If the world is the result of an established plan, as some say, it must be the conception of a hideous monster whose three cardinal principles are Disease, Despair and Death. But this much we can say: Though God created us a savage, fortunately man is civilizing Nature's brute and is making him a Man.

Disease is one of Nature's cardinal forces. So, to attain health, we struggle against disease; but health only means the guarding of it through fear. "With all the ills the flesh is heir to," true health is a chimera, an existing state unknown to man.

To be "well" is such a precious condition, that Nature cautions us against expecting to retain health too long, by instructing us, through experience, to prepare for a siege of illness. Thus, disease and illness would seem to be the natural states, and health the artificial condition under which Nature permits us to live. No one goes to his grave without suffering the tortures of some disease and paying the penalty of living. No one is exempt from the inflictions Nature imposes.

The greater portion of our life consists in devising means and medication to relieve us of our states of ill health and disease. Sanitation and all the methods we are capable of discovering and inventing are becoming universally applied to kill and to destroy the menacing germs that God causes to inhabit the air, and that breed and multiply in the fertile flesh of our bodies.

And finally, we are so utterly ignorant of how even to eat, sleep, walk, breathe, stand or sit, that the slightest infringement of the simplest rules of life can, and does, cause us irreparable harm.

If we did not move to help ourselves, Nature would have us live in filth and stagnation.

We seek, discover, or invent all kinds of methods to build health and to remain perfectly strong throughout our lives, and yet, despite it all, we are puny and sickly beings. In fact, I do not think there is such a thing as perfect health. What we may do to correct, insure or perfect our healthy tissues will have a detrimental effect upon some other part of our body. What we do to build up must also tear down. What we do to produce health will, after a certain point, produce disease. This, it seems, is the law not only of life, but also of the universe.

It is regrettable that God did not possess the magnanimity of an Ingersoll and make health contagious instead of disease.

Physical pain and mental suffering are the mysterious sorrows that we must experience and pay to a tyrant God for the existence we bear. It is incontrovertible that no realization is given us by Nature of the fearful pains and tortures that we are capable of suffering and still sustain ourselves, only to repeat over and over again the unending torment in exchange for the consciousness of a worthless life.

We, with our limited intellects, with our puny strength, with our inability to utilize all the materials in our possession, are still superior to the workmanship and the justice of God.

Tyrant is no name for such a God, who creates a living organism purposely and maliciously to torment and torture it.

A poor creature is a God who makes his suffering playthings more powerful than "he," and compels them to bear their existence under the lash of inexorable laws of sorrow and suffering, pain and penalty.

And yet we are satisfied with so little. We ask for a crumb only. We are pleased with the slightest favor. A toy delights us; a little trinket elicits from us warm gratitude; a breath of balmy air is drunken with keen and pleasurable delight; a "fine" day is celebrated with exultation!

But what a mockery is life!

We writhe in pain and bear the brunt of an arrogant tyranny from whatever force that created and controls us. We must daily bathe our bodies, wash our hair, brush our teeth, change our clothes and perform other necessary physical functions to feel freedom from the filthy conditions that Nature imposes upon us and surrounds us with.

If Nature saw fit to give us eyes, she should have given us perfect ones; not those which, upon the slightest contact with a minute foreign substance, cause unutterable pain and possible loss of sight, in a world where sight is so imperative!

If Nature saw fit to give us ears, she should have given us perfect ones; not those which are capable of such frightful pain, with the possibility of becoming totally deaf, when it is so necessary to hear!

If Nature saw fit to give us a nose, she should have given us a perfect one; not one that causes such miserable torture and unbearable suffering from the slightest defect!

If Nature saw fit to give us a mouth, she should have given us a perfect one; one that would perform all the functions of perfect speech; not one that is so liable to harm and so susceptible to dumbness, when speech is of such paramount importance to Life!

If Nature saw fit to give us teeth, she should have given us perfect ones; not those which ache and pain with such fearful intensity that the mind is almost distracted!

If Nature saw fit to give us arms, legs, and organs, she should have given us perfect ones; not a body whose tenderness makes it an instrument of such menacing torture; not a body of crippled bones and crippled joints, where suffering results from everything it does!

If Nature saw fit to give us a brain, she should have given us one strong enough to withstand all the rebuffs of life, and one capable enough to utilize all the forces under command. Each person should be a mental Hercules capable of solving his own problems and directing all matter to its greatest material uses.

Instead of the human body being the marvelously constructed instrument we are wont to believe it, we now find it to be nothing but a common machine, imperfectly made, and subject to innumerable changes and radical improvements.

Every person acquainted with the anatomy of the body can give you a list of imperative improvements that it needs, and without which it will continue to function imperfectly and continue to cause pain and suffering to its possessor.

It were a great deal better, after a full summary of life, were we to be created utterly devoid of feeling, equally impervious to joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. We should be manifestly benefited, for the greater part of our life is now full of sorrow, anxiety, fear, pain, disappointment and worry.

A small portion of our life is a matter of indifference. A portion might be termed satisfaction, and a minute balance, an infinitesimal part, termed—if there is such a thing in life—joy.

And yet, the joy we may experience to-day will not be present to-morrow to cheer and comfort us, but the pain that we feel to-day will pinch us more strongly to-morrow, and will remain as an ever-poignant memory.

Joy and pleasure are of a transitory nature only, while pain and sorrow are of a permanent and accumulative character. Is all of life worth the sorrow, the agony and fear of death?

Just think of giving a life so full of grief that those who have it do not want it and quite often destroy it! No wonder that drugs more powerful than our minds, used to numb the pains of life, are so much in demand and so universally used.

What a ridiculous assumption it is to think that a soul, separate and distinct from the body, would imprison itself in such a miserable confinement!

Instead of life's being a privilege, it is a prison, wherein we must suffer fearful pains and still more fearful thoughts. Physical pain registers a high degree of intense feverish suffering, but mental torture is fired with the scorch of hell.

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