and think nothing about it.  It does not exist for you.  A nervous resistance to any sort of indigestion prolongs the attack and leaves, a brain-impression which not only makes the same trouble more liable to recur, but increases the temptation to eat forbidden fruit.  Of course this is always preceded by a full persuasion that the food is not likely to disagree with us now simply because it did before.  And to some extent, this is true.  Food that will bring pain and suffering when taken by a tired stomach, may prove entirely nourishing when the stomach is rested and ready for it.  In that case, the owner of the stomach has learned once for all never to give his digestive apparatus work to do when it is tired.  Send a warm drink as a messenger to say that food is coming later, give yourself a little rest, and then eat your dinner.  The fundamental laws of health in eating are very simple; their variations for individual needs must be discovered by each for himself.

“But,” it may be objected, “why make all this fuss, why take so much thought about what I eat or what I do not eat?” The special thought is simply to be taken at first to get into the normal habit, and as a means of forgetting our digestion just as we forget the washing of our hands until we are reminded by some discomfort; whereupon we wash them and forget again.  Nature will not allow us to forget.  When we are not obeying her laws, she is constantly irritating us in one way or another.  It is when we obey, and obey as a matter of course, that she shows herself to be a tender mother, and helps us to a real companionship with her.

Nothing is more amusing, nothing could appeal more to Mother Nature’s sense of humor, than the various devices for exercise which give us a complicated self-consciousness rather than a natural development of our physical powers.  Certain simple exercises are most useful, and if the weather is so inclement that they cannot be taken in the open air, it is good to have a well-ventilated hall.  Exercise with others, too, is stimulating, and more invigorating when there is air enough and to spare.  But there is nothing that shows the subjective, self-conscious state of this generation more than the subjective form which exercise takes.  Instead of games and play or a good vigorous walk in the country, there are endless varieties of physical culture, most of it good and helpful if taken as a means to an end, but almost useless as it is taken as an end in itself; for it draws the attention to one’s self and one’s own muscles in a way to make the owner serve the muscle instead of the muscle being made to serve the owner.  The more physical exercise can be simplified and made objective, the more it serves its end.  To climb a high mountain is admirable exercise, for we have the summit as an end, and the work of climbing is steadily objective, while we get the delicious effect of a freer circulation and all that it means.  There might be similar exercises in gymnasiums, and there are, indeed, many exercises where some objective achievement is the end, and the training of a muscle follows as a matter of course.  There is the exercise-instinct; we all have it the more perfectly as we obey it.  If we have suffered from a series of disobediences, it is a comparatively easy process to work back into obedience.