IT was thought at one time by many that science would do away with
poetry--that it was the enemy of the imagination. We know now that is
not true. We know that science goes hand in hand with imagination. We
know that it is in the highest degree poetic and that the old ideas once
considered so beautiful are flat and stale. Compare Kepler's laws with
the old Greek idea that the planets were boosted or pushed by angels.
The more we know, the more beauty, the more poetry we find. Ignorance is
not the mother of the poetic or artistic.
So, some people imagine that science will do away with sentiment. In my
judgment, science will not only increase sentiment but sense.
A person will be attracted to another for a thousand reasons, and why
a person is attracted to another, may, and in some degree will, depend
upon the intellectual, artistic and ethical development of each.
The handsomest girl in Zululand might not be attractive to Herbert
Spencer, and the fairest girl in England might not be able to hasten the
pulse of a Choctaw brave. This does not prove that there is any lack
of sentiment. Men are influenced according to their capacity, their
temperament, their knowledge.
Some men fall in love with a small waist, an arched instep or curly
hair, without the slightest regard to mind or muscle. This we call
sentiment.
Now, educate such men, develop their brains, enlarge their intellectual
horizon, teach them something of the laws of health, and then they may
fall in love with women because they are developed grandly in body and
mind. The sentiment is still there--still controls--but back of the
sentiment is science.
Sentiment can never be destroyed, and love will forever rule the human
race.
Thousands, millions of people fear that science will destroy not only
poetry, not only sentiment, but religion. This fear is idiotic. Science
will destroy superstition, but it will not injure true religion. Science
is the foundation of real religion. Science teaches us the consequences
of actions, the rights and duties of all. Without science there can be
no real religion.
Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of
science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The
more we know the safer all good things are.
Do I think that the marriage of the sickly and diseased ought to be
prevented by law?
I have not much confidence in law--in law that I know cannot be carried
out. The poor, the sickly, the diseased, as long as they are ignorant,
will marry and help fill the world with wretchedness and want.
We must rely on education instead of legislation.
We must teach the consequences of actions. We must show the sickly and
diseased what their children will be. We must preach the gospel of the
body. I believe the time will come when the public thought will be so
great and grand that it will be looked upon as infamous to perpetuate
disease--to leave a legacy of agony.
I believe the time will come when men will refuse to fill the future
with consumption and insanity. Yes, we shall study ourselves. We shall
understand the conditions of health and then we shall say: We are under
obligation to put the flags of health in the cheeks of our children.
Even if I should get to heaven and have a harp, I know that I could
not bear to see my descendants still on the earth, diseased, deformed,
crazed--all suffering the penalties of my ignorance. Let us have more
science and more sentiment--more knowledge and more conscience--more
liberty and more love.