements.
Every person acquainted with the anatomy of the body can give you a list
of imperative improvements that it needs, and without which it will
continue to function imperfectly and continue to cause pain and
suffering to its possessor.
It were a great deal better, after a full summary of life, were we to be
created utterly devoid of feeling, equally impervious to joy and sorrow,
pleasure and pain. We should be manifestly benefited, for the greater
part of our life is now full of sorrow, anxiety, fear, pain,
disappointment and worry.
A small portion of our life is a matter of indifference. A portion
might be termed satisfaction, and a minute balance, an infinitesimal
part, termed--if there is such a thing in life--joy.
And yet, the joy we may experience to-day will not be present to-morrow
to cheer and comfort us, but the pain that we feel to-day will pinch us
more strongly to-morrow, and will remain as an ever-poignant memory.
Joy and pleasure are of a transitory nature only, while pain and sorrow
are of a permanent and accumulative character. Is _all_ of life worth
the sorrow, the agony and fear of death?
Just think of giving a life so full of grief that those who have it do
not want it and quite often destroy it! No wonder that drugs more
powerful than our minds, used to numb the pains of life, are so much in
demand and so universally used.
What a ridiculous assumption it is to think that a soul, separate and
distinct from the body, would imprison itself in such a miserable
confinement!
Instead of life's being a privilege, it is a prison, wherein we must
suffer fearful pains and still more fearful thoughts. Physical pain
registers a high degree of intense feverish suffering, but mental
torture is fired with the scorch of hell.