participator of the life which now is; but it is not "by being anxious" in an inordinate or unduly fussy fashion that he can hope to live long or well. The best way to live well is to work well. Good work is the daily test and safeguard of personal health. I do not mean over-work," or "under-work," or making a great show of energy, but doing what we have to do " with our might"

that is, earnestly and with industry, bringing the powers of mind and body to bear on the task as though it were worth doing, and therefore worth doing thoroughly well.

If those who desire health for themselves and their families could be induced to live in closer conformity with the laws and instincts of an intelligent life, they would secure a larger share of that greatest of all blessings, "personal health," and hand down a better heritage of habit, inclination, and appetite, to those who are destined to be their successors, and whose destiny they must help to shape.

Personal hygiene is in two senses personal. It is hygiene of the person, and, in a special and almost pure sense, personal in its scope and possibilities. I have insisted on the importance of avoiding undue carefulness for the health of the body and mind. By a fidgety and timid policy of self-preservation life may be so embittered that it will cease to be worth living. By too much introspection the consciousness may, so to say,

be made to consume itself. These are evils and dangers against which it is needful to guard.

Meanwhile something must be said on the other side of the question. Neglect is scarcely less injurious to body and mind than excess in precaution. The practical aim should be to live an orderly and natural life, and to leave contingencies to be met by the force and strength of those safeguards with which the physical and mental being is surrounded by the collateral effects of its own systematic and habitual healthiness. If the eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light. If the life be pure, the whole nature will be full of health and in a persistent state of bodily and mental soundness.

Health-preservation does not so much consist in the avoidance of disease as in the establishment of a habit to which disease is foreign, and by which the invasion of disease will be resisted. We were not intended to pick our way through the world trembling at every step, but to walk boldly, secure in the confidence that "a sound mind in a sound body" is able to triumph over all ordinary difficulties and to surmount the perils it cannot escape.

Disorderly activity is the first departure from health in every function, and it is against this departure the life should be most resolutely guarded. The way to protect ourselves from this danger is to make the whole life orderly and to keep it so.

Some nervous folk make the mistake of supposing that an orderly life must necessarily be a life "by rule."

How opposed this assumption is to the principle illustrated throughout nature should be. apparent on the most general observation. There is nothing like uniformity in the material world. Diversity of form and colour characterises the face of nature; and, with all the rhythm and order we discern in the customs and processes of nature, there is no sameness. Nature abhors "vain repetitions."

Enough of individualism presents itself in every stage of a natural existence to redeem the commonest experiences of healthy life from the reproach of being monotonous. When man with his fancy views of the reign of law tries to establish order, he resorts to a process of government by rule; and, whether the subject of his control be himself or those around him, he incurs the irksome and enervating influence of uniformity.

Nothing can well be more directly opposed and even antagonistic to the conditions of health than a severe austerity. Take the buoyancy and spring that result from expectancy out of life, and existence becomes a labour and an exhausting toil. The mill-horse round of duty and relaxation which a life by rule entails is in itself unhealthy.

It is pitiful to watch the weary progress of the

valetudinarian who in his misconception of order self-imposes a burden. The only marvel is that life should be practicable under a régime which admits neither of hope nor of emotion, but is full of unceasing solicitude what to eat, what to drink, and what to put on or lay aside. The life of the body is squandered in the energy bestowed on the ordering of its food and raiment.

The problem of health is to live easily and happily, without worry about self, and with such cheerfulness as consists in taking the world and life as we find them-neither grieving over-much for its sorrows, nor revelling too eagerly in its socalled enjoyments. Those approach most nearly and safely to the solution of this problem who so live as not of the world, and yet as placed in, and passing through, it with a keenly sensitive appreciation of the opportunities life affords, and the self-improvement to which, when rightly used, its vicissitudes minister.

nesses.

We are not sent into this world to be miserable, nor was life given us to be wasted in melancholy regrets for its emptiness and wants and weakAnother great point is to make the best of what may be vouchsafed us rather than to pile up an agony of regret in manifold mournings over disappointment. If we have little health, let us make the most of it, instead of frittering away what we have in lamentations poured out on the score of its littleness.

One of the considerations which should be suggested by the reflection that health is personal is that both the opportunity and the responsibility for its maintenance are personal. We hear a great deal about the need of public measures for the preservation of health, and of the obligations which rest on the State and the community. Let us think more of our own individual share of the burden.

Every man may be relatively healthy-that is, healthy up to the limits of his physical and mental organisation-if he will; and the way to reach that level is to live naturally, wisely, and as common-sense and instinct combine to guide the judgment, with neither excessive carefulness nor extreme carelessness, but the mean of intelligent reasonableness and independence which lies midway between the two.

"FEELINGS."

THE feeling of being "below par," "not up to the mark," or "not very well," has much to answer for. This is one of the excuses of lifeless and lazy folk with no heart and energy in their work, and not obedient to the law and obligations of duty. The world is full of such persons, and society has, to a certain extent, become

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