It is hideous and disgusting. There can
be no beauty where it is. The prettiest woman is made repulsive by it.
Children are made fretful, impatient, and bad-tempered by it. Men are
degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt
is,--for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where
the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must
be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an
affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers
have clearly made out that the dirty classes are the drunken classes;
and that they are prone to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and
opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul
conditions in which they live.
We need scarcely refer to the moral as well as the physical beauty of
cleanliness--cleanliness which indicates self-respect, and is the root
of many fine virtues--and especially of purity, delicacy, and decency.
We might even go farther, and say that purity of thought and feeling
result from habitual purity of body. For the mind and heart of man are,
to a very great extent, influenced by external conditions and
circumstances; and habit and custom, as regards outward things, stamp
themselves deeply on the whole character,--alike upon the moral feelings
and the intellectual powers.
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