And there are, I believe, peoples who possess this tragic sense of life also.

It is to this that we must now turn our attention, beginning with this matter of health and disease.

FOOTNOTES: 

[5] “Salto inmortal.”  There is a play here upon the term salto mortal, used to denote the dangerous aerial somersault of the acrobat, which cannot be rendered in English.—­J.E.C.F.

[6] “Conciencia.”  The same word is used in Spanish to denote both consciousness and conscience.  If the latter is specifically intended, the qualifying adjective “moral” or “religiosa” is commonly added.—­J.E.C.F.

[7] San Juan de los Angeles.

[8] To be lacking in everything but intelligence is the necessary qualification for thinking like you.

[9] James Thomson, author of The City of Dreadful Night.

II.

THE STARTING-POINT

To some, perhaps, the foregoing reflections may seem to possess a certain morbid character.  Morbid?  But what is disease precisely?  And what is health?

May not disease itself possibly be the essential condition of that which we call progress and progress itself a disease?

Who does not know the mythical tragedy of Paradise?  Therein dwelt our first parents in a state of perfect health and perfect innocence, and Jahwe gave them to eat of the tree of life and created all things for them; but he commanded them not to taste of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But they, tempted by the serpent—­Christ’s type of prudence—­tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and became subject to all diseases, and to death, which is their crown and consummation, and to labour and to progress.  For progress, according to this legend, springs from original sin.  And thus it was the curiosity of Eve, of woman, of her who is most thrall to the organic necessities of life and of the conservation of life, that occasioned the Fall and with the Fall the Redemption, and it was the Redemption that set our feet on the way to God and made it possible for us to attain to Him and to be in Him.

Do you want another version of our origin?  Very well then.  According to this account, man is, strictly speaking, merely a species of gorilla, orang-outang, chimpanzee, or the like, more or less hydrocephalous.  Once on a time an anthropoid monkey had a diseased offspring—­diseased from the strictly animal or zoological point of view, really diseased; and this disease, although a source of weakness, resulted in a positive gain in the struggle for survival.  The only vertical mammal at last succeeded in standing erect—­man.  The upright position freed him from the necessity of using his hands as means of support in walking; he was able, therefore, to oppose the thumb to the other four fingers, to seize