2,16 
 
 
 Dr. Axel Emit Gibson
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L 1 

 
 This book is DUE on last date stamped below 
 
 UN 
 
 
 927 
 
 
 
 APR 1 6 194?) 
 
 NOV 41952 
 
 r r- 29 
 
 9 196t 
 
 APR 12 1962
 
 NEW LIGHT 
 
 ON 
 
 LIVING 
 
 DR. AXEL EMIL GIBSON
 
 Copyright, April 1922 
 By DR. AXEL EMIL GIBSON
 
 JVxel tintl (btbsmt
 
 
 "Evolution is God's way of doing things." 
 Prof. John Fiske. 
 
 "To live for common ends is to be common. 
 The highest faith makes still the highest 
 
 man; 
 For we grow like the things that we believe 
 
 in, 
 
 And rise or sink as we aim high or low. 
 No mirror shows such likeness of the face 
 As the faith by which we live in heart and 
 
 mind; 
 
 We are in very truth the thing we love : 
 And love, through noblest deeds, is born of 
 ; - faith." 
 
 X 
 
 j? Robert Browning.
 
 "Through the tube of my microscope I am 
 watching the development of a speck of pro- 
 toplasm. Strange possibilities lie dormant in 
 that semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate sup- 
 ply of warmth reach its watery cradle and 
 the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid 
 and yet so steady and purpose-like in their 
 succession that one can compare them to 
 those operated by a skilled modeler upon a 
 formless lump of clay. As with an invisible 
 trowel the mass is divided into smaller and 
 smaller portions until it is reduced to an ag- 
 gregation of granules not too large to build 
 withal the finest fabrics of the nascent or- 
 ganism. And then it is as if a delicate finger 
 traced out the line to be occupied by the com- 
 ing spinal column and moulded the contour 
 of the body; pinching up the head at one end, 
 the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and 
 limb into due proportion in such an artistic 
 way that after watching the process one is 
 almost involuntarily possessed by the notion 
 that some more subtle aid to vision than the 
 chromatic would show the hidden artist, with 
 his plan before him, striving with skillful 
 manipulation to perfect his work." 
 
 Thomas Huxley, La\ Sermons. ' '
 
 .... "Those who do not read the 
 book of Nature as a whole, who do not 
 try their faith by the records of the 
 rocks and the everlasting stars, who 
 are oblivious to the great law of evo- 
 lution which has worked out the sal- 
 vation of man and all living things, 
 through good and ill report, through 
 delays and sufferings of agonies in- 
 calculable, who have not learned that 
 the calamities of men and nations are 
 not the effect of some offended divin- 
 ity, but the ups and downs in the 
 long run of human development, and 
 that in the nature of things, justice is 
 meted out to all men if not in a day, 
 then in a year, or in a thousand years; 
 if not to the individual, then to his 
 family, or to his race those who take 
 no account of all these things soon 
 lose their reckoning in times like 
 
 ours." John Burroughs.
 
 Forword 
 
 Plato was right; no man turns his 
 back to the light knowingly. We sin 
 in ignorance, and often in innocence. 
 Yet the great laws of life do not change 
 their courses or suspend their opera- 
 tions because of the failure of the indi- 
 vidual to realize the nature of the forces 
 his attitude brings into action. For 
 whatever we sow, we must reap ; and if 
 we sow weed in place of seed, nature 
 cannot stop her world-embracing, bio- 
 logic advance for the sake of correcting 
 individual mistakes. 
 
 Yet as long as we have eyes, with 
 which to see, and ears to hear, we have 
 no more right to find fault with nature, 
 than if we should be drenched by a rain- 
 storm after having neglected to bring 
 
 with us our umbrella or raincoat 
 
 Knowledge is needed at any cost, 
 knowledge and judgment; and the 
 laws of life are the teachers which, 
 with unerring certainty, at once pro- 
 tect and guide us in the right direction, 
 no matter how circuitous and obscure 
 the course may appear. 
 
 In a universe, governed by construc- 
 tive and sustaining laws, where every 
 aspect of life works for harmony, health 
 and power, it is not only our right, but 
 our duty to be well. Sickness stands for 
 friction and discord, due to the attitude 
 an individual takes to his environment 
 in terms of thought or act. Nature 
 stamps the mark of diseass on the brow
 
 of disloyalty, when we allow our desires 
 and appetites to menace our health by 
 life-sapping indulgences. For any in- 
 dulgence which violates the laws of 
 health, and impairs our usefulness, is 
 an attack upon life itself, impeding not 
 only our own career, but strikes discord 
 and chaos into the very heart-life of an 
 interrelated and reciprocal humanity. 
 
 A diseased individual is a side-tracked 
 engine, derailed by obstructions thrown 
 in his way by his own mistakes. And 
 while medicine may succeed in pushing 
 him onwards over the rough and un- 
 paved route of chronic ailment, it is 
 only loyalty to life, in terms of natural 
 living, that can ever bring him back on 
 his native tracks, where life again as- 
 serts its smooth, frictionless and self- 
 regenerating power. To know the meth- 
 od of living which brings about this 
 restoration of natural health and power, 
 should be the duty of every human be- 
 ing. And it is the mission of this book 
 to shed such light upon the science and 
 philosophy of living, that the individual 
 may not only see the truth, but also 
 realize the supreme reason and logic 
 back of the things that happen. 
 
 "What is man," asks Carlyle, in one 
 of his essays and answers: "A breath, 
 a vision, an appearance; a visualized 
 idea in the eternal mind." 
 
 DR. AXEL EMIL GIBSON. 
 
 Los Angeles, Calif., March 25, 1922.
 
 Index 
 
 1. Up-to-Nature not "Back-to-Nature." 
 
 2. The Difference Between Looking at Nature or 
 
 into Nature. 
 
 3. Historical "Back-to-Nature-Men." 
 
 4. An Analysis of Forced Water Drinking. 
 
 5. The "Unfired" Food Theory. 
 
 6. Pepper and Salt Friends or Enemies? 
 
 7. Salt-Treatment as a Cure for Cancer and 
 
 Tuberculosis. 
 
 8. The Great Fruit Indiscrimination. 
 
 9. The Problem of Quantity in Feeding. 
 
 10. The Einstein Theory Applied to Life. 
 
 11. Self-Directed Evolution. 
 
 12. "Lest we Forget."
 
 New Light on Living 
 
 UP-TO-NATURE, NOT BACK-TO-NATURE 
 
 THERE seems to be a tendency in ordinary 
 human nature to try to repair the conse- 
 quences of one error by committing another. 
 All throughout history we find these mental cruisers 
 on the highseas of life, pursuing theories and appear- 
 ances in order to prove their preconceived notions 
 with regard to some problem of life, continually 
 shifting their course from one extreme departure 
 of experimentation to another. The poise of exist- 
 ence, the balance of judgment, the middle of the 
 road in a word, the shortest line between two 
 points has always been the most difficult achieve- 
 ment in the career of self-seeking and self-serving 
 philosophers. 
 
 In one of his stories, Mark Twain speaks of a 
 steamboat owner on the Mississippi River, who 
 advertised for a pilot to run one of his boats. When 
 the applicant appeared, he was asked if he knew the 
 exact location of the various snags and reefs of the 
 river. The man shook his head. "What !" exclaimed 
 the owner. "Do you expect me to trust you with a 
 boat if you don't know the obstructions you may 
 run up against?" The pilot whittled for a moment, 
 and then drawled out : "Well, sir, if you are looking 
 for a man that knows where all the snags and reefs 
 are in the river, you must find some other fellow; 
 
 IS
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 but I know the channel where the snags are not, and 
 there is where I calculate to do my sailing." 
 
 It is not necessary to know all the snags and 
 bumps of the moral and mental world to find one's 
 way into peace, service and security. The real 
 important phase of the research lies in the motive 
 of the research, and whether the latter stands for 
 the universal advancement and betterment for each 
 and all of the creatures on earth. Life, to be safe 
 and worth while, must be gauged by a long-ranged 
 vision, a reciprocity of interest, and an unshakable 
 faith in the worth-while of the undertaking. 
 
 For any pursuit which is staged and engineered 
 solely by self-interest and personal ambition, inverts 
 the mental vision of the individual, and renders the 
 perspectives of his field inaccurate. In his eagerness 
 to find the truth for its own sake, or for the gratifi- 
 cation of his personal ambition, he is likely to run 
 the risk of losing the compass of his judgment, and 
 to fall a victim for that universal shortcoming which 
 awaits every wayfarer who has lost his points of 
 orientation : he finds himself in the vicious circle 
 which causes the individual to return on his own 
 tracks, and land at the very point of his departure. 
 
 The molluska when injured mends her shell with 
 a pearl; the man when he commits a mistake, in 
 the majority of cases, corrects it by committing 
 another. Thus, in the first case, we have a creature 
 who, with its mere rudiments of vision, sees enough 
 to produce a pearl, and in the second we have an 
 entity who while endowed with the most sweeping 
 power of vision, yet fails to see how to correct his 
 own mistake. 
 
 This because of the fact, that we may ''have eyes 
 to see and yet not see." For without the medium
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 of sight, which is light, there can be no seeing. 
 Hence in the darkness of night a man with the best 
 eyes may yet find himself going astray, because of 
 his lack of medium for seeing. And having thus 
 lost his power to see, he unconsciously or subcon- 
 sciously comes under the influence of another vision, 
 the vision of memory, which can see without light, 
 but only the events of the past. Thus the individual 
 finds .himself between two powers of vision the 
 eye, which sees in the present, but only in the me- 
 dium of light, and memory which can see without 
 light, but only in the direction of the past. In the 
 power and aptitude of the individual to respond to 
 either of these guidances, lies his course of direction 
 forward or backward. 
 
 In this fact lies the explanation of people, lost in 
 the night, who have found themselves returning into 
 their own tracks, because under the sway of the 
 vicious circle, which always grips the man who loses 
 his light physical or mental and leads him back 
 to the point of his departure. The weaker his vision 
 of the future, the more vacillating and uncertain 
 his steps, the stronger becomes the pull upon him 
 from the past; while his train of thought, fading 
 into theories and fancies, turns his face toward 
 life's past stages, and gives rise to the Back-to- 
 Nature Man. For the past, with its memories, is a 
 mere depositary of records, formed by the once 
 active life-drama of a continuously vanishing pres- 
 ent. Hence it is only through a resolute control of 
 our perceptive faculties, focused in the light of 
 truth, and guaged by a firm conviction in the possi- 
 bilities of realizing every desire that makes for hu- 
 man welfare that we may escape from losing our- 
 selves in the shadow-theories which the force of an 
 
 15
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 ungovernable memory leads us into. The indi- 
 vidual must always be greater than his past, or his 
 evolution comes to a standstill. Memory is a men- 
 tal archive, the hall of records, so to speak, of ac- 
 complished or lost opportunities, and has value to 
 us as a means of comparison and adjustment, rather 
 than as a guiding and constructive force in decipher- 
 ing and unveiling the future. 
 
 16
 
 II 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOOKING AT 
 NATURE AND INTO NATURE 
 
 THE principle involved in the Back-to-Nature 
 fallacy has been one of the great, retarding 
 factors in the career of individual evolution. 
 For to go "back-to-nature" is not only to lose the 
 opportunities of the present, but also to miss the 
 vision of the future, as it is in the exhaustive reali- 
 zation of the present, that the future designs be- 
 come revealed. For it is here, in this living present, 
 that we find the vision which the conjuror of the 
 Arabian tale found in his magic crystal, causing the 
 future to reflect its visage ; it is in the experimental 
 field of individual evolution that the on-rush of sen- 
 sations, emotions, impulses, visions and conceptions 
 bring out life's deeper meaning, for us to contem- 
 plate, analyze, penetrate, comprehend and interpret, 
 in terms of service, beauty and usefulness. 
 
 Hence to the extent that a phase of evolution be- 
 comes a known and utilized fact to human under- 
 standing it passes into one of those steps of human 
 progress which successively have served the indi- 
 vidual as a means of advance, and in its turn is to 
 give way to other steps. As a separate factor in 
 active progressive life each particular event has lost 
 its usefulness, and to be guided by its memory is 
 to return upon one's own career and pass into the 
 vicious circle of dogmatism, confusion and failure. 
 
 17
 
 IMITATION MENTAL SUICIDE 
 
 Every great invention or discovery was ever 
 the result of original individual conceptions, often 
 absolutely contrary to the course and method pur- 
 sued by evolution itself. In his invention of the 
 phonograph, Thomas Edison made a discovery 
 which strictly illustrates this fact. As long as 
 the inventor imitated the natural design involved 
 in the structures of the organ of voice, and repro- 
 duced with minute faithfulness the anatomical ele- 
 ments of the throat its larynx and pharynx, its 
 cricoid cartilage and lingual ligaments, etc., he met 
 with mere failures. It was only under the strain 
 and stress of intellectual applications that he finally 
 struck a rift in his mental atmosphere, when out 
 from the clouds of speculations sprang a ray of that 
 deeper consciousness called intuition, by which light 
 of understanding was shed upon his problem. The 
 process is universal. In Darwin's Gorilla Ape, who, 
 for generations, had been brooding over his neces- 
 sity to open the shell of the cocoanut to get at its 
 interior, we find the same light in terms of instinct 
 revealed to the struggling anthropoid the use of tvro 
 stones as the primitive anvil and sledge hammer. 
 A new field of evolution had thus been opened for 
 the simian consciousness. In place of imitating the 
 anatomy of the human throat, with its staggering 
 complex of self-adjusting vital lever-action and au- 
 tomatic vocal technique, the genius of Edison 
 grasped the same principles as nature herself the 
 principle of vibration and applied it to his own 
 system of vocal mechanics. On the responsive me- 
 dium of tonal vibration the human voice was caught 
 
 18
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 and registered in its finest modulations, preserved 
 and reproduced with the accuracy of life itself. The 
 phonograph was invented: a machine talking in 
 terms of human song and language had become a 
 tangible reality. 
 
