A treatise on the stomach and its trials / by J.C. Eno.

  • Eno, J. C.
Date:
[1870?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the stomach and its trials / by J.C. Eno. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    69/82 (page 67)
    with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who al¬ lowed his sons, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight ? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us—and, more or less, of those who are connected with us— do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game in¬ finitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess¬ board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And who plays ill is checkmated—without haste, hut without remorse. ‘ My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzschhas depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute, for the mocking fiend in that picture, a calm strong angel, who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win. And I should accept it as an image of human life. ‘The great mass of mankind are the “Poll,” who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can’t come up again. Nature’s pluck means extermination. ‘ Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience—incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature’s discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed?—Huxley. We quote the above from Professor Huxley, because we think it fully indorses what we have in this treatise been endeavouring to press with great earnestness, in the cause of truth and health, upon the mind of the reader : that obedience to natural laws is health and happiness and long life, while disobedience or ignorance entails disease, and hands it down from one generation to another. THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR. Nature lives by it, all things are full of it, the mainspring of all that is noble ]n this life depends on it, the active only have a true relish of life ; it is exertion that renders rest delightful, and sleep sweet and sound. Man was born to work, and must work while it is day. ‘ Have I not,’ said a great worker, ‘ an eternity to rest in V