Where are the sprightly, modest maidens with cheeks rosy with healthy blood, graceful in figure with well developed forms--the chaste, pure spirit shining in their eyes, with witchery and common sense combined? Where are the fathers and mothers whose good fortune it is to possess such children as these? Can it be that they should deem these caricatures of fashion worthy of their fond desire?--these whose days are spent in idling, who find their pleasure in the streets, the shops, the theatres and the like they term "society?"
Those youths too often die at twenty, dissipated wrecks, holding as a mere ceremony the marriage they expect eventually to consummate; or married, now and then produce a single child that had far better never have been born.
What of those mothers who cannot nourish their own offspring, but fain would make shift with all imaginable unnatural substitutes and bring up children in whom a predisposition to disease has already been born?
Oh nature! High and mighty mistress! A bitter penalty dost thou exact from these thine erring progeny.
Cruelly plain dost thou stamp thy mark on the tiny brow of the unborn child to mark in what degree its parents have departed from thine eternal ways of truth.
When a great man, recently, in his address before the body of a famous university, solemnly asserted that mankind is growing better, day by day, he must have had before his inner eye fair visions of a future race--the Future of Truth, which come it must--some day--but now lies dormant in the lap of the gods, its alluring, visionary, transcendental form depicted, for an optimistic instant, in the fervent, hopeful heart of a sincere but far-sighted reformer. But it is written: false prophets must come, deceiving in respect to all things in heaven and earth. "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur." (The world wishes to be deceived, therefore, let it be deceived.) The world elects to be deceived. It is so--often on the most paltry of pretences. And here lies the fatal and prolific cause which has ever, throughout the ages, wrought infinite harm and impeded the progress of the world: _The world's indifference to truth._
For the proper understanding and radical cure of any disease it is of primary importance to have before the mind's eye a distinct picture of its character and developments, thus tracing it back step by step to its source, so that the therapeutic, or healing measures employed may be properly adjusted to its various stages.