 The invention of the flying machine, to be a suc- 
 cess, must find its basis and outset, not in a me- 
 chanic imitation of the flight of the birds, but in the 
 discovery of the principle which makes it possible 
 for the birds to neutralize the force of gravity and 
 use the air with the same safety of support as the 
 quadrupeds use the earth. The builders of the aero- 
 plane occupy the same position in relation to flying, 
 as Edison once in working out the problem of his 
 talking machine. The knowledge which is to render 
 aerial navigation an undertaking of controllable 
 safety has not yet been found. A new departure 
 must be struck; the problem to be solved is that of 
 gravitation rather than of aviation; the problem 
 of suspending and overcoming the menacing influ- 
 ence which the relentless pull of the earth exert* 
 upon the things of the earth. No imitation of me- 
 chanical structure will insure safety and success to 
 the ambitions of the human mind in its struggle for 
 supremacy over elemental gravity. Knowledge is 
 the only power knowledge not merely of appear- 
 ances but of realities ; not in the control of mechanics 
 only, but of dynamics ; not of a hand-to-hand wrest- 
 ling with archaic forces, but with intuitive under- 
 standing and subsequent control of the principles 
 which constitute the directing, animating and sus- 
 
 19
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 taining principle back of the wonderful phenome- 
 non of bird flight.* 
 
 Only to the extent man knows, can he lead, and 
 only to the extent he leads, can he conquer and con- 
 trol. Like the Sphinx of the Ancients, nature 
 must either be controlled or be suffered to control; 
 must either be the master or the servant ; either help 
 us or crush us. And having brought her under con- 
 trol, we should interpret rather than imitate her 
 methods. The back-to-nature-man pleads imitation ; 
 the up-to-natu re-man interpretation. The inventor 
 or discoverer penetrates nature, reveals her princi- 
 ples and releases her powers. What Thomas Edi- 
 son is doing in the mechano-dynamic world, Luther 
 Burbank is doing in the vital-dynamic. In his mir- 
 acle gardens at Santa Rosa, California, this inspired 
 laborer in the vineyard of the Lord, is demonstrat- 
 ing what Nature can accomplish under the guidance 
 of a master. The Crimson Poppy, unknown in the 
 entire domain of visible nature, the pitless prune, 
 spineless cactus, seedless blackberry, and a host of 
 other miracles, are wrought in the silent, invisible 
 workshops of nature's deeper life under the leader- 
 ship of the California wizard, whose intuition, 
 through untiring, self-sacrificing labors, has re- 
 vealed to him the ways and means of nature, and in- 
 itiated him into her mysteries. More perhaps than 
 any naturalist, in this or any other country and any 
 other era, Luther Burbank has demonstrated, in ac- 
 tual tangible results, that nature unaided fails. For 
 in its higher expressions of life, nature depends on 
 culture and man-directed evolution, on loving mo- 
 
 The problem of nautical navigation has been solved on this very 
 basis. By the Introduction of the semi vacuum In our sailing vessels, 
 we have succeeded in neutralizing the law of gravity in its relation 
 to floating bodies In themselves heavier than the medium in which 
 they are suspended. 
 
 SO
 
 NEW LIGHT O/V LIVING 
 
 lives in research, and untiring, altruistic purposes of 
 application. Leave the apple tree alone to the un- 
 aided care of sun and wind, and after a few genera- 
 tions its output will show evidence of retrogression, 
 slowly sinking back into the matrix of the crude 
 apple, which yet grows in the highlands of Asia, 
 from whence it came. 
 
 Similarly with the Royal Chrysanthemum of our 
 flower shows, which the genius and affection of man 
 lift up from the skimpy, little, wild flower that is 
 yet to be found in nature's primitive simplicity upon 
 the hillsides of China and Japan. The same condi- 
 tions meet us in the luscious naval orange, whose 
 humble ancestry is still extant in a bitter, small- 
 sized, inedible fruit, indigenous to the sterile soil of 
 the Peruvian Highlands. Even the animal testifies 
 to this law of life this principle of being "our 
 brothers' keepers," on every plane of life as can 
 be seen in the Kentucky thoroughbred "Black 
 Beauty" stallion, which human care and untiring 
 patience gradually evolved from the primitive horse 
 of the prairie to a veritable human-like intellect. 
 Cases of these kind are innumerable, and emphasize 
 the ancient fact, that to assist Nature does not mean 
 to go back-to-nature, but rather to be moving in Her 
 own direction. For in order to know, we must first 
 be able to see, as no judgment can be formed until 
 the sense of sight has been ordered to verify the 
 statements made by the other sense-organs. But as 
 the eye can operate only in the medium of light, it 
 follows, that to obtain perfect seeing, the organism 
 must not only have a perfect eye, but also perfect 
 light, which is truth. 
 
 For light, when applied to the mind, and as a 
 mental phenomenon, is truth itself, while seeing, 
 
 21
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 considered from the same point of view, is the func- 
 tion of the mind to ascertain the truth, and thus 
 stands for reasoning intelligence or the power to 
 know. And as there can be no sight without light, 
 so there can be no knowledge without truth. To 
 walk in physical darkness always means uncertainty, 
 stumbling and mistakes ; while to walk in mental 
 darkness, which is absence of truth, is characterized 
 by that mental uncertainty, vague speech, wild the- 
 orizing and general dogmatizing, that comes from 
 ignorance, and from efforts to ascertain facts with- 
 out the guidance of truth. Finally, the most om- 
 inous part of the entire category is found in the 
 fact that while physical light is shed upon every eye 
 that faces the day, the light of the mind, which is 
 truth itself, comes only to him who consciously re- 
 sponds to truth, talks the truth, acts the truth, in 
 a word lives the truth. Hence falsehood, sham, 
 pretense, insincerity, vice, in their failure to respond 
 to truth, notwithstanding the keenest power of logic 
 and inductive reasoning, will never discover a single 
 original truth for the benefit of life. The discoverer 
 must walk in the light of truth, which alone is pos- 
 sible if he lives the truth, acts, speaks and thinks 
 the truth. Thousands of back-to-nature devotees, 
 with all their professed love for nature, and with the 
 same opportunities as Luther Burbank, but, ani- 
 mated by no higher motives than the gratification 
 of personal ambitions and social comforts, have 
 failed to respond to the vision of life's deeper mean- 
 ing and accomplished nothing. For without the 
 vision of truth, there can arise no power to know, 
 no intelligence to interpret, and no mastery to di- 
 rect the creative energies of nature. In place of en- 
 listing as standard bearer for the advance army of
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 evolution, the back-to-nature-man retires to the rear 
 to fall in line with its buckaneers and canteen 
 keepers.
 
 Ill 
 
 HISTORICAL "B ACK-TO-NATURE-MEN" 
 
 NOW and then a "back-to-nature-man" rises 
 into historical eminence. Yet, notwithstand- 
 ing the often overwhelming powers of these 
 men as leaders, and thinkers, their historical influ- 
 ence has always brought the hands on the Dial of 
 Progress a few stages backward. Thus it took 
 France a hundred years or more to recuperate from 
 the religious iconoclism and ethical vandalism of her 
 great "back-to-nature-man," Jean Jacques Rosseau. 
 Confusing the principles of morality with "natural- 
 ness," of truthfulness with brutality and sincerity 
 with vulgarity, this in many respects great mind, 
 set a premium on obscenity by substituting simplic- 
 ity and innocence for brutality and unrestrained in- 
 stincts, until in the course of time this reversion or 
 perversion of social, communal, political and relig- 
 ious relationship went down in human history in 
 the universal smash-up known as the French Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 A later and even greater "back-to-nature-man," 
 the Russian Socialist and philosopher, Count Leo 
 Tolstoi has been more responsible than any other 
 individual factor in landing the Russian Empire on 
 the rocks of perverted liberalism. He destroyed his 
 people's faith in the theory of the Imperial Russian 
 Government, without putting anything in its place 
 without even telling them that another kind of gov- 
 ernment was possible but left the problem to be 
 solved by the anarchist. And while it would be
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 wholly unfair to charge Tolstoi with the atrocities 
 of the Bolshevists' rule, we cannot escape from the 
 conviction that his writings created the atmosphere 
 that made these atrocities possible. For with all its 
 moral eminence, his philosophy does not distinguish 
 between the principles of regenerate and degenerate 
 nature, between centralized rule and popularized li- 
 cense, between system and caprice. The success of 
 any organism, be it an individual or a nation, has 
 its basis in the surrender of all motives other than 
 those that aim directly at the betterment and salva- 
 tion of every unit, high or low, complex or simple, 
 living under the power of its influence. Reciproc- 
 ity, with its moving force in brotherhood, holds the 
 common devisor which alone can yield the human 
 equation. Looked at from its widest angle there re- 
 mains no doubt that the wealthy class of the com- 
 munity needs the assistance of the poor, as vitally 
 as the poor needs the help of the wealthy. Will- 
 ingness of each one, rich or poor, to contribute all 
 he can offer in service and good will to the general 
 advances of life as manifested in the organized com- 
 monwealth, can alone save the world from disaster. 
 And, so far from being a means toward this goal, 
 a philosophy urging a return to the rudiments of 
 existence, to a state where each one serves himself, 
 attends his own needs, cobbles his own boots, con- 
 strues and operates his own means and ways of tran- 
 sit, is his own locomotive, tractor, mail-carrier, 
 manufacturer, and medium of exchange, etc., 
 shackles and menaces the human race in its march 
 toward true freedom. Mankind must not be hin- 
 dered in its discoveries of new agencies of power and 
 magnificence; every means of assistance should be 
 given to promote and safeguard the imagination of 
 
 25
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 man in exploring the regions of the unseen, unheard 
 and unrealized. No invention of constructiveness, 
 aiming at taking away the burden of physical drudg- 
 ery from the life of man, can possibly interfere with 
 the economic safety of the community. No form of 
 ingenuity or miracle-working inventiveness can en- 
 danger human welfare as long as the inspiring and 
 governing motives stand for reciprocal service and 
 philanthropic interest. On the other hand, there is 
 no form of life so simple, no community so crude, 
 that individual selfishness cannot turn it into agen- 
 cies of destructiveness and disaster. The form and 
 conditions of any given era, merely registers the de- 
 gree in which the indwelling principle of humanity 
 succeeds in impressing itself upon the evolutionary 
 current. And to go back-to-nature is thus simply 
 to oppose the tidal wave of an all-embracing cos- 
 mic consciousness, sweeping through the elemental 
 world in its course toward a self-understood, self- 
 governing and self-directed evolution. 
 
 "Let us remember," says a writer in "The New 
 Way," "that our thoughts and virtues are going into 
 solution all the time in the great human sea, and 
 that in the long run every one has his full oppor- 
 tunity to leave an eternal, deathless benediction be- 
 hind him."
 
 IV 
 THE ANALYSIS OF FORCED WATER DRINKING 
 
 THERE can be no doubt that we owe our health 
 and strength to nature in and through our 
 obedience to her laws. And in order to ascer- 
 tain the significance of these laws in relation to life 
 and power, our organism is equipped with a sys- 
 tem of special sensation, the function of which is 
 to keep the individual informed about his needs and 
 necessities, with regard to fuel for the heat, and 
 building material for the repair of the living, physio- 
 logical engine placed at his disposal. The material 
 thus required is contained in the food we eat, the 
 water we drink and the air we breathe; and to at- 
 tend to these functions, promptly and sanely, in con- 
 formity to the law of demand and supply, consti- 
 tutes the fine art of common sense in diet. 
 
 Where this law is overlooked and the individual 
 allows himself more fuel and building-material than 
 required for the perfect up-keep of his fires and 
 structures of life, there will accumulate an excess 
 which in the course of time either must be burned 
 up by the back fires of fever, the abnormal sewer- 
 discharge of catarrh, or stowed away in the physio- 
 logical garbage cans of body tumors. If made to 
 realize his serious situation, and to act promptly 
 and in time, the individual can prevent disaster by 
 introducing some drastic, in themselves abnormal 
 measures of expediency, such as a longer or shorter 
 period of the physiological rest we term fasting, 
 accompanied by a flushing of the cellular and capil-
 
 HEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 lary drainage pipes of his system, in the form of 
 excessive water drinking. Through these measures 
 it may be quite possible to neutralize the effect of 
 former excesses in diet especially the over-indul- 
 gence in heavy proteids such as beans, meat, eggs 
 and the concentrated or extracted forms of carbo- 
 hydrate known as sugar and cream. In this case 
 an enforced water flushing and a strict vegetarian 
 diet would be a good venture, as pure water, plenty 
 of fresh air, raw fruit and green vegetables consti- 
 tute the great "chimney sweeps" by which nature 
 cleans up the obstructions in our waste-laden, 
 choked-up physiological furnaces. 
 
 So far, so good. But when this same course of 
 intense elimination is applied promiscously, and 
 suggested to cases that suffer from enemia, ner- 
 vousness and other effects from a one-sided indul- 
 gence in raw, acidic fruit, with its irritating rough- 
 age of peelings, seeds and hull, raw cereals, etc., 
 with water to drink "by the gallon," the system 
 runs the danger of getting its synovial fluids the 
 lubricating oils of the organism cleaned out with 
 the rest. Having lost this all-important oil of 
 lubrication, the delicate nerve strands rub against 
 their dried up insulators in a nerve-racking fash- 
 ion, and neuralgia, neurites and rheumatism are 
 formed in the scrambling washers, the carti- 
 lages and delicate membranes of the joints. 
 
 A constitutionally restless and overstrung ner- 
 vous system is, by sheer force of its nervousness, 
 already stressing the glands of its secretions into 
 gushing artesian wells, that flush the physiological
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 ducts and passages to the point of cellular inunda- 
 tion. Hence a forced water drinking while ben- 
 eficial to the over-nourished, sluggish individual, as 
 promoting the action of his congested ducts of 
 elimination must necessarily interfere with these 
 very functions, should the individual be of the 
 nervous, anemic type. For to add to the liquid 
 percentage of a digestion, already surcharged 
 with its own abnormal secretions, means to weaken 
 the keenness and incisive power of the enzymes 
 upon which the processes of digestion, assimila- 
 tion and elimination depend. The business of 
 digestion, already hampered by the excess of its 
 secretory fluids, is compelled to go into a state of 
 solution on account of its "watered stock" a con- 
 dition which in physiology means nervous dyspep- 
 sia. And the state of constipation which in most 
 cases constitutes the main reason for an excessive 
 water drinking, may not infrequently, by the very 
 weakening of the nerves of peristalsis, due to the 
 abnormal increase of fluid, become intensified and 
 more difficult of cure. So true to the conditions is 
 this statement, that the so-called "Schrot treat- 
 ment," practiced in German and Swedish sana- 
 toria, consists in keeping certain types of indi- 
 viduals on an absolutely dry diet, allowing no 
 water, often for a period of two or more weeks, to 
 enter the system. Under the strain of this en- 
 forced thirst, the structural cells of the organism 
 are compelled to exude the stagnant, rancid resi- 
 due of their old, retarded secretions, and thus by 
 a thorough cleaning and renewing of the cell 
 structures succeed in giving to the entire field of
 
 MEW LIGHT ON 
 
 metabolism a stronger, purer and more adequate 
 output of glandular secretions.* 
 
 Thus we frequently have to face conditions 
 when a treatment, which in one case may have 
 proven itself so helpful, in another, will send a 
 patient into physiological wreckage. Healing 
 means a restoration of the disturbed vital balances 
 of an organism, whether the process involves fast- 
 ing or feasting, thirst or inundation, vegetarian or 
 carnivorous diet. Abnormal conditions require 
 abnormal remedies, but the saving grace in any 
 process is determined by a judgment that can 
 guide with scientific accuracy the vital changes 
 ringing in upon the stage of life, either in terms of 
 health or ruin. 
 
