and constitutes merely an art? Who ever thought of claiming that any art-music, speech, painting, or sculpture, or aught else that is extrinsic to the body-could be affected by heredity? Such arguments as these make one lose all confidence in the conclusions of Weismann's personal microscopical investigations, in which otherwise one would gladly look for instruction.

With one more citation from this work on heredity, we conclude the presentation of what we deem sufficient evidence to prove the utter unreliability of Weismann's conclusions. It is to be found on pages 95 and 96 of the work hitherto quoted from:

In my opinion, there is absolutely no trustworthy proof that talents have been improved by their exercise through the course of a long series of generations. The Bach family shows that musical talent, and the Bernoulli family that mathematical power, can be transmitted from generation to generation, but this teaches us nothing as to the origin of such talents. In both families the high-water mark of talent lies not at the end of the series of generations, as it should do if the results of the practice are transmitted, but in the middle.

This proves nothing but that the intermixture of other blood, not specially endowed in the same direction, diminishes mental manifestation of the original talent. It has been proved repeatedly by Galton and others that descent in the direct line, despite this intermixture, has long shown hereditary qualities of marked type, generation after generation of persons peculiarly adapted to certain employments being engaged in them in numbers so great that it is impossible to suppose that those employments were originally sought by all on account of their special personal aptitude for them. If the increased speed of the trotting horse within fifty years, from a mile in two-forty to about a mile in two-ten, is not significant of change in the animal, due to appropriate change in function and structure, in addition to the effects of artificial selection of stock to breed from, what else will account for it? The gait, as a fast one, is not natural to the horse; the extreme development of what the

best horse could at first do with practice in the trot was soon reached; artificial selection could find nothing better than was at first discovered in the way of stock to breed from. Whence, then, can come what still remains to be accounted for in the enormous increase, in fifty years, of speed in the trotter, but from its having been modified in function and structure, and the effects transmitted to the progeny? If men and women did not mate for love and money and a thousand other motives than with reference to the qualities of their descendants, but, like the domesticated animals, were bred for various qualities, we could make great musicians, painters, mathematicians, generals, or athletes, at pleasure, unchecked save by the occasional effect of atavism. Although this will never be, we may yet clearly perceive, if we but observe closely, with minds divested of prejudice, the working of the indicated law, which, as it has ever done, holds important sway at all times and in all places on earth.

CHAPTER I.

THE GENERAL LAWS OF HEALTH.

N entering upon the subject of health and personal beauty,

which are correlated, it is best to consider, first, what is life, which includes them both. The obvious reason for this course is that if health and physical beauty depend on the observance of the laws of life, at least upon those of well-being, without which life would not be worth living, then we can best understand the production and maintenance of these attributes through knowledge of their source.

The most ordinary observer recognizes everywhere the difference between life, both animal and vegetal, and mere stocks and stones. He sees that the crucial test of life is ability or inability to produce after the manner of the kind,-animals, animals; vegetables, vegetables. He knows perfectly well that a block of red sandstone is derived from a stratum of the earth's crust, but is not one of its descendants, while from the highest animal to the lowest they are respectively the progeny of similar beings. He sees this distinction as clearly as does the most profound man of science, with one exception. This exception is that he does not know, what is largely the revelation through the microscope, of the existence of a world which has always been beyond his ken, in which animal and vegetable forms so descend in the scale of life, or, more properly speaking, have not risen in it, that they are sometimes scarcely distinguishable, and sometimes not at all. In a word, barring this exception, the most ignorant of men sees as clearly as the most instructed the essential difference between the organic and the inorganic world.

But that is only a small step, although, as being the first, an indispensable one to comprehension of life in its various

aspects. Until one has grasped and firmly holds the central idea that all life is fundamentally represented by different kinds of cells, which also produce after the manner of their kind, through various transformations, he fails to obtain possession of the clue which leads to perception of many of the consequences which environ living things. The old doctrine of the naturalist was that all life is derived from an egg. The doctrine of the modern naturalist is that all life proceeds from a cell, for an egg is nothing but a complex, or, as he would call it, a differentiated cell. It is the germinal vesicle of the specialized cell of the egg that fundamentally contains life. All else of the egg, in yelk and albumen, is merely concentrated proteid food for the nourishment of its growing inmate, or shell for its protection during the period of incubation.

In both animals and vegetables, from the lowest organisms, consisting of a single cell, to the highest manifestations of life in each, consisting of untold numbers of cells, the unit of life is the cell, capable, in health, through unknown laws, of reproducing its kind, and of changing its manifestations of kind in the formation of varying products. Bones, marrow, cartilage, tissues of all sorts in the human body are nothing but the final temporary resting-stage of cells which have assumed protean forms and functions. Even the blood itself, through which the whole organism is revivified, is to be regarded physiologically as a tissue. A tissue more plastic than the others, its flow is through appointed channels, bearing with it cells consisting of red and white corpuscles, the former of which, as they move along with the current, have the power of renewing oxygen in the other tissues, while the latter, known as leucocytes, or wandering cells, with distinct power of motion, can become saprophytes, or cells acting as the scavengers of the circulation.

From the cradle to the grave there is no absolute restingstage of life, whether in the single cell or in the organism as a

Life is acting and being reacted upon by complex influences from the earth, earthy, and from far beyond, by those derived from sun and moon, upon which the earth itself depends. The body, through its tissues, composed of cells, is ceaselessly wasted and repaired, as the fundamental condition of temporary endurance in the struggle to which every organic being finally succumbs through the law of death. It will therefore be perceived what bearing these remarks have on the laws of life as the condition precedent of health; that is, unless we are so situated by circumstances of climate and other surrounding conditions, and at the same time obey the laws of life, we cannot, no matter what the strength of the original organism, enjoy health.

We examine our canceled checks, add to them ones still outstanding, and, by comparison of the sum-total with our deposits in bank, carefully cast the balance to find out what still stands to our credit there. But in life, even in robust health, how many carefully reckon up the income and outgo to ascertain what is the balance of endurance left? So far are most reasonable creatures from following such a course, it is generally enough for man or woman to be robust for them to consider their capital unlimited. Pleasure, vanity, and a thousand other frivolous motives induce us to spend lavishly of the greatest of all treasures. The old woman in the fairy tale, with her mumbling jaws and rheum-streaming eyes, was eager to exchange all her riches for the poor girl's blooming cheeks and rounded form, and not less eager was the maiden, in ignorance of the value of her priceless possessions, to seal the bargain on the spot. But, the mutual transfer made, how immediately the maiden saw, from her withered, living grave, that all the riches of the earth cannot compensate for the joy that wells in the heart of youth, health, and beauty.

Youth ought to mean health; more's the pity that it does not always mean it. In the nature of things, we grant, youth