Countless centuries have come and gone and have left on the earth myriad
forms of life; but just what life is, from whence it came, whether
or not there is purpose or design behind it, whether or not all the
sacred books are mere conceptions of the infant mind, of the whence and
whither, we do not know; but when we put life beneath the searchlight of
science, we do know that it is a mere assembling of ionic matter into
organic forms, and that this strange work is done in accordance with
certain well-defined laws.
We know that these laws are a part of the great cosmic scheme. In
harmony with them works evolution, which tends to lift to higher and
higher degrees of perfection all forms of both animate and inanimate
life. We believe that if all the natural laws governing life could be
ascertained and obeyed, the number of disorders or interferences with
Nature's scheme would be very greatly decreased.
Man's system of co-operating with his fellow-creatures, which we call
civilization, has imposed certain restrictions, duties and limitations
upon him, which make it impossible for him to live in strict accordance
with these laws; therefore if he would have his birthright, which
is health, he must employ science to fit him into his artificial
environment.
Man has been brought to his present state of physical development on
the rural, outdoor, close-to-nature plan, and since he must live in
houses and pursue occupations foreign to those through which he was
developed, he must make corresponding changes in the material from
which his body is constantly being repaired and made; therefore, as the
selections, combinations, and proportions of the various things he needs
for nourishment are determined by his age, activity, and exposure to the
open air, if he accurately or even approximately ascertains and observes
these things, life will continually ascend in the scale of power and
grandeur, and his endurance and period of longevity will be increased.
Nearly all forms of life on this globe, except man, live approximately
eight times their period of maturity. Man matures at twenty-four;
measured by this scale he should live about two hundred years. But the
average life of civilized man, reckoning from the age of six, is only
about forty years, while if we include the infant class, and reckon
the average age from his birth, he scarcely gets his growth before his
hair and teeth are disappearing, and his eyesight is being propped
up by the lens of the oculist, and he quietly drops into his grave.
One hundred and sixty years of life, then, is about what civilization
has cost him up to date. This is very expensive, but of course he has
something to show for it. He has aeroplanes, wireless communication,
the mile-a-minute train, politics, several kinds of religion, rum and
cocain, the tramp, the billionaire, and the bread line.
We cannot consistently leap over ten thousand years of heredity and
habit, but we can recover some part of the one hundred and sixty years
of life civilization has cost us. This can be done by feeding our bodies
according to their requirements determined by age, temperature of
environment, and work or activity; by cultivating mental tranquillity;
by loving some one besides ourselves, and proving it; by breathing an
abundance of fresh air, and by doing useful work. Of all these things
food is the most important because it is the raw material that builds
the temple wherein all other things dwell.
Civilization and science are doing but little real good for man if they
cannot select for him the material necessary to develop his body and all
its faculties to their highest degree, or at least free him from much of
his disease and materially increase his "ease"; they have brought him
but little, I say, if they cannot show him a way to live more than forty
years. Science would have nothing of which to boast if it only pointed
out a way by which man could exist for two hundred years, as this is
his birthright. It can only boast when it has given him more than his
natural heritage.
That man's general health and period of longevity have decreased, while
all other branches of science have so vastly increased, is evidence
sufficient to justify the assertion that he has not employed scientific
methods to the art of living, or at least to those fundamental
principles, such as nutrition, motion, and oxidation, which really
govern his health and his life.
The difference between youth and age, between virility and senility,
is in reality a chemical difference only. The difference between the
flexible cartilage of youth, and the stiff cartilage of age is one of
chemistry.
If, by the process of metabolism, the muscles, bones, tissues, and
brain-cells can be made to multiply and to reproduce themselves at
eighteen, it seems only logical that science should give us the secret
by which this same thing could be done at eighty, and if at eighty, why
not at a hundred and eighty? It is by no means extravagant to say that
if science can teach us the actual demands of the body under the varied
conditions of age, climate, and activity, and the means of supplying
these demands with only such food elements as are needed, life can be
prolonged to what seems to be our natural period of years.
Consider the human body as a machine that possesses the power of
converting fuel or food into energy, using or expending that energy at
will, reproducing itself piece by piece from the same fuel, and casting
out the debris and ashes--if all this is done by the body automatically,
and its power to act or to do these things depends so completely upon
the fuel or the material with which the body has to work, then the
question of the _kind_ of fuel, the quantity, how to select it, how to
combine it, how to proportion it, becomes at once the most important
problem within the scope of human learning.