Dr. Paley was accustomed to direct the particular attention of travellers in foreign countries to the condition of the people as respects cleanliness, and the local provisions for the prevention of pollution.  He was of opinion that a greater insight might thus be obtained into their habits of decency, self-respect, and industry, and into their moral and social condition generally, than from facts of any other description.  People are cleanly in proportion as they are decent, industrious, and self-respecting.  Unclean people are uncivilized.  The dirty classes of great towns are invariably the “dangerous classes” of those towns.  And if we would civilize the classes yet uncivilized, we must banish dirt from amongst them.

Yet dirt forms no part of our nature.  It is a parasite, feeding upon human life, and destroying it.  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.

Moses was the most practical of sanitary reformers.  Among the eastern nations generally, cleanliness is a part of religion.  They esteem it not only as next to godliness, but as a part of godliness itself.  They connect the idea of internal sanctity with that of external purification.  They feel that it would be an insult to the Maker they worship to come into His presence covered with impurity.  Hence the Mahommedans devote almost as much care to the erection of baths, as to that of mosques; and alongside the place of worship is usually found the place of cleansing, so that the faithful may have the ready means of purification previous to their act of worship.