 *"Some people are never thirsty. They should go out and 
 exercise or work until they sweat a little and then they will 
 get thirsty. It does no good to swill down a lot of liquid to 
 slosh around in a distended stomach. If there is real thirst, 
 the result of physical activity, the tissues will absorb water 
 like a sponge and your water drinking will benefit you." 
 "Healthy Home," quoted by the "Medical Summary," Jan. 
 1st, 1922. 
 
 30
 
 THE "UNFIRED" FOOD-THEORY 
 
 FOLLOWING the theory that whatever in- 
 creases the rugged strength of the animal 
 must also increase the strength of the indi- 
 vidual, the back-to-nature devotee reaches out for 
 the raw-food-diet, in which he includes the hull 
 and pealings by which nature protects the grains, 
 fruit and vegetables of her third kingdom. It is 
 readily seen, however, that if the raw or "unfired" 
 diet theory was true, the animal should find itself 
 in the same position to the mineral stratum of 
 nature, as the human being is to the raw grains. 
 For every plane of life brings out powers and 
 capacities of an entity in response to the vital con- 
 ditions peculiar to that plane. Hence, just as a 
 fish possesses the phenomenal power to oxidize 
 its tissues from the water in which it swims, and 
 the plant the not less wonderful agency of an 
 exudate by which it can break up and decompose, 
 with its tiny roots, the rock itself, so the animal 
 has in its stomach a fireless cooker by which it can 
 tear up and peptonize the cellulose and starchea 
 which the average human stomach has no power 
 to bring out. For evolution is a continuous ad- 
 vancement of life from lower to higher forms of 
 expression; from the elemental to the mental; 
 from the power of brawn to the power of brain; 
 from the chemistry and physiology of nature, to 
 the mental, moral and spiritual processes of the 
 soul. Hence the entire trend of evolution is a less-
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 ening of the quantitative and a corresponding in- 
 crease of the qualitative powers of the advancing 
 entities of life. 
 
 Thus in the cellular secretions of its roots, the 
 plant possesses an enzyme which has the power to 
 decompose the granite, and turn its sterile mole- 
 cules into palpable vegetable tissue ; while the ani- 
 mal in its turn possesses a digestive power strong 
 enough to dextrinate the raw starch and intract- 
 able cellulose, which the human stomach is leav- 
 ing behind in its adaptation to higher vital needs. 
 
 The struggle between man and his environment 
 is at present determined by the direction in which 
 he tips his vital balance either toward the head 
 or the stomach; either toward thinking or vege- 
 tating; self-control or self-indulgence. It is un- 
 mistakable that all along the human stage of evo- 
 lution is going on a definite functional balancing 
 between the forces of the mind and those of the 
 digestion. For it cannot be a mere fatuous coinci- 
 dence that most of the world's geniuses have suf- 
 fered with digestive difficulties. The dyspepsia of 
 Carlyle has almost as far famed a historical emi- 
 nence as his "French Revolution." Richard Wag- 
 ner suffered from a life-long chronic indigestion. 
 Darwin was a victim to a chronic "mal de mer" 
 that compelled him annually to increase the angle 
 of his posture to the plane of his writing desk, in- 
 volving a constant lowering of his head toward the 
 level of his stomach. Herbert Spencer was known 
 to be incapacitated for a whole week's work by 
 indulging in what to most people would constitute 
 an ordinary dinner. And Alexander Pope, in his 
 later years, was mostly restrained to a diet of milk 
 soup. These cases are too numerable to allow any 
 
 32
 
 JSEW LIGHT O!\ LIVING 
 
 doubt as to the existence of a biologic sliding scale 
 between a man's brain and his stomach ; and that 
 the progressive, constructive thinker sooner or 
 later must choose between gross animal eating and 
 fine human thinking. 
 
 Now with gross eating we must include every 
 form of food which either by its own nature or by 
 its treatment and combination is either indiges- 
 tible, or in its digestion involves the expense of 
 energy beyond the vital income derived from it by 
 the system. 
 
 In its raw form the starch molecule for its suc- 
 cessful dextrinization requires the high-powered 
 physiological engines of animal digestion, while 
 the ordinary human stomach, to accomplish the 
 same feat, needs the assistance of the baking oven. 
 And while we may find individuals that with ap- 
 parent immunity, and sometimes even with the 
 flush of high stimulation, may succeed for a season 
 in stressing their digestive functions to an extraor- 
 dinary pitch, such violations of dietetic economy, 
 however, will result in a general lessening of vital 
 resilience, accompanied with nervousness and 
 premature breakdown. To introduce into the 
 stomach the raw form of such foodstuffs as pota- 
 toes, beets, beans, peas, seeds, peelings, bran, hull, 
 is to sport with human energy, as the indigestible 
 mass requires for its treatment the bringing up of 
 constitutional vital reserve forces which were in- 
 tended to be called upon first in later years, at an 
 age when the current of vitality would naturally 
 begin to ebb. In heat and its application we have 
 a life and energy saving device ; and ever since 
 Prometheus the symbolic incarnation of man's 
 higher intelligence wrestled fire from the hands 
 
 S3
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 of a metaphysical Zeus, mankind, to the extent of 
 its intelligence, has profited by its marvelous 
 acquisition and used its services as one of the most 
 fundamental and indispensable agencies of human 
 evolution. Fire as a force is as necessary for a bal- 
 anced and sustained progress in the vital and men- 
 tal field of existence as it is in the industrial and 
 social. 
 
 The same expediency which organizes an engine 
 to thrash our grains, weave our clothes and trans- 
 mit our messages, is, in the form of fire, brought to 
 bear upon the simplification of the labors of diges- 
 tion and assimilation, in relation to certain food- 
 stuffs. The solar heat, stored up in our fuel, when 
 applied to cooking, releases the locked-up life-en- 
 ergies of our food by intensifying the rate of its 
 molecular vibrations, until the starch molecule de- 
 livers its finest energies to the human metabolism. 
 Hence, within a certain range, the higher the heat, 
 the swifter become the vibrations, and the finer 
 and more potent the released life force. The 
 baked potatoes will release a higher energy than 
 the boiled, and the latter a higher energy than 
 the raw. The same is true with regard to all 
 starch bearing products. In the northern countries 
 the farmer has found that, during winter, the 
 chickens produce more eggs, the cows more milk, 
 the hogs more pork, if the molecular vibrations of 
 their foods the grains and tubers have been 
 raised by boiling or steaming. It is this same 
 power of heat, when applied to the coffee bean, 
 which has the power to turn its static energy into 
 a veritable dynamo of stimulating force. For the 
 cellulose surrounding the bean molecules is so 
 compact and intractable that even the heat of
 
 NEW LIGHT Oi\ LIVING 
 
 boiling is insufficient to release its full force. It 
 requires the intense vibrations arising from roast- 
 ing or baking to burst the enclosure and set free 
 the vital dynamics imprisoned within the cell-walls 
 of the coffee bean. 
 
 Another example may be furnished in the won- 
 derfully stimulating and sustaining power con- 
 tained in thoroughly toasted bread. By pouring 
 hot water on sliced and well toasted, whole-wheat 
 bread, and allowing it to drain some ten or 
 fifteen minutes, a liquid is obtained which, if 
 slowly sipped, may sustain human life for weeks 
 and months. The high frequency of vibration pro- 
 duced by the intense dry heat of the oven unlocks 
 the latent energies in the grain, which the oxydiz- 
 ing water readily transmits to the metabolism of 
 the body. 
 
 This power of increased vibration to change 
 the nature and condition of things is universal. 
 The putrid air of the dungeon may be transmuted 
 into the refreshing purity of a spring wind by the 
 aid of a powerful vibrator dynamo. As the latter 
 churns the air into an increasing frequency of 
 vibrations, the ensuing friction between the air 
 molecules gives rise to the combustion of the 
 carbon envelope which surrounds the oxygen atom; 
 and the subsequent release of its locked up energy 
 starts processes of chemical displacement in the 
 atmosphere. This fact gives to the fanning de- 
 vice of offices and public halls a deeper and more 
 far-reaching significance. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the cooking of our food 
 stuffs is not merely for the purpose of taste, but 
 also gives rise to an increasing vital-dynamic value 
 of the elements. The destruction of the power of 
 
 35
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 germination of the grain by cooking, does only 
 affect the aspect of life involved in propagation, 
 not in its power to serve as medium for physiologi- 
 cally constructive life. On the other hand, the 
 assistance which cooking brings to the body in its 
 wrestling with the digestion of an impossible 
 cellulose, is of immense significance to the entire 
 human organism, and becomes the salvaging of 
 incalculable force units on the vital and intellec- 
 tual plane threatened by wreckage through ex- 
 hausture. Yet the cooking must not be left to 
 the care of ignorance, but should be conducted in 
 a scientific way. For as it is mainly the carbon 
 and starch molecule of the grain and tuber that 
 requires the high temperature for its thorough 
 dextrinization, the food products of the albumins 
 and carbohydrates, such as are represented in the 
 white of an egg, the heart of celery, and the entire 
 field occupied by the fruits and the leafy vege- 
 tables should be enjoyed in their raw state. To 
 this should also be classed the products of the 
 animal world, as meat is rich in organic salt and 
 albumin, and should, therefore, be only lightly 
 cooked simmered or seered, in a chafing dish, 
 rather than to be "well done" through boiling or 
 frying. In preparing these foods, the tempera- 
 ture should not be raised above 200 Fahrenheit, 
 as this temperature suffices to break the cellulose 
 envelope without incurring the disorganization of 
 its albumin or the destruction of its vital units 
 the vitamines. 
 
 But there are occasions in the vital conditions 
 of an individual when even fruit must be cooked 
 to render it safe to digestion. The gastro-neuros- 
 thenic or nervous dyspeptic, may bring upon him 
 
 36
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 an attack of gastritis from the inability of his dis- 
 ordered digestive nerve batteries to polarize the 
 high-tensioned vital-electric energy discharged 
 by the raw fruit. But as the cooking changes the 
 polarity of the fruit from electric to magnetic, so 
 the dyspeptic stomach, in itself electrically polar- 
 ized, may, if certain rules of food-combinations are 
 observed, be able to digest and assimilate cooked 
 or simmered fruits. That even, however, the aver- 
 age, normal digestion can suffer from an excess 
 of fruit, is readily seen in the nervous, irritable 
 disposition that follows its over-indulgence. The 
 acidity of the fruit indicates its main character- 
 istic: that of cleaner and purger; and when the 
 greasy and carbonacious deposits of the system 
 have been removed, a continual indulgence may 
 readily lead to tissue-irritation. In other words, 
 fruit, to be safely indulged in, needs a physiologi- 
 cal or pathological basis to work on a metabolic 
 shock absorber so to speak formed in and by 
 the superfluous accummulations of fats and car- 
 bons in the system. If this was not so, the life of 
 the Indians of this country, and most of the peo- 
 ple of the northern countries in Europe, who, for 
 entire seasons, are without fruits, would long ago, 
 have suffered extinction. 
 
 The employment of fire as a time-and-energy- 
 saving device in the preparation of our foods, has 
 been used by every people of culture as far as 
 history leaves any records. In the king's cham- 
 ber of the Great Pyramid, M. Champolion found 
 fragments of well baked bread, and the Greeks in 
 their heydays of the Periclean era made their prin- 
 cipal meal out of well baked barley cakes, ripe 
 olives and cooked fish. In fact the very gods of 
 
 9J 
 /
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 Olympus feasted on carefully prepared viands, 
 as did the crudest savage on his rudimentary bar- 
 becues; and to the extent civilization has endowed 
 people with common sense and practical ingenuity, 
 the method of assisting their digestive and assimi- 
 lative labors by the aid of fire, are in historical 
 evidence. And while the back-to-nature-man 
 often refers to the culinary habits and table man- 
 ners of the monkey and squirrel, horse and ele- 
 phant, bears and forbears of his quadruped pre- 
 ceptors, as good arguments for the "unfired" food 
 theory, it must be considered that in the first place 
 the animals are not permitted to indulge in light- 
 housekeeping, and furthermore, that the diges- 
 tive apparatus of these early forbears are equipped 
 with power to combust and dextrinate the most 
 intractable starch and cellulose. But as has al- 
 ready been referred to, the animal can afford the 
 vital expense of his high-powered digestion, as its 
 main business is to digest, vegetate and propa- 
 gate; while to the extent man raises himself to a 
 higher level with ideas and ideals above the con- 
 sideration and gratification of mere animal func- 
 tions, the expression of personality becomes ele- 
 vated and transmuted from the animal, material- 
 istic, sense-governed plane to the constitutional 
 refinement of the higher mind; from gross auto- 
 matic instinct and sensuous impulse to the high 
 graded conditions of self-directed thought and 
 reasoned intelligence. 
 
 38
 
 VI 
 
 SALT AND PEPPER IN THE VITAL ECONOMY 
 
 OF MAN 
 
 THE business of life is to understand it. And 
 this understanding does not come from one- 
 sided theories, haphazard judgments or 
 short-sighted generalizations regarding the mean- 
 ing of life, but by calm intelligence and imper- 
 sonal, universal interest. The extremist who 
 either rides his hobby over theories to the limit of 
 endurance, or refuses to enter the vital race- 
 track at all, are equally unsafe and unreliable as 
 counselors in the great problems of life and health. 
 In the great majority of cases, the food reformer 
 takes his cue from his own mistake, and reacts 
 to the whip of personal suffering brought about 
 by his own violation of some natural law. Having 
 ruined both his food and his health by an exces- 
 sive use of cookery, frying, stewing or boiling 
 the individual, with panicstricken suddenness, re- 
 acts to the consciousness of his danger and swings 
 over to the opposite extreme to indulge in every- 
 thing in its raw form. Realizing that patent-sifted, 
 snow r -driven A-l flour causes congestion, catarrh, 
 constipation, and a host of subsequent pathological 
 conditions, he rushes headlong into a diet, made 
 up by every coarse, rough, indigestible and irrita- 
 ting substance within his reach from the seeds 
 and skins of the fruit and berries, to the hull of the 
 grain and peelings of potatoes and tubers. Similar- 
 
 39
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 ly, after an excessive diet on greasy soups, rich 
 gravies, and life-smothering pastry, with the 
 threatening break-down of kidney and liver as the 
 natural and inevitable consequence, he may turn 
 around and shout from the housetops a sweeping 
 condemnation of every form of meat diet, while 
 pronouncing the vegetarian diet as the only 
 physically, mentally and morally legitimate way 
 of conducting the business of life. On the same 
 basis of emotional unbalance, he would urge the 
 disappearance of every ledge of rock salt from the 
 surface of the earth, and de-chemicalize every 
 grain of salt in the ocean, just because he once 
 got the cartilageous ball-bearings of his joints and 
 spinal vertebrae stiffened up by the life-long 
 vicious habit of three times a day covering up his 
 food with a thick film of sodium chloride. Yet 
 for each individual who wrecks his kidneys by an 
 excess of salt, there are hundreds and thousands 
 that lose their health and rush into degeneracy 
 from an over-indulgence in sugar. 
 
