Arnold's Lectures on the Structure and Laws of the Human Body; Adapted to the Capacity of Youth ... (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...of the brain continues through life, if its possessor lives in such a manner that its energies are not crippled by connection with a weakened body. There is no need of this dotage or second childhood--it is not natural. If men lived as nature designed they should, the mind would become stronger to the last. In ancient times, when men lived more naturally, old age was but another name fopwisdom; but nowa-days a man is kicked off the stage of action at fifty. We have our retired lists of ministers, soldiers, and politicians-a polite system of bribery for the recipients not to expose their weakness. But this should not be so; a man's mind should be stronger at seventy than it is at thirty; it should be stronger at eighty than it is at seventy; for I believe that the mind was designed to progress continually to the end of the chapter. And then, I believe, that when it leaves this chapter and commences another in a higher state of existence, it will continue to progress. And who is prepared to say but that it will go into a still higher and higher existence through-all eternity, as its powers become more and more developed? No wonder that men's minds grow weak in old age, . in modern times. The course of life we live, is the one best calculated to weaken the energies of our brain; and it is a good thing that our Creator has taken' compassion on us and shortened our lives, for if we were permitted to live a hundred years, as in old times, we should have no mind at all to start with in the next world. We are all of us living in such a way as to weaken and finally destroy the integrity of our brain, and, as a consequence, our mind; for you must bear constantly in recollection, that the brain is the organ of the mind, and whatever...