All the different families of mammalia, when living in freedom, live closely up to the life period allotted to them by Nature. Man is the only exception. It is claimed that according to the laws of longevity his average length of life should be considerably over one hundred years, while according to life insurance statistics, the average is at present [1913] thirty-seven years. This shows an immense discrepancy between the possible and the actual longevity of man.
Even this brief span of life means little else than weakness, physical and mental suffering and degeneracy for the majority of mankind. Visiting physicians of the public schools in our large cities report that seventy-five percent of all school children show defective health in some way. Diagnosis from the Eye proves that the remaining twenty-five percent are also more or less affected by hereditary and acquired disease conditions. Christian Science says, "There is no disease." Nature's records in the iris of the eye say there is no perfect health.
These established facts of greatly impaired longevity and universal abnormality of the human race would of themselves indicate that there is something radically wrong somewhere in the life habits of man, and that there is ample reason for the great health-reform movement which was started about the middle of the last century by the pioneers of Nature Cure in Germany, and which has since swept, under many different forms and guises, all portions of the civilized world.
When people in general grow better acquainted with the laws underlying prenatal and postnatal child culture, natural living and the natural treatment of diseases, human beings will approach much more closely the normal in health, strength, beauty and longevity. Then will arise a true aristocracy, not of morbid, venous blue blood, but pulsating with the rich red blood of health.
However, to reach this ideal of perfect physical, mental and moral health, succeeding generations will have to adhere to the natural ways of living and of treating their ailments. It cannot be attained by the present generation. The enthusiasts who claim that they can, by their particular methods, achieve perfect health and live the full term of human life, are destined to disappointment. We are so handicapped by the mistakes of the past that the best which most of us adults can do is to patch up, to attain a reasonable measure of health and to approach somewhat nearer Nature's full allotment of life.
Wild animals living in freedom retain their full vigor unimpaired almost to the end of life. Hunters report that among the great herds of buffalo, elk and deer, the oldest bucks are the rulers and maintain their sovereignty over the younger males of the herd solely by reason of their superior strength and prowess. Premature old age, among human beings, as indicated by the early decay of physical and mental powers, is brought on solely by their violation of Nature's Laws in almost all the ordinary habits of life.
Health Positive—Disease Negative
The freer the inflow of life force into the organism, the greater the vitality, the more there is of strength, of positive resisting and recuperating power.
In the book~ Harmonics of Evolution~ we are told that at the very foundation of the manifestation of life lies the principle of polarity, which expresses itself in the duality and unity of positive and negative affinity. The swaying to and fro of the positive and the negative, the desire to balance incomplete polarity, constitutes the very ebb and flow of life.
Disease is disturbed polarity. Exaggerated positive or negative conditions, whether physical, mental, moral or spiritual, tend to disease on the respective planes of being. Foods, medicines, suggestion and all the other different methods of therapeutic treatment exert on the individual subjected to them either a positive or a negative influence. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that the physician and every one who wishes to live and work in harmony with Nature's Laws should understand this all-important question of magnetic polarity.