 There is no doubt that an excess of salt may 
 ultimately result disastrously, especially to people 
 of the lean and nervous type. But used as a con- 
 diment, and gauged by common sense, sodium 
 chloride acts as a basis for free oxygen to break 
 up the muscle contracting carbon deposits of the 
 system, and release its stagnant fluids. It is this 
 character of being an oxydizer that gives to salt 
 its stimulating as well as preserving qualities, 
 starting reactions of displacement through vapor- 
 ization of old, dead, water-soaked lymph-spaces 
 in the field of absorption just as it is the evapor- 
 ating power of the salt that sends the liquid masses 
 of the ocean up into the blue ether, to recondense, 
 
 40
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 and in due time, to precipitate itself as rain. It 
 is also this stimulating quality that gives to salt the 
 miraculous power of displacing over sixty per- 
 centage of blood of the human body, when in acci- 
 dents the individual may have sustained a cor- 
 responding loss of his circulating fluids. It is safe 
 to say, that in a mixed diet, the average individual 
 will become sluggish and dull in the course of a 
 protracted absence of salt in his diet. While on 
 the other hand we must not forget that any per- 
 son, who has indulged excessively in salt, and as 
 a natural consequence, feels symptoms of irrita- 
 tion and a short-circuiting of his muscular and 
 nervous exchanges, should for a longer or shorter 
 time eliminate its use completely from his diet.* 
 
 The same principle holds good with regard to 
 pepper and other spices and condiments. Like 
 salt, pepper, by virtue of its high percentage of 
 carbon, is a powerful base for oxydation and in- 
 creases the responsiveness of the food stuffs to the 
 action of the digestive secretions. In the tropics 
 where the incessant heat reduces life to its lowest 
 level of relaxation, the oxydizing power of pepper 
 is of greatest value to digestion and assimilation 
 
 *In his report to the British Geographical Society, Dr. 
 Livingstone, the famous African explorer, mentioned the 
 singular desire the natives of the Congo had for salt. No 
 greater attraction could be offered the children of these na- 
 tives than a few crystals of ordinary coarse cooking salt. 
 Strange as it may seem, according to Livingstone, they even 
 preferred it to sugar. 
 
 Another explorer of the "Dark Continent," Rev. George 
 Kenilworth, refers to the same trait of the African natives. 
 In a report to an English Missionary Society, he says: 
 "African boys and girls love salt as our boys and girls love 
 candy. In some portions of Africa salt takes the place _of 
 money. Missionaries starting out to their stations in interior 
 Africa, never fail to take along with them a goodly supply of 
 salt, for in some sections it is of far more value than silver 
 or gold." 
 
 41
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 a fact which makes a light use of this condiment 
 during the hot season in every zone, very impor- 
 tant to the ordinary diet. In fact so powerful is 
 the salt and pepper as agencies of digestion, that 
 a piece of raw meat, thoroughly kneaded in with 
 pepper and salt, and exposed to the open air for a 
 period of four hours to each side of the meat, by 
 the action of the super-induced oxygen-increase, 
 is transmuted into a palatable steak and more thor- 
 oughly cooked than any French chef, of the most 
 exalted kitchendom, could ever accomplish. Nature 
 has a meaning and purpose with her various prod- 
 ucts. There are no air-tight, or water-tight compart- 
 ments in the domain of nature : everywhere includ- 
 ing the very mineral we find the play of reciprocity, 
 of inter-dependence in relationship, and solidarity in 
 mutual assistance. But extremes, excesses and vio- 
 lations of law must be unconditionally avoided. 
 Plato was right when as the guiding rule for the stu- 
 dents of his "Academia" he wrote the motto: 
 moderation in all. The balance and poise of life is 
 not maintained in the back-to-nature phrase, "all 
 or nothing," but in the knowledge, judgment, ap- 
 preciation and self-control of a well-ordered, self- 
 restrained life.
 
 VII 
 
 SALT AS A CURE FOR CANCER AND TUBERCU- 
 LOSIS 
 
 IN our ignorance about the deeper facts of life, 
 we constantly overlook the most wonderful 
 opportunities offered by nature in terms of 
 remedies constructive to life. Thus in denouncing 
 our common salt sodium chloride as an unqual- 
 ified deadly poison, to be shunned as an implacable 
 enemy to man, many of our food reformers keep 
 the public prejudiced against one of nature's 
 grandest agencies, which, when understood in its 
 deeper influence upon organic structures, will be 
 of greatest value to suffering mankind. It is 
 especially in its quality as an oxydizing agent 
 that salt manifests its startling powers as a cell 
 restorative. 
 
 It is a simple fact, known to every peasant 
 as well as to every scientist, that salt has the 
 power to preserve animal tissues from decom- 
 position. But the basis for this elemental power 
 is not generally recognized, as it calls for a knowl- 
 edge of organic and inorganic chemistry in rela- 
 tion to life, which few take the trouble to acquire. 
 In referring to men of strong character as "the 
 salt of the earth" we unconsciously certify to this 
 fundamental value of salt to the extent that char- 
 acter exerts the same preserving, steadying in- 
 fluence upon the mind, as salt upon the meat. In 
 either case there is introduced a rate of vibration
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 into the involved structures that render them im- 
 mune to the attack of hostile forces. 
 
 "Ye are the salt of the earth." When spoken 
 by the master to his disciples, these words carried 
 a significance far beyond the scope of mere oratori- 
 cal phrasing. It meant that as salt protects the flesh 
 from physical corruption, so the soul, when rooted 
 in righteousness and virtue, protects the mind from 
 moral corruption. Thus, character may be said to 
 be crystalized virtue a fixed, standardized, un- 
 shakable and indissoluble moral virility, which by 
 precept or example, by mental attitude or living 
 action, may throw a zone of protection around 
 other minds, less strong in their power of resist- 
 ence to forces of corruption. 
 
 Now, in applying salt as a remedy for the treat- 
 ment of consumption, it must be recognized that 
 consumption is a disease of structural degener- 
 acy a decomposition of tissues, and that the ap- 
 pearance of bacillus tuberculosis in the pathologi- 
 cal field goes to prove that the stage of corruption, 
 with its output of festering tissues, has passed be- 
 yond the scope of native constitutional power to 
 remove from the system. Hence, so far from be- 
 ing enemies to the individual, the bacilli tubercu- 
 losis are in reality his assistants, performing the 
 duties of physiological house-cleaning: removing 
 from his lungs the broken down, decomposing cell- 
 wrecks that otherwise would have caused the in- 
 dividual to choke in his own excretions. In other 
 words, his microbes operate on the same basis 
 of service and usefulness as the scavenger birds 
 from the fly to the buzzard in cleaning up his 
 kitchen or backyard. Nature abhors decomposi- 
 tion and corruption, and the moment organized 
 
 44
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 tissues break down either within us or without 
 us; either in the lungs of our chest, or in the car- 
 cass of our backyard that great supervisor of 
 universal sanitation sends her running, crawling, 
 wriggling, swimming or flying hosts of scavengers 
 to remove the cause of corruption from her do- 
 main. 
 
 Now the same function which the maggots and 
 microbes perform in the field of organized life, the 
 mineral salts bring about in the inanimate field 
 of rocks and metals. We see the action of these 
 silent, elemental scavengers in the metallic oxyda- 
 tion known as rust, which in every aspect and pur- 
 pose corresponds to the process of the organized 
 destruction known as tuberculosis. In either case 
 we recognize the act of expediency involved by 
 nature in her efforts to arrest the degeneracy, men- 
 acing to other forms of existence. 
 
 The power of ordinary salt to protect nature 
 from premature degeneracy is readily seen in the 
 preservative action of salt sodium chloride 
 upon meat, which, when saturated by the solution 
 of this agent, may withstand decomposition for 
 years a process which has its sole explanation in 
 the singular paradox that the power of salt to act 
 upon objects has its basis in the very absence of 
 any constructive power in the salt itself. 
 
 For salt is simply a "mineral ash" produced by 
 the smokeless and fireless combustion of other ele- 
 ments. When by some reason or other an element 
 starts a war upon itself, within its own domain, 
 its component parts become subject to the disin- 
 tegrating action of disbanded forces, which in their 
 very release break down and dissipate as in- 
 dependent structures, to become absorbed into 
 
 45
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 stronger elemental associations. And the dis- 
 tinguishing process which Always attends disinte- 
 gration, is the presence of oxygen the supreme 
 executioner of elemental disloyality, which in 
 terms of vitiation, corrosions or rust, removes from 
 the highways of evolution the wrecks that failed 
 to respond to the creative, constructive and sus- 
 taining principle of universal life. And the waste 
 product, the ash or sediment, formed in and by 
 every process of combustion, from the burning up 
 of a piece of paper to the "rust" of an iron bar, is 
 the substance we call salt. 
 
 Being thus a mere ash from which every self- 
 sustained form or expression of constructive 
 energy is removed, salt becomes a vital vacuum, 
 ever ready to absorb into its elemental void every 
 process of excessive vitality within the reach of 
 its influence. And it is this unsatisfied hunger for 
 its lost chemical affinities that gives to salt the 
 quality to absorb and unite to itself that particular 
 life or energy which, through some pathological 
 influence, has become disturbed in its normal re- 
 lationship to its organization in other w r ords : 
 forms of decomposition. 
 
 The rationale of the eliminative action exerted 
 by salt upon tissues of corruption, is thus readily 
 seen. It is at once an act of prevention and res- 
 toration, of destruction and construction. The 
 decomposing tissues of the organism, being re- 
 lieved of their infection, find a ready opportunity 
 to reestablish normal relationship to organized 
 form, and the resulting reciprocity of orderly, 
 creative life impulses. 
 
 The method by which this elemental action of 
 salt can be most practically utilized, in the treat- 
 
 46
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 ment of tuburculosis consists of a two-fold applica- 
 tion: internal and external. In the first case, to a 
 pint of saline saturated solution should be added a 
 tablespoon of pure alcohol, and out of this mix- 
 ture the tuberculosis patient should take a tea- 
 spoonful morning and evening, twenty minutes be- 
 fore the meal, and diluted with half a cup of hot 
 water. The water of the solution should be dis- 
 tilled and thoroughly boiled before using. 
 
 The external application consists of a daily 
 warm bath, made up by a solution of one meas- 
 ure of salt to thirty measures of water and in 
 which the patient should be immersed while 
 gently massaged, during some fifteen or twenty 
 minutes. The bath, if convenient, should be taken 
 in the evening and followed by a crisp rub with 
 a towel wrung out in cold water. While in the 
 bath, the action of the solution can be greatly in- 
 creased by gently rubbing a handful of salt over 
 the chest and back of the patient, allowing the 
 salt to melt on the skin, as it is in the very melting 
 process that the salt exhibits its greatest powers 
 of oxydation. Every morning upon leaving his 
 bed, the patient should be rubbed all over his 
 body with a "pickled towel" by which is meant 
 a towel soaked in saturated salt solution, and then 
 allowed to dry in the sun. The rub should include 
 the foot soles, and the spaces between the toes, as 
 the latter are great centers of nerve action. It is 
 also to be observed that the rubbing should take 
 place before an open window. 
 
 In the case of external cancer, the patient 
 should increase the percentage of the salt in the 
 bath to a point approaching saturation. The salt
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 should be allowed to melt on the affected places, 
 and if in the throat, a gargle of saturated solution 
 should frequently be used, while the outside of 
 the neck is soaked with strongest brine. The bath 
 should last fifteen minutes, and repeated morning 
 and evening: three hours after breakfast and the 
 same time after supper. Should the cancer be 
 abdominal, compresses of hot brine should be ap- 
 plied over the surface under which the cancer is 
 located. Stomach, intestines, bowels, ovaries, uter- 
 us, or any other seat of the attack may thus be 
 reached by external application, covering the ana- 
 tomical zones in which these organs are located. 
 As an adjuvant to this salt cure, should be added 
 a diet absolutely free from grease and animal fats, 
 such as cream, yolk of egg, butter, cheese, gra- 
 vies, soups, pastry; condiments such as peppers, 
 mustard, sugar, vinegar, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, 
 ice-cream soda and any form of beverage other 
 than pure water and milk. Salt, being an irritant 
 to internal tissues, should also be removed from 
 the diet. The food should consist of bland, non- 
 irritating substances, such as vegetables, barley, 
 onion, garlic-puree, whole wheat (not the irritat- 
 ing bran or graham), Japanese brown small rice, 
 Salisbury steak, (upper cut of a round steak), 
 seered on a plate ; fish baked or steamed never 
 fried or boiled and only once or twice a week, 
 baked Irish potatoes, fresh leafy, green vegetables, 
 turned into salads, but no dressing save oil; string 
 beans, parsley, spinach, onions, carrots, celery, 
 cabbage, either in cooked or raw form; Italian 
 macaroni with onions, artichoke, celery root. For 
 specialized "bill of fares" see my book "Facts 
 and Fancies in Health Foods." Fruits should not
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 be taken in connection with meals. No tomatoes 
 or grape fruits; but one hour before breakfast 
 twice a week a glass of sodium citrate may be 
 enjoyed. The citrate is made up of the juice of 
 half a lemon and one-half teaspoonful of Epsom 
 Salts, mixed in a glass of distilled water. Flax- 
 seed tea with a sprinkling of salt makes a good 
 substitute for tea or coffee. A teaspoonful of pure 
 olive oil should be taken before each meal. At 
 night three hours after the last meal, the patient 
 may enjoy a fresh, sweet apple. Deep, full breath- 
 ing, in the open air, and daily walks are absolutely 
 essential for the patient.
 
 VIII 
 THE GREAT FRUIT INDISCRIMINATION 
 
 A T the Gateway of every Eden," said Mo- 
 Z\ hammed, "hangs a two-edged sword." 
 * -^-It is the sword of moral decision by the 
 individual when he faces the issues of pleasure 
 or duty, and brought to make the choice between 
 them both. At every step of life we are brought 
 up against the situation of the ancient Hercules, 
 who, symbolizing the destiny of the heroic soul, 
 found himself before the parting of the roads 
 under the stress of inevitable choice. This symbol- 
 ism stands as the eternal recurrence in every in- 
 dulgence of an individual's life. Especially at 
 present does this situation meet us in regard to 
 food. Never before has mankind been tempted 
 with more variety of foods and with more appeals 
 to his appetite than at present. New forms and 
 combinations, with new methods of treatment of 
 the different foodstuffs are continually introduced 
 by a perverted kitchendom to a sensation-loving 
 public, coupled with a constantly increasing yield 
 by nature herself in response to the ingenuity and 
 genius of men who have learned how to bring out 
 new departures of biologic life in terms of grains, 
 fruits and vegetables. And to give added pressure 
 to the temptation, there seems to be a growing con- 
 viction in the individual that the object of evolu- 
 tion is merely to cater to the human appetite, re- 
 solving every presentation of beauty, fragrance, 
 
 50
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 harmony in the great ensemble of nature life, into 
 thrills of taste, smell and raphsody. 
 
