Nervous exhaustion is met by recourse to all
kinds of stimulation. We are apt to think coffee and tea as harmless,
or rather as slow in their deleterious action, as any. Are they nothing
more?
As debility marks the degeneration of our physical constitution, so
does a morbid sensitiveness at all earthly indulgence, a tendency to
reform things innocent, although useless, betray the weakness of the
moral health of our day. An ascetic spirit is abroad; our amateur
physiologists look rather to a mortification than an honest building-up
of the flesh. They prefer naked muscle to rounded outline, and seek
rather to test than to enjoy their bodies. Fearing to be Epicureans,
they become Spartans, as far as their feebler organizations will allow
them, and very successful Stoics, by the aid of Saxon will. By a faulty
logic, things which in excess are hurtful are denied a moderate use.
Habits innocent in themselves are to be cast aside, lest they induce
others which are injurious.
There is but little danger that Puritan antecedents and a New England
climate should tend to idle indulgence or Epicurean sloth. We think
there is a tendency to reform too far. We confess our preference for
the physique of Apollo to that of Hercules.
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