What can be more
pleasurable, for instance, than the feeling of entire health,--health,
which is the sum-total of the functions of life, duly performed?
"Enjoyment," says Dr. Southwood Smith, "is not only the end of life, but
it is the only condition of life which is compatible with a protracted
term of existence. The happier a human being is, the longer he lives;
the more he suffers, the sooner he dies. To add to enjoyment, is to
lengthen life; to inflict pain, is to shorten its duration."
Happiness is the rule of healthy existence; pain and misery are its
exceptional conditions. Nor is pain altogether an evil; it is rather a
salutary warning. It tells us that we have transgressed some rule,
violated some law, disobeyed some physical obligation. It is a monitor
which warns us to amend our state of living. It virtually says,--Return
to nature, observe her laws, and be restored to happiness. Thus,
paradoxical though it may seem, pain is one of the conditions of the
physical well-being of man; as death, according to Dr. Thomas Brown, is
one of the conditions of the enjoyment of life.
To enjoy physical happiness, therefore, the natural laws must be
complied with. To discover and observe these laws, man has been endowed
with the gift of reason. Does he fail to exercise this gift,--does he
neglect to comply with the law of his being,--then pain and disease are
the necessary consequence.
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