 No greater danger lies before the individual 
 than to convert the function of eating from a 
 means to an end, from sustenance to indulgence. 
 For any form of food, even the purest and most 
 beneficient, if indulged in without discrimination, 
 for pleasure in place of service, for gratification 
 of appetite in place of aiming at better health and 
 usefulness becomes a deadly poison in the sys- 
 tem. And this fact receives an added significance 
 in the further fact that the finer the type of the 
 foods, as for instance, the fruits, the greater danger 
 lies in its misuse or abuse. For the sweetness and 
 acids combined in the fruits, owing to the swift- 
 ness in their rate of vibration, possess a keeness of 
 vital electric polarity, which may strike into the 
 processes of human digestion as a bolt of light- 
 ning into a heap of conductive metals. 
 
 Fruit occupies a position in the realm of food- 
 stuffs all its own. In a way we may call fruit an 
 after thought of evolution the ornamental and 
 finishing refinement due to the more advanced 
 types of life. For while the great staple forms of 
 foods: the albuminous, carbonacious, mineral, 
 starchy, alkaline, saline elements of the human 
 nutrition, grow on, in, or upon the earth as shown 
 in the tubers, grains, pulses and vegetables the 
 fruit has its birth and evolution in the mid-air, 
 under the confluent support of sun and air, elec- 
 tricity, ozone and vital energy. Hence while the 
 former group is a representative of the earth, and 
 instrumental in building and maintaining the body 
 structures the mechanics of the organism, so to 
 speak the latter is of the blue ether, a fairy 
 
 51
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 fabric of light and ozone, and equipped with 
 power to expurge and remove the waste products 
 of the physiological industry; absorb its acids, 
 neutralize its surplus of fats, and dissolve its 
 mineral deposits, while suffusing a purifying and 
 regenerating influence over every cell, or group 
 of cells of the organism. In other words, as the 
 earth-bound foods give an onward or forward 
 movement to the physical organism, the electro- 
 carbo-hydrates the fruits move in an upward 
 direction, supplying the body with an elasticity of 
 tissues, suppleness of movement and freedom of 
 poise that, if not interfered with, would insure the 
 individual at least a century of physical health, 
 mental vigor and altruistic energy. " 
 
 So far so good. But the condition for the bio- 
 logic success of the scheme hinges on a thorough 
 realization of the scope of indulgence which can 
 be safely extended to any one individual with a 
 view to his particular constitutional needs of fruit. 
 Fruit, being electric to its quality, has an alto- 
 gether different effect on the nervous, highly or- 
 ganized individual, than on the sluggish or poised 
 and easy-going. For the former expresses the 
 electric type, and is consequently in and by him- 
 self generating the high momentum of energy in 
 his nervous and circulatory system of which the 
 fruit is the biological carrier and transmitter; 
 while the latter type, being magnetic or neutral, 
 is in constant need of external electric impulse to 
 keep his cell-world from an ever-threatening stag- 
 nancy. Nervousness means mental friction, and 
 out of friction we get heat, fire or electricity, 
 corresponding to the nature of the substances or 
 elements in which the friction takes place. And
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 as acids are animated or vitalized electricity 
 passed into states of condensation and liquidation, 
 it is only a matter of scientific logic that nervous- 
 ness should be accompanied by acid stomach, or 
 that progressive acidity in the blood and muscle, 
 which manifests in rheumatism, neuralgia and 
 neurites. 
 
 On the other hand, the same scientific logic 
 which warns against the indulgence of acid fruits 
 by the nervous, finds this very indulgence a physio- 
 logic necessity for the neutral or sluggish type, 
 which, when over nourished on fat or greasy food- 
 stuffs may even require the metabolic jolt of 
 pickles, vinegar and sour milk for the maintenance 
 of an acid balance. Here, if ever, is seen the 
 truth of the old wise saying, that one man's food 
 is another man's poison. 
 
 Under any circumstance, however, fruit should 
 be taken alone, separated by at least three hours 
 from any other form of food. Explosive to its 
 nature, with its field of digestion in the intestines 
 in place of the stomach, and consequently with no 
 need or demand for the salivary or gastric secre- 
 tions, the fruit requires a digestive field all its 
 own and is absolutely incompatible with any other 
 foodstuffs. For the acidity of the fruit closes the 
 ducts, both of the salivary and gastric secretions, 
 while the starch of the cereal and the proteid of 
 the meat demand imperatively the unhampered 
 flow of these very secretions a situation which 
 seriously handicaps the digestion all along its ali- 
 mentary career. Hence no greater mistake in diet 
 was ever made than to start a breakfast with grape 
 fruit, and follow it up with some kind of cereal, 
 hot rolls or biscuits, etc., and perhaps a glass of 
 
 55
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 milk as a table beverage. Only the most strenuous 
 effort of the nerves of the different secretions can 
 overcome this maltreatment and subsequent dead- 
 lock of the glandular agencies, which often have 
 to be assisted by vital, constitutional, reserve 
 forces. The situation is practically that of an en- 
 gine spending its energy against the resistance of 
 its turned down breaks a menace which in the 
 case of human nutrition involves a prodigious 
 waste of vital forces, drawn from physiological 
 reservoirs which are set aside for future old age 
 when the system ceases to be biologically self- 
 sustaining. 
 
 It may appear an extreme assertion to say, that 
 fruit, notwithstanding its high biologic value to 
 progressive life, because of its abuse, has done 
 more harm than good to mankind. Not realizing 
 the individualities involved in the different fruits 
 their varying degree of acidity and subsequent 
 vibratory intensity we indulge in fruit-salads 
 where each ingredience often works in jarring 
 conflict with every other, and the digestive labors 
 resemble a debating society where each speaker 
 uses a vernacular of his own, unintelligible to the 
 rest. The adjustment of the situation must again 
 be sought in the call upon constiutional reserves 
 with the recurrent and inevitable loss of vital 
 power. Truly, John Ruskin was right: we realize 
 what we suffer, but not what we lose in our cam- 
 paign with the incidents of life. 
 
 The sour or sweet dressing which usually graces 
 or greases the salads adds injury to the insult, as 
 far as the digestibility of the mass is concerned. 
 And while these offenses against the laws of phys- 
 iologic life may or may not be laid at the door 
 
 S4
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 of gluttony, yet the indulgence is too serious to be 
 allowed to pass unmentioned. The bizarre con- 
 coction made up by oil or melted butter, sour 
 cream, lemon juice often vinegar and sugar, 
 whipped into an indigestible emulsion, may well 
 deserve the name of wolves in sheep's clothing 
 where each ingredience makes its savage attack 
 on the peaceful labors of the normally engaged 
 digestive functionaries. 
 
 This rule against fruit mixtures either with 
 different kinds of fruits themselves, or with other 
 kinds of foods, allows of no exception, though it 
 has been found that in some cases the combination 
 of fruit with a pint of milk, or with a few pecans 
 has proved a tolerable dietetic success. In fact, in 
 some cases of nervous indigestion it is only in com- 
 bination with milk that fruit can be enjoyed at all. 
 
 On the other hand it is of vital importance for 
 every person to distinctly realize that the great, 
 constantly increasing avalanche of fruit-made 
 breads and cereals, such as raisin-bread, prune- 
 bread, fig-bread, banana-bread, fruit in coffee sub- 
 stitutes, etc., are all violations of biologic-chemical 
 laws, whose only excuse is that of stimulating the 
 stomach to efforts of ingestion and digestion be- 
 yond its normal needs and capacities. The rule 
 is irrevocable : what nature has united shall men 
 not separate, and vice versa. The alarming in- 
 crease of dyspepsia, colitis, gastric ulcers, cancers, 
 catarrh, tumors, appendicitis, typhoid, pneumonia, 
 and occasionally some new species of disease, ar- 
 riving in response to some new form of food poison- 
 ing are indisputable evidences of the fatal pres- 
 ence of an "enemy within our own household," 
 
 55
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 that feasts and festers upon our perverted appe- 
 tites, turning our foods into poisons and gradually 
 foreshortening our vital perspectives. The con- 
 tinuous struggle between the supremacy or sub- 
 ordinacy of the conflicting food mixtures sooner 
 or later wears out the system, and in spite of the 
 splendid inheritance we may have received of an- 
 cestral vitality, the present generation shows grim 
 evidence of approaching disaster both in the in- 
 creasing frequency of old diseases and in the oc- 
 casional appearance of some new, inexperienced 
 and undefinable type of startling morbidity. 
 
 The individual must learn, whether roaming in 
 the woods or moving in the lime light of high 
 graded society, that to interefere with vital prin- 
 ciples is freighted with danger. And though he 
 may succeed in a temporary escape from the con- 
 sequences of the transgression, the fact remains 
 one of the sternest in the whole realm of human 
 dietetics, that any separation, extraction or sub- 
 traction of nature's organized life in the form of 
 grains, milk, meat, fruit; any sifting, extracting, 
 diluting or concentrating process, bringing about 
 a discord in the molecular or atomic arrangement 
 of cell-structures, or disturbing the mechanical, 
 chemical, dynamic or vital balance of her life-bear- 
 ing compounds reacts on the entire physical and 
 mental value of the foodstuff. The individual must 
 be made to realize that he can add nothing to the 
 grain, save heat and water, that can improve upon 
 its vital value, and that the bran, or fruit, or short- 
 ening added to the flour, means disturbance of 
 vital poise and the irreparable loss to the construc- 
 tive powers of the grain. For evolution during un- 
 told biologic ages weighed and measured the 
 
 55
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 value of her vital compounds, until she finally ar- 
 rived at the present perfectibility of her life-bear- 
 ing processes. 
 
 Man must learn to keep hands off nature's vital 
 handiwork until he enlists himself as a faithful 
 laborer in the vinyard of the Lord the domain of 
 organized life. He must first learn to spell na- 
 ture's alphabet, and strive to attain to a knowl- 
 edge of her aims and purposes before he may 
 venture to interfere with her processes. So im- 
 portant is this rule that his fidelity to it determines 
 the fulness, power and integrity of his entire evolu- 
 tionary career. 
 
 57
 
 IX 
 THE PROBLEM OF QUANTITY IN FEEDING 
 
 IN the entire realm of diet there is perhaps no 
 question more embarrassing to the individual 
 than the amount of food required to cover the 
 vital expenditure involved in his daily existence. 
 In fact so complex is the question of human nutri- 
 tion in relation to the real need of the system, that 
 any attempt to arrive at a satisfactory solution on 
 a purely technical, physiological basis, in terms 
 of food-grams and calories, must necessarily fail. 
 The question is at once the most vital and most 
 subtle of the entire system of diet, and involves 
 for its true solution, a co-operation of the entire 
 individuality of man with all the forces and cate- 
 gories that go to make up his moral and ethical 
 nature. 
 
 Above all, this question makes a call for self- 
 control. When feeding his body, the individual 
 comes under the influence of forces which spring 
 from the plane of instinct, and may often be strong 
 enough to sway his judgment from its high level of 
 calm intelligence, to that of an unreasoned and un- 
 governable sense of appetite. Hence, for a com- 
 prehension of the individual's attitude to life in 
 general, we must realize him as placed under the 
 strain of two distinct, opposing forces ; that of in- 
 stinct and that of reason, of emotion and of judg- 
 ment, of sensuous promptings and of moral self- 
 control. And so completely independent of each 
 others motives are these forces, that they move 
 55
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 along lines of diametrically opposite direction 
 followed by friction and conflict whenever they 
 come in active contact. 
 
 The one set of these forces expresses the instinc- 
 tual-animal nature of the individual. The other 
 his self-consciously moral. The one is in the hand 
 of automatic desire, the other of reasoned intelli- 
 gence and self-directed will. Now in ordinary 
 animal existence where the instinct is primitive and 
 pure, and still unhampered by psychological crav- 
 ings, the sense of appetite forms part of a system 
 which, on the basis of an automatically regulated 
 relation between the physiological demand and 
 supply of the animal, renders its struggle for ex- 
 istence perfectly safe. But when, as in the intellec- 
 tualized and reason-endowed human individual, 
 the influence of psychology has displaced that of 
 physiology, and pure instinct, with its true, nat- 
 ural sensation of hunger, given way to the irri- 
 tated and artificially aggravated sense of appetite, 
 detached from its guiding instinct, and governed 
 solely by its over-stimulated desire to indulge 
 the act of eating becomes a bacchanal with its 
 sole check in the physical incapacity of the system 
 to further engage. And as appetite and cravings 
 mostly are false psychological impressions, formed 
 in the mind and flashed upon the automatic records 
 of the medulla, it is readily seen that to be guaged 
 by these impulses means to juggle with life, and 
 to install future or immediate disaster to the sys- 
 tem. For desire is like fire it feeds upon any- 
 thing thrown in its way, with its demands increas- 
 ing in fury until reaching the fatal point of in- 
 capacity to further indulge, when under the st^- 
 gering load of increasing nutritional excels, tv^
 
 NE1F LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 physiological receivers become clogged to suffoca- 
 tion and the vital engine, with its intricate meta- 
 bolic involvement of secretions and circulation trem- 
 bles on the verge of bursting. 
 
 To obtain self-control in eating, it is of the great- 
 est importance to know the difference between 
 hunger and appetite. Thus while hunger is a 
 natural stimulation of the secretory nerves, arising 
 from positive vital needs of the system, sensation 
 of appetite is a mere irritation, independent of any 
 corresponding physiologic necessity, but solely 
 due to the influence of the secretory nerves of 
 mental and psychic representations. To allow the 
 mind, during business hours, to dwell upon food, 
 with all the imagery of tempting viands, psychol- 
 ogizes the gastric nerves, and through them im- 
 pose upon the medulla oblongata the central office 
 of the vital-physiologic exchanges a false image 
 of hunger, with no basis in real nutritional needs 
 of the system. And as nature in all her workings 
 operates on a basis of elasticity and yields to recur- 
 ing stresses, the one indulgence paves the way to 
 another, until the overcharged organ becomes 
 chronically discentralized and forced out of rela- 
 tion to the nutritional demand-and-supply-balances 
 of normal life. 
 
 Having thus been derailed into an altogether 
 pathological order of functioning, the digestive 
 system may make demands, and force issues out 
 of all relation to normal physiological standards; 
 and indulgence of food, based upon these repre- 
 sentations, must be irreliable and dangerous to the 
 system itself. Hence, to regain normal relation- 
 ship between physiological demand and supply, 
 the individual must ignore his cravings and sen- 
 
 60
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 sations of unsatisfied appetite, and recognize the 
 promptings of reasoning intelligence and calm 
 judgment as the determining factors in the meas- 
 urement of his food allowance. And having at- 
 tained this power of judgment, the next step 
 should be to enforce it by the mandate of self- 
 control, and subsequent readjustment of the gas- 
 tric secretion into a normal relationship to sys- 
 temic requirements. The whole question of quanti- 
 tative feeding can thus be resolved to a question 
 of morals, to be dealt with sucessfully only on a 
 basis of moral integrity, reasoning intelligence, 
 and self-control. 
 
 It has great practical value as an aid to this 
 development to study the lives of other people 
 whose frugality in matters of food have in no way 
 lessened their health and usefulness. In fact 
 from the time of the later Romans up to the 
 present, there is an unmistakable relationship 
 between a peoples' health, intelligence and power, 
 and their degree of self-restraint in matters of 
 food. It is almost incredible as to the small 
 amount upon which human life can be sustained 
 and yet retain its full vigor and usefulness. It was 
 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes himself a doctor of 
 medicine who once made the statement that we 
 never have any need of regretting that we eat too 
 little. Another great man, Benjamin Franklin, 
 makes mention in his autobiography of an interest- 
 ing experience in his early years when he worked 
 his way through life as a printer. One day when 
 particularly rushed for time, he was compelled to 
 give up his lunch and remain in his office to the 
 end of the day. When evening came, he was sur- 
 prised at the sound, healthy feeling of his head in 
 
 61
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 which he had suffered a dull ache since the early 
 part of the day. To this advantage was added 
 another that of economy which, to this father 
 of thrift, was of great importance. And so Ben 
 Franklin, from that very day, decided that if the 
 elimination of a meal from his daily dietary meant 
 a saving to him in health, money and time, he 
 would run his business without a lunch. 
 
 It is generally well known that Mr. Thomas 
 Edison, notwithstanding his enormous activity, is 
 a remarkably small eater, and often works an 
 entire day without indulging in a single meal. And 
 yet the health and endurance of this man is phe- 
 nomenal. While advancing on his eightieth anni- 
 versary he is yet in possession of all the vigor and 
 virility of youth. 
 
 In Chauncey M. Depew we have another living 
 example of what can be attained and retained in 
 health and power on a very diminutive diet. On 
 a daily allowance of food which to most people 
 would look like starvation, this man, who has al- 
 ready passed his "eighties," is in possession of a 
 mind and body as active and regenerative as in his 
 prime of life. In this connection may be mentioned 
 the curious story told of M. Agricola, the nephew 
 of Cicero, who, after having for years been suffer- 
 ing from a very severe dyspepsia, decided to take 
 a deadly revenge on his arch enemy the stomach 
 by starving it to death a procedure which, at 
 the same time, would terminate his own suffer- 
 ings. After a rigid abstenance from food for a 
 few days, M. Agricola found to his wonder and 
 delight, that his sufferings had left him, and life 
 smiled upon him as of former days. The fasting, 
 which had given his stomach an opportunity to 
 
 62
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 restore its broken down cell-structures and im- 
 peded secretions, in place of killing his "enemy," 
 turned him into his closest friend. 
 
 Similar records of long lives from short meals 
 come to us from the histories of many great men. 
 Swedenborg, Goethe, Herbert Spencer, William 
 Gladstone and John Burroughs are the names of 
 a few men who were noted for their frugal living, 
 but whose minds were great and of undying value 
 to their race. In fact it may almost be held as an 
 historical fact, that the men who have made the 
 greatest marks in this world have been the small- 
 est eaters. 
 
 As a further help toward acquiring the power 
 of self-control in eating, it should be realized how 
 small an amount of food is actually needed for a 
 maintenance of the daily vital expenditures in- 
 volved in human existence while performing his 
 duties of life. Thus it has been ascertained, on a 
 basis of strictly scientific calculation, that the 
 energy expended in a three mile walk can be re- 
 plenished by the calories contained in three 
 medium-sized olives and an English walnut. Not 
 less amazing is the fact that a person was able to 
 propel his body weight against the pull of gravity 
 all the way up the 555 feet high Washington Monu- 
 ment and down again, on the energy released in the 
 assimilation of a single sardine and a teaspoonful 
 of thick fig-jam. 
 
 From these facts it becomes convincingly clear 
 that the amount of food we eat, for which the sys- 
 tem has no use, is appalling. But this is not all: in 
 physiology and religion we face the same alterna- 
 tives, that what is not for us is against us. For as 
 the introduction of a single morsel of food, not 
 
 63
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 needed for the repair and general up-keep of the 
 system, fails to find a place in its economy, it follows 
 that at some time or other, in some form or other, 
 either through the surgical removal from the sys- 
 tem of the waste-heap called a tumor; or through 
 the slow, painful excavations over the channels of 
 respiration termed tuberculosis; or the forcible, con- 
 vulsive evacuations and spontaneous combustion of 
 body-waste in the typhoid; the collection and isola- 
 tion in the tissues of stagnant fluids as in dropsy, 
 or any other disease utilized as an expediency in 
 the removal from the organism of its overflow of 
 decomposing excess Mother Nature that great 
 engineer of organized life introduces a balancing 
 account with her creatures, and removes from the 
 culprit his illgotten goods. This explains the re- 
 currence of "colds" which constitute channels for 
 the forceful elimination through the eyes, nose and 
 throat of the mostly unnoticed accumulation of 
 internal sewerage with its festering centers, ever 
 ready to break through its temporary enclosures 
 and throw the system into serious fevers the 
 opening of a physiological "barage fire" on the 
 organism with the subsequent specialized attack 
 on some body organ the lungs, pleura, kidneys, 
 liver, intestines, etc., in terms of inflammation and 
 combustion of these structures. 
 
 Another realization which cannot fail to serve 
 as a memento mori in our struggle with appetite, is 
 the religious incentive, which, deeper than any 
 other appeal, should impress upon the Christian 
 mind its profound and sinister lesson. It is the 
 consciousness of duty the obligation under which 
 we find ourselves to the Author of our lives and 
 the Supreme Architect of the marvelous instru-
 
 !\EW LIGHT OI\ LIVING 
 
 ment which, in the form of a physical organism, 
 has been placed at our disposal to serve us as 
 means of our evolution. And to violate the laws 
 and principles involved in the integrity of this 
 instrument, as in the form of gluttony or harmful 
 excesses of any kind, means a rupture in our rela- 
 tion to the very center of energy which constitutes 
 the source and sustenance of our lives. It means 
 a loss to our existence in mental keenness, moral 
 fitness and physical energy, with a corresponding 
 foreshortening of life itself with all its values of 
 development, usefulness and service. Under the 
 sway of the law of causation the unbreakable 
 chain of cause and effect that relates with unerring 
 certitude an act with its consequences the indi- 
 vidual who deliberately indulges in food or drink 
 which he knows are detrimental to his health and 
 service, draws upon himself conditions that involve 
 the same judicial severity on the mental and vital 
 plane as the destruction of life and property brings 
 out on the social and communal plane. And while 
 the transgressor of the moral and vital laws may 
 suffer no infringement on his social and individual 
 freedom, yet the penitentiary which imprisons the 
 individual in the form of racking diseases and suf- 
 fering, is often by far more intolerable than the 
 penitentiary of the criminal offense. 
 
 After having considered these various aspects 
 of quantitative feeding, with the inevitable conse- 
 quences of disorder arising in the course of excess 
 and uncalled for indulgence, it will be easier for 
 the individual to arrive at an adequate apprecia- 
 tion of the amount of food required for the main- 
 tenance of the best health and usefulness. The 
 motives for eating should be carefully scrutinized 
 
 65
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 so as to leave him in no uncertainty whether his 
 needs for food are real or fancied. 
 
 As a means of controlling a strong appetite, the 
 individual, at the beginning of the meal, and be- 
 fore his appetite, by the convulsive rush of psy- 
 chic stimulation, has carried away his judgment, 
 should put upon his plate whatever he at that in- 
 stant would consider to be a fair and adequate 
 amount for the satisfaction of his true physiolog- 
 ical needs. Having thus brought his calm judg- 
 ment to bear upon the selection of his food, with a 
 proper rating of capacity and requirement, noth- 
 ing should prevail upon him to add a single morsel 
 to his meal. 
 
 The mental, moral and physical power, which 
 such a positive and determined attitude to life and 
 its principles gives to the individual, will be mani- 
 fested with striking impressiveness in every act 
 and undertaking of his daily life. It will show 
 itself in the power of his will, in the clearness of 
 his judgment, in the health and beauty of his body, 
 and above all in the realization of himself as a 
 soul with its exhilarating consciousness of moral 
 triumph. The victory of self over appetite, the 
 triumph of will over sense-life in a word, the 
 power of self-directed evolution. 
 
 From this it becomes evident that the question 
 of quantity in diet resolves itself to a question of 
 principle, determined by intelligent judgment and 
 moral will. After all, the individual must deter- 
 mine his own attitude to appetite and indulgence. 
 He must examine himself from the standpoint of 
 temperament and environment, as the latter are 
 of greatest importance in solving his problem. As 
 a general rule the nervous and high-strung mind, 
 
 66
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 by virtue of its accelerating influence on the vascu- 
 lar exchanges, demands more nourishment for the 
 system than the placid and phlegmatic mind. 
 
 On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that 
 the larger the quantity of a meal, the more vital 
 energy is used up in its digestion, and consequently 
 may render less net profit to the system than the 
 smaller meal. Having more vital energy to spend 
 upon his smaller quantity, the moderate eater has 
 the advantage of getting his food more thoroughly 
 masticated and assimilated than the heavy eater. 
 Consequently we may not infrequently encounter 
 the dietetic paradox that the more food the less 
 nourishment, and that one egg or one slice of meat 
 may yield more actual nutritional benefits to the 
 eater than two eggs or two slices of meat. It is 
 this fact that lies back of the power, so frequently 
 observed during fasting, that a person can attend 
 to his business for weeks, without the intake of 
 any form of nourishment. For while the fast fur- 
 nishes no vital income to the system, neither does 
 it give rise to any of the expenditures which, in the 
 form of an overcrowded digestion, imperfect as- 
 similation, and excessive elimination, give rise 
 to such overwhelming losses to the vitality of the 
 glutton and the average heavy eater. 
 
 Another fact in diet always to be considered, is 
 the difference in quality between concentrated 
 foods, such as dried fruits, butter, cheese, etc., and 
 foods that retain their natural, constitutional bal- 
 ance, such as fresh fruit, milk and vegetables, 
 which must largely influence the amount of their 
 use. On a similar basis we must carefully distin- 
 guish between the germs or seeds of foods and 
 their pulp the grains and their protective wrap- 
 
 67
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 per in our selection of quantitative eating. Grain 
 food such as bread, mush and any form of cereals, 
 constitute the very germ of the plant and is conse- 
 quently packed with all the energy to be mani- 
 fested in its growth and evolution. This principle 
 holds good in regard to any form of seed, includ- 
 ing beans, peas, nuts and even eggs the latter 
 being seeds on the animal plane. 
 
 These concentrated forms of nourishment 
 should be used with the same moderation as meat, 
 and never exceed four meals a week. As to nuts, 
 it is safe to say, that four or five walnuts at a 
 meal, not to exceed three meals a week, consti- 
 tutes a fair amount of that highly concentrated 
 food for the system. On the same scale of nutri- 
 tion one egg a day sets the limit of safety for every 
 person who prefers health to indulgence, and the 
 attainment of power to the gratification of appe- 
 tite. 
 
 68
 
 THE EINSTEIN THEORY APPLIED TO LIFE 
 
 FROM a standpoint of metaphysics the Ein- 
 stein world-conception cannot be doubted. 
 The theory in its general term was already 
 conceived, for more than twenty-five hundred 
 years ago, by the ancient Greek philosopher, Her- 
 aclete, who, in his famous formula "Pantha Rhei" 
 all is motion gave to the world the modern 
 theory of relativity. Every moment of time ushers 
 in upon the stage of world-dynamics a new and 
 never before experienced phase of existence. To- 
 day every individual on this planet occupies a 
 position, physically, mentally and morally differ- 
 ing from any position he ever had before. The 
 earth moves through a space in cosmos which it 
 never before has traversed, and the sun itself, with 
 all its appendages and dependencies of planets 
 and moons, stars and comets, is pioneering the uni- 
 verse in stellar territories of new and inexperienced 
 magnificence. Every unit of existence, from the 
 atom to the pleiades, are in constant motion, en- 
 tering incessantly into new relations, both intern- 
 ally and externally, to itself and to others. No 
 form ever occupied the same position twice; no 
 thoughts or ideas are ever reproduced in their 
 minutest shades of meaning and expressiveness; 
 no type of life ever completely covered the linea- 
 ments of any other type. For the tiniest snow 
 crystal, no matter how apparently exact it re- 
 
 69
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 sembles the type of other snow crystals, is always 
 at work on its own reorganization. 
 
 Now in this universe of difference, whether in 
 time, space or form, no definite relations between 
 things can be possible. Before the ray of a star 
 has been able to traverse the billions of miles of 
 distance separating it from its neighbor star, it 
 has burned itself into dust and disappeared for- 
 ever from the luminous pageant of celestial 
 wanderers. We are gazing today on stars, which 
 for ages ago passed out of existence, while their 
 light-rays are still on their way through the starry 
 deserts of space to continue yet for future ages to 
 reproduce their phantom orbs on the retinas of 
 coming generations. 
 
 It is thus self-evident that every position we 
 occupy in space, and the subsequent impact of 
 forces that arrive or depart within the sphere of 
 our cosmic relationship, bring upon us a new train 
 of influences with their power to alter and re-ad- 
 just our general astro-physical associations. But 
 important as our relation to physical conditions 
 may be, it covers only one aspect of relativity, 
 while an incalculably more important phase, yet to 
 be realized, lies in the effect produced on the 
 moral and intellectual plane, where thoughts and 
 ideals are crossing and recrossing each other's 
 currents, changing purposes and thwarting reso- 
 lutions, as the motives rise into light or sink into 
 darkness ceaselessly though silently, affecting 
 the course of human destiny in terms of individual 
 and social interrelations. 
 
 Vices and virtues, peace and war, progress and 
 degeneracy are conditioned by mental and psychic 
 
 70
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 relativity, with the same certainty as on the astro- 
 physic plane, light rays are affected by gravity, 
 and time by motion. It is this relativity on the 
 moral plane that determines the character of an 
 act and the resultant ethics of social relationship. 
 It is this relativity that should enforce tolerance 
 and patience in our dealings with differences of 
 creed, intelligence, race and color. Our stand- 
 ards of life are maintained by the attitude we hold 
 to life ; and from a moral point of view the crude 
 ethics of the cave man or of the South Sea Islander, 
 may be gauged by purer motives and stronger 
 principles than the man of the social refinements 
 in the midst of modern culture. On the other 
 hand, the attempt of the back-to-nature-man to 
 apply the ethics of the simple life of the past, to 
 the super-complexity of present social relations, 
 and to relegate the time-and-labor-saving devices 
 in the machinery of industry, of education and of 
 government, to the socialistic and naturalistic level 
 of common ownership, with its individual irrespon- 
 sibility, and lucky-go, hap-hazard, hand-to-mouth 
 relationship, is no more reasonable and practicable 
 than to reestablish the stage coach and sailing 
 vessel as agencies for the commercial avalanches 
 of national and international exchanges. No re- 
 turn to old conditions is possible. The past must 
 be left to bury the past, while the present fixes its 
 gaze, intensely and sanely, on the future. For the 
 solution of the world problem is not to return to 
 the innocence of a "golden age," but to advance 
 on the virtues of the Golden Rule. And it is here 
 we find the true formula for "salvaging of civil- 
 ization." It is in the force of conscience that the 
 inequalities of men will find their common de- 
 
 71
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 visor. If men in their relations were governed by 
 conscience, despotism, tyranny, injustice, cruelty, 
 and any form of social degeneracy would be im- 
 possible. There is no industrial, political or 
 religious problem so complex that it cannot be 
 solved by the power of conscience, nor is there 
 any system of existence, no matter how simple and 
 primitive, that can endure without it. 
 
 For it is only through the force of conscience 
 that the individual can preserve the sense of moral 
 responsibility, which the socialization or commun- 
 alization of the state, with its sway of "herd-con- 
 science," tries to remove. Consequently, any re- 
 form which does not proceed from the particular 
 to the general ; i. e., from the individual to the com- 
 munal, but on the contrary starts its impulse in 
 the latter, gives to the individual an opportunity to 
 dissolve his conscience in the conscience of the 
 mass, and to that extent lose his sense of personal 
 responsibility and the power of self-directed un- 
 foldment. It was this absence of personal respon- 
 sibility among the soldiers of the Russian Army that 
 brought about its defeat in the war with Japan, 
 1905, and it is the same fatal defect that demoral- 
 izes and enfeebles the industrial and cultural in- 
 itiatives of the Russian Commonwealth of today. 
 And any attitude of a government which tends to 
 weaken the individual responsibility of its citizens 
 socially, politically or industrially destroys the 
 fine edge of their independent, self-directed power 
 of thought, and leads to general demoralization. 
 The individual with his personal responsibility 
 constitutes a center of communal gravity, while 
 society with its herd-conscience goes into per- 
 petual solvency, either toward progression or re- 
 trogression. 
 72
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 And this brings us face to face with the impend- 
 ing crisis : that unless society awards the individual 
 the full freedom to exercise his moral responsibility 
 and power of conscience with society ever ready 
 to respond to the ensuing central impulse of his 
 nature our moral cosmos will lose its center of 
 gravity and return to chaos from which it sprang. 
 In the cosmogony of old Greece, Cosmos emerged 
 from Chaos, guided by the torch of Eros (Love). 
 And as love depends on the individual rather than 
 on the social consciousness for its meaning and de- 
 termination, so it becomes evident that unless we 
 maintain the light of love as the guiding force in 
 our individual life, the world will retrograde in its 
 motion, and in place of cosmos advancing on chaos, 
 the latter will turn upon cosmos. In other words, 
 we must deal directly with the individual, and in 
 thought, word and act, bring before his mind 
 the consciousness of his tremendous responsibility 
 as a human being equipped with power to save 
 or wreck the world. 
 
 73
 
 XI 
 SELF-DIRECTED EVOLUTION 
 
 IN his failure to appreciate the deeper relation- 
 ship between man and nature, the sensualist 
 falls utterly short in his standards of evolution. 
 Even in her strongest exhibitions, nature is as in- 
 complete without man, as man is incomplete with- 
 out nature. They are complimentary to each 
 other, like the artist and his instrument. Environ- 
 ment furnishes the means by which the individual 
 may conquer himself, and in the death-struggle 
 of his physical life evolve the virtues of his im- 
 mortal life. 
 
 To "go-back-to-nature" is to surrender principle 
 to law, intellect to instinct, spiritual energies to 
 elemental forces. It means the sacrifice of the 
 higher for the lower; the grafting of a flower upon 
 the stem of a weed, or a luscious fruit tree upon a 
 wild tree of the forest. In place of surrendering 
 to the elemental sway of nature's forces, we should 
 control, direct and elevate nature into ever higher 
 expressions of growth, beauty and service. To 
 "go-back-to-nature" is to the mind what "return 
 to dust" is to the body; the discentralization and 
 dissolution of intellectual self-hood and self-deter- 
 mining individuality. Our business is not to exist 
 and die only, but to live and survive; not merely 
 to enjoy, but to improve ; not only to accept life as 
 a birthday gift, but to use it as a constructive 
 power in the service of humanity. 
 
 74
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 For with all her power and archaic intelligence, 
 Nature must yet remain our servant. Only to the 
 extent we can intelligently influence Her processes 
 and assume mastery of our environments, are we 
 in line with our own evolution. There is no neu- 
 trality, no pose of indecision in nature. Either 
 onward or backward; either we must lift our- 
 selves upward or be dragged downward. The 
 same irresistible force that stirs in the seed, stirs 
 in the weed, and man must either grow immortal 
 in good or mortal in evil. We are creators on all 
 lines and in all aspects of growth. Everything we 
 touch with our motives springs into life and grows 
 into the direction of our ideals. Give your interest to 
 a vice, and it grows under its influence, as a weed 
 grows under the influence of water and air. Our 
 wills impart the magic of growth to our posses- 
 sions ; to the seeds of virtue or to the weeds of vice. 
 
 In place of allowing ourselves to be hustled for- 
 ward and backward as puppets in the relentless 
 grip of pending conditions, we should let our judg- 
 ment devise, and our will execute principles of 
 moral life, standardized and sanctioned by con- 
 science. Self-directed evolution means that the 
 individual assumes control of his own elemental 
 forces, and outlines his own vital and mental 
 career. His gauge must be spiritual, not sensuous, 
 and his attitude to life, that of a conquering hero, 
 converting and organizing every emotion, arising 
 from the subconscious plane, into law-abiding, 
 principle-governed agencies of thought and action. 
 To allow the lower life to control the higher in 
 terms of unhealthy habits and life-menacing indul- 
 gences is impossible for everyone who aims at the 
 attainment of moral-free will and a self-governed 
 individuality. 
 
 75
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 As demonstrated by recent researches in the 
 field of psycho-analysis, the human being is made 
 up of a host of sub-conscious entities, endowed 
 with individual consciousness, and capable of in- 
 fluencing the central individual self with fluctuat- 
 ing standards of morality. Now, self-directed 
 evolution means the power of an individual to 
 assume control and dictatorship of his subcon- 
 scious kingdom, and to impress upon its denizens 
 the insignia of moral exaltation and spiritual con- 
 sanguinity which alone insures a morally guaged 
 and biologically sustained unity of individual 
 advance. 
 
 Every expression of individual consciousness 
 has its source in the operation of spiritual or ele- 
 mental forces, inspired either by egotism or altru- 
 ism; by motives either of personal ambition or of 
 universal service. Thus to the extent that art, as 
 an expression of individuality, is made a vehicle 
 for vanity, pride or profit, it connects with down- 
 ward or backward-directed forces, leading to de- 
 generacy and oblivion ; while to the extent the art- 
 impulse expresses itself in terms of service and 
 for the love of beauty and truth, does it spring 
 from the soul and genius of man's immortal, eter- 
 nal self. The former is a branch from the spiritual 
 tree of life, skilfully grafted upon the top root of 
 egotistic motives and made to blossom forth in the 
 evanescent splendor of a sense governed world, 
 but yields no fruit nor survival value to life itself; 
 the latter springs from perfected moral excellence 
 with its root in eternal life itself and its fruits in 
 the purity and altruism of a morally developing 
 humanity. Hence we have a sensual art and a 
 moral art; and, whether expressed through the 
 
 76
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 brush of the painter, the chisel of the sculptor, or 
 the pen of the poet, this art confers upon the artist 
 the tremendous alternative of either lifting earth 
 up to Heaven, or dragging Heaven down to earth. 
 This art, when expressed in the general vehicle of 
 fiction the novel or the drama with the leading 
 motives derived from the complexities of unre- 
 generated popular sense-life, creates such literary 
 productions as we find in the carnal realism of the 
 French naturalists, in the moral pathology of an 
 Ibsen and Strindberg, or the scoffing, muck-raking 
 cynicism of a Bernard Shaw. 
 
 This distinction in the expressions of motives 
 obtains in every interpretive endeavor of the 
 individual in his relation to art, science or litera- 
 ture; in expressions of oratory, song, music or 
 dance. For in every endeavor is inevitably in- 
 volved the leading motives of the performer; 
 either unselfishness or egotism, love or desire; 
 appeals to the ideality of the superman, or sugges- 
 tions to the grotesque, sensuous, vulgar and brutal 
 in the cave-man. And the enormous task before 
 us today is to acquire the ominous power of judg- 
 ment in selecting our leaders. We must not only 
 have eyes, but also the power of seeing; not only 
 have the privilege of asking, but a knowledge of 
 the right thing to ask for. Once for all we must 
 be made to recognize as an absolute guide for life 
 and conduct that whatever we may acquire in 
 power or possession, if not paid for in some form 
 or another, in money, time or work, is not ours, 
 and will never become an organized part of our 
 nature. Having merely yielded to temporary coer- 
 sion, the situation abides the time when vital, 
 moral or physical conditions shall introduce the 
 
 77
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 crisis by which a balancing of forces and restora- 
 tion of the disturbed individual equilibrium will 
 be made possible. For the keynote to health and 
 survival lies in the maintenance of an equilibrium 
 between the individual and his environment, and 
 is back of the whole vital biologic process, which 
 is known as the "struggle for existence" or the 
 "survival of the fittest," with its presence mani- 
 fested in every accident, every disease, every 
 phase of fortune or misfortune. The entire sweep 
 of evolution, with all its movements of life and 
 death, rise and fall of races and species, is a play 
 of cosmic affinities at work on every entity or unit 
 of life, from the Amoeba to man, toward the estab- 
 lishment of a vast, universal merger, in which 
 every individual will strike a level of equilibrium 
 and poise. And the attitude by which the indi- 
 vidual most readily can further this grand integral 
 ensemble of moral and vital forces lies in the con- 
 centration of his mind upon some neutral, super- 
 sensual point of interest, by its very nature ele- 
 vated above every motive of personal irritation. 
 Attitudes that may yield such imperturbable cen- 
 ters of repose may be found in the realization of 
 concepts like Unity, Soul, Immortality, Space, 
 Humanity, or the effort to visualize in their full 
 optic perspective the symbols of the Star, the Cross 
 or the Heart. Thus detached from the storm-centers 
 of the lower life with its chaos of broken laws and 
 violated principles, the individual ceases momen- 
 tarily to be subject to the jarring forces of sin 
 and passion, and merges into the calm zone of 
 serenity, rhythm and harmony. It is this shifting 
 of centers of consciousness that gives the eternal 
 value to silence and its companion-mood medita- 
 
 78
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 tion ; the release and exaltation of the mind, as it 
 temporarily escapes from the burden of its lower 
 self with the harassing complexities of desires, 
 worries and disappointments. During the night 
 we experience the physiological phase of this re- 
 lease, in the restorative, vital process which brings 
 rest, strength and rejuvenation to the individual 
 after a night's sleep. 
 
 Applied to the daily events of our life, this 
 practice of silence, concentration and meditation, 
 will gradually give rise to a state of consciousness 
 in our mind, which shall enable us to deal with the 
 very heart of things, and to direct the career of 
 our own evolution. For it is the lack of knowledge 
 lack of a thorough, well-grounded and morally 
 convincing knowledge of things and events, that 
 lies back of all errors and mistakes of human life. 
 Such a knowledge will elevate our ideals into posi- 
 tive creative forces, and link our motives and 
 actions with the all-embracing chain of human 
 sympathy and solidarity which should transfigure 
 every impulse of our complex nature into agencies 
 for the promotion of universal interests. Self- 
 directed evolution is the will in action, the deter- 
 mination of the individual to eliminate from his 
 nature every element of his personality physi- 
 cally, mentally, or morally that in any way forms 
 an obstruction to his progress. The removal of old 
 tendencies, the clearing away of race habits from 
 the field of consciousness, a careful analysis of 
 every indulgence as to its health and usefulness 
 in our development, and the willingness of self- 
 denial and self-sacrifice for the furtherance of 
 truth and virtue can alone bring about the triumph 
 
 79
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 of self-control, without which self-directed evolu- 
 tion becomes impossible. 
 
 Every day our life should express the triumph 
 of growth, the glory of action, the beauty of sacri- 
 fice. "For each day, well lived, turns yesterday 
 into a dream of happiness, and tomorrow into a 
 vision of hope." 
 
 80
 
 XII 
 
 tt 
 
 Lest We Forget" 
 
 THERE is a tendency in modern times to widen 
 the narrow road of life by a general disregard 
 of the constructive laws and principles that 
 lie back of the entire progressive movement of 
 evolution. 
 
 Now, while the conditions of existence may dif- 
 fer, according to natural environments and indi- 
 vidual temperaments, yet the underlying forces of 
 law and purpose remain eternally the same. For 
 laws are the guide boards of evolution, the unerring 
 vanguards of progress, at once prompting and ar- 
 resting, directing and correcting, the biologic 
 advance. In other words, law constitutes a self- 
 adjusting agency, determining through individual 
 reactions, the physical, mental and moral fitness of 
 an entity to opportunities of life and service. 
 
 Consequently law asserts its corrective power 
 only on him who attempts its violation, while it 
 gives unseen aid to every action or movement 
 which follows its course of order. A free moral 
 agent, the individual in his relation to law assumes 
 the paradoxial attitude of being at once a servant 
 and a master, whose surrender means conquest and 
 who, through obedience alone, can become free. 
 Each step of progress brings us under the domin- 
 ion of a new law whose conditions we can over- 
 come only by obeying them. It is the restatement, 
 in natural evolution, of the ancient sphinx holding 
 up its grim, old riddle to the wayfarer who must 
 either solve its propositions or perish. 
 
 Hence it is not only vigilance, but vigilance in 
 the right direction, that holds the price of liberty. 
 
 81
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 There is no other slavery than ignorance, and no 
 other freedom than truth. By obeying the law- 
 be it physical, moral or spiritual we obtain the 
 key that will work out the solution of any condi- 
 tion. And just as in solving a problem in mathe- 
 matics, we must analyze and test the elements of 
 its composition, so in solving the problem of exist- 
 ence we must analyze and weigh the integral prin- 
 ciples of its nature, which is possible only through 
 the processes of life itself in the scientific, philoso- 
 phical and spiritual realization of the character 
 and tendency of leading motives. 
 
 Moreover, as the function of law is to enforce 
 individual recognition of abstract principles in 
 their application to moral and vital virtues, it fol- 
 lows that it is only through the exaltation and 
 purification of our motives that we can discover 
 the operation of new and deeper laws. It is not 
 a mere coincidence that the leading minds of all 
 ages have been those of great spiritual devotion. 
 It was under the impulsion of a spiritual Olympus 
 that Pheidias, in his Parthenon, laid down archi- 
 tectural principles which in scientific accuracy, 
 artistic beauty and spiritual exaltation have 
 remained unparalleled in the subsequent twenty- 
 five centuries of architectural efforts. It was this 
 same impulse of the soul that inspired Michael 
 Angelo in sculpture, Raphael in painting, Bach 
 and Beethoven in music, Shakespeare in drama, 
 Humboldt in nature, Carlyle in history, Tennyson 
 and Walt Whitman in poetry. That the intellect 
 may know, the soul must see, and the vision 
 which alone can discern the deeper meaning of 
 laws and principles must be purified and exalted 
 through spiritual devotion.
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 Now, if the spiritual or religious acceptance of 
 the universe with its exaltation of life and motives 
 brought out the genius and creative powers of the 
 master-minds of the past, it is in the natural order 
 of things that a materialization of life must give 
 rise to the very opposite. For as materalism stands 
 for the disregard of every consideration not 
 directly promoting the comfort and pleasure of 
 the material and sensual part of our nature, it 
 follows that its mastery over the mind means a 
 gradual elimination from individual conscious- 
 ness of every power and function associated with 
 the religious and spiritual life of humanity. For 
 as any agency depends for its existence and 
 power upon the accuracy of the avenues through 
 which it receives its communication, so the mind, 
 which in consequence of its materialism, is iso- 
 lated from spiritual influences, gradually becomes 
 unconscious to every source of intelligence other 
 than that arising from material sensation. Thus 
 isolated from every aspect of life other than that 
 which directly impresses his senses, the materialist 
 finds his entire mental and moral energy concen- 
 trated on this lower plane of life the sensuous 
 which, while isolating his mind from higher 
 institutions, gives to his instincts and sensuality 
 an entirely undue and eventually degenerating 
 influence. 
 
 The central spring and preserving power in 
 evolution is the ever present urge called the "sur- 
 vival of the fittest." Now, the nature and the issue 
 of this world process if on the spiritual plane, in- 
 volves moral and spiritual survival; if on the 
 material, the safeguarding of purely material inter- 
 ests. The difference is fundamental, determining 
 
 8S
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 the entire career of the human being; for as the 
 struggle for spiritual existence involves the quick- 
 ening and strengthening of universal virtues, em- 
 bracing the welfare of the entire human race, so 
 the struggle for material or sensual existence is 
 limited to efforts for the mere personal self, and 
 as such leading to the fatal, demoralizing life, 
 which gradually isolates the man from the very 
 influences that lie back of the evolution of his own 
 
 humanity. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The relapse of an individual from his high plane 
 of altruistic and humanistic motives to the low 
 level of selfishness brings about changes of con- 
 sciousness that correspond to the changes that 
 take place in the field of physiological chemistry 
 when structures of organized life, through pro- 
 cesses of decomposition, break down into alcohols, 
 hydroxyls and acetic acids. The breaking down 
 of moral nature differs in no way from the break- 
 ing down of physical nature, and the departure 
 of a soul from moral purity into the decadence of 
 sensuality and sordid greed proceeds through 
 stages of descent perfectly analagous to those that 
 take place in the passage of healthy tissue into 
 states of decay and putrefaction. 
 
 In the cultural life of modern society the influ- 
 ence of the materialistic tendency is in fatal evi- 
 dence. In our relation to dramatic representa- 
 tions this tendency is especially pronounced. The 
 spiritual penetration and moral interest in life 
 which enabled an audience in old Greece to listen 
 in wrapt attention for several hours to a tragedy 
 of Aeschylus, not for the sake of entertainment or 
 amusement, but for the sake of edification, has be- 
 
 84
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 come a lost art to modern theatre goers. The 
 nervous tension of our natures demands the short- 
 circuited methods of the photo-drama and the 
 vaudeville. 
 
 The dramatic organism breaking down into 
 "skits" and "scenarios," is reduced to fragments 
 of isolated purposes and sporadic emotions, sport- 
 ing in the flash-light of ever shifting motives, while 
 stimulated into conculsive though puerile actions 
 by injections of half veiled suggestions. The en- 
 tire drama is dissected or vivisected in "naked 
 truths" and "frank portrayals" interspersed with 
 moral thrills and ganglionic shocks, while the 
 breathless succession of swift racing incidents reel 
 off human destines at the rate of a year a minute, 
 galvanizing into seeming vitality the fading 
 energies of an over-stimulated and exhausted 
 nerve life. 
 
 The same nervous exhaustion is evidenced in 
 our popular music which, from the deep emotions 
 and exalted feelings of the old folk-songs, is de- 
 parting into the nerve-whipping tone-spasms of 
 "ragtime" and "jazz." So unwholesome to the 
 sensitive mind and body is this latest anomaly of 
 music that in the clinical report that came to us 
 from a field hospital in France where music had 
 been employed and very successfully as a 
 means of sedative or "shock absorber" to patients 
 suffering from shell shock, the introduction of 
 "jazz" caused the entire ward to show signs of 
 the greatest uneasiness, bordering in some cases 
 on frenzy and convulsions. On the other hand, 
 the soothing rhythms and mollifying chords of our 
 old, beautiful folk-songs brought to the patients a 
 
 85
 
 HEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 peacefulness and poise that proved to be of great- 
 est value in their treatment and recovery. 
 
 And what is the "tango," the "fox trot," the 
 "shimmy," and other "high step" and "low bow" 
 varieties the inartistic, senseless and vulgar in- 
 novations of the totally nude "nature" dances, 
 "problem" dances, "emotional" dances, "realistic 
 movements," "cubic postures," etc., but the ethical 
 breakdown from the dignified movements, quiet 
 grace and ethical beauty of the classic dances into 
 vulgar and degenerate substitutes. It is the ever 
 present failure of the nervously overtaxed mind of 
 the present age to sustain the moral coherency 
 and emotional control as represented in the rhy- 
 thmic movements, restrained pose and modest at- 
 tire of the time of our forebears. 
 
 The same principle of moral decadence meets 
 us in some of the departures of modern paintings, 
 as for instance, in the weird concepts of "futurism" 
 the uncalled for and grotesquely nude, with ita 
 unreal and pathological "realism." It is the de- 
 parture from ideal purity to physical embellish- 
 ment; the breaking down of spirituality into 
 materiality, of morality into sensuality of the 
 whole and unified, into the fragmentary and dis- 
 connected. 
 
 This work of destruction is traceable through- 
 out every departure of modern life, from the dance 
 hall to the pulpit, from the street corner oratory 
 to the accepted standards of elocution. Now 
 "jazz" is to music what "slang" is to language 
 and the creative art of building words into lin- 
 guistic structures of inspiring sentences, ideals and 
 feelings into symbols and character, is rapidly be- 
 coming a sport of incongruous articulations a 
 
 86
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 clever juggling with ideas into a haphazard ver- 
 bal mosaic. Sermons themselves, which should 
 serve as vehicles for the most inspiring and ex- 
 alted emotions, are, with increasing frequency, 
 savored with the jocose effusions of the circus 
 clown. And when comparing our modern busi- 
 ness edifices of worship with the inspiring temple 
 structures of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome 
 their Parthenons, mausoleums, and even the cathe- 
 drals of early Christendom it is striking how fit- 
 tingly the principle of a thing invests itself in the 
 corresponding form the morally debased into the 
 materially grotesque. 
 
 The average contemporary novel or "short 
 story" is hardly more than a collection of news- 
 paper incidents, bound in cloth, with rough edges 
 and gilt top. It is a restatement in print of the 
 raw thought hash of backyard gossip, the sen- 
 sualities of the dance hall, the cheap, puerile emo- 
 tions of milady's parlor, with its attractive blend 
 of nauseating vanities, soulless cynicisms and 
 highly spiced yellow journalism presented in that 
 spirit of "frankness" and "chatty" tone which is 
 so "catchy" in the "best sellers of the season." It 
 is the wholesome, thoughtful, humanizing philoso- 
 phy of the classic novel the novel of George Eliot, 
 Bronte, Scott, Dickens, Hugo, Stael, von Holstein, 
 etc. breaking down into the microbic composi- 
 tions of the "up to date" short-story writings. 
 
 It is this attempt of our modern time to bring 
 about a reversion of the evolutionary order and 
 materialize the soul in place of spiritualizing mat- 
 ter to force the larger into the compass of the 
 smaller that gives rise to the agonizing con- 
 sciousness of high soaring ideals strangled in the 
 
 87
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 grip of materiality a consciousness which lies 
 back of the entire soul-fever with its delirious, 
 unreasoning effort to break away from some un- 
 defined but threatening moral world-danger. In 
 every walk and pursuit of life we meet this tossing 
 about of the fever-stricken mind, manifesting in 
 business as well as in art, in science and religion, 
 in literature and education, in amusement, in 
 divorces and in crime. Sin has become interesting 
 and attractive, virtue cold and repelling. Poise, 
 safety, care are thrown overboard, while speed 
 defiant holds the steering gear. The world is 
 struck by moral panic and tries to escape from the 
 scathing indictments of its outraged virtues. An- 
 cient virtue, with its poised, self-sustained moral- 
 ity, is breaking down into the pathology of do- 
 mesticated "vampire" types, "soul brides," "vic- 
 ious triangles," inescapable "parallels," "hypnotic 
 dissections," and courtroom melodramas, with all 
 the ennobling, refining sacredness of domestic se- 
 clusion and chaste reserve thrown wide open to 
 the vultures of a scandal-hungry public. The so- 
 cial life is an actualization of the old Hindu par- 
 able of the man who plunged into the river current 
 to find a diadem of lustrous beauty flashing from 
 the deep. And though the jewels were in plain 
 sight, the eager diver was unable to find them. 
 Then suddenly a glimpse of light caught his eye 
 from above and lo! on the projecting branch of 
 an old tree, high above his head, hung the real dia- 
 dem, the image of which he had seen reflected in 
 the water. 
 
 This delirious hunt for a spiritual ideal, reflected 
 and distorted in the mud of sensuality, is impress- 
 ing itself more or less upon every feature of 
 
 88
 
 NEW LIGHT O/V LIVING 
 
 modern civilization. Speed is king! The greatest 
 vigilance is required by the road police to prevent 
 the "speed fiend/' not only from "annihilating 
 space," but also from annihilating himself and hig 
 fellow travelers. In business his speed mania is 
 scored by records of reckless plunges, chance- 
 takings, gamblings, bettings, and a general fas- 
 cination for uncertainties. His meals are race 
 courses where the foodstuffs, in convulsive hurry, 
 are precipitated down his throat hardly touched 
 by his molar mechanism. The eating speed is 
 facilitated in forms of tabulated food cencentra- 
 tions, soup tabloids, malthoid wafers, instantane- 
 ous coffee, chocolate tablets, predigested break- 
 fast foods, etc. When the digestive mechanism, 
 from very natural reasons, falls behind in the die- 
 tetic schedule, a smart pill will speed up the process 
 and whip the wornout energies into line with the 
 continually foreshortened vital speed limits. 
 
 But this speed is not in pace with the march of 
 true evolution. In place of a speed of life it often 
 turns out to be the speed of death. In spite of ad- 
 vanced hygiene and sanitation surpassing every 
 recorded effort in ancient and modern history 
 the casualties of mortal diseases are constantly in- 
 creasing. Last year 175,000 vital speed fiends 
 were fatally wrecked on the highway of life over 
 the handicap of typhoid fever; while a similar 
 amount were killed in collision with Bright's dis- 
 ease ; and still another hundred thousand through 
 attacks of heart failure, cancer, tuberculosis and 
 insanity. Furthermore, clinical statistics make the 
 staggering assertion that last year every seventh 
 woman in the United States, dying after the age of 
 forty, showed cancer as the cause of her death! 
 
 89
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 But outdistancing them all in the swift race with 
 death is the infant mortality, which, between the 
 ages of one and five, in the course of twelve 
 months snuffed out 300,000 lives, or six times the 
 sum of casualties in the American army during 
 their entire campaign! It is the speed of the 
 fathers breaking upon the career of the children. 
 
 For it must be borne in mind that the first, last 
 and ever present cause of degeneracy is infrac- 
 tion of some moral, mental or physical law. Yet 
 the statement, "to break a law," is a misnomer. 
 No law can be broken. It is not we who break the 
 law, it is the law that breaks us, as the boulder 
 breaks the dashing waves. And, like the latter, 
 our continuity becomes shattered, leaving in the 
 wake of personality a splitting or dismemberment 
 of its constitutional unity, which again means a 
 breaking up of motives into fragments of char- 
 acter and moral convictions. And it is in this 
 breakage with universal laws that the individual 
 finds himself losing hold on the harmony of feel- 
 ing, coherency of thought and rhythm of ex- 
 pression, which, if not restituted, must lead to 
 collapse of his moral poise and intellectual bal- 
 ance. 
 
 Now, the causes for this departure from the high 
 destinies for which man was born are not to be 
 found in his environment or evolutionary impedi- 
 ments, but in his voluntary surrender to the forces 
 of degeneracy. "It is the loss of a people's vision," 
 said Channing, "that leads to its downfall." 
 When, in the course of his evolution, the individual 
 determined to shift his interests from the ideal to 
 the concrete, from spirituality to materiality, from 
 his eternal position as soul to his ephemeral posi- 
 
 90
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 tion as body he started the downward career 
 which little by little caused him to lose hold on 
 life's reality and become a victim of laws and prin- 
 ciples which, through the growing dimness of his 
 inner vision, he no longer was able to understand. 
 For man grows in the direction of his ideal. 
 With his ideal absorbed in physical existence his 
 perspective of life becomes correspondingly nar- 
 rowed. The foreshortening of mental and moral 
 perspective follows the same laws as the fore- 
 shortening of optical perspective ; and the descent 
 from moral heights is followed by the same ever 
 narrowing horizon as the descent from physical 
 heights. It was this descent from the ideal to the 
 material, from a worship of the soul to the worship 
 of the body, that started the downward march of 
 the Greek and Roman civilizations. In fact, it is 
 in the very apotheosis of the Pheidean sculpture 
 culminating in the highest attainment of art 
 ever reached by man that materially tipped the 
 balance of spirituality, and creative art took its 
 departure from man, as an expression of God, to 
 God, as an expression of man. From this turning 
 point of personal ambition the subsequent masters 
 of creative art took their suggestions and started 
 their spiritual descent through the interpretation 
 of God in terms of man, in place of man in terms 
 of God. Slowly the personal interest assumed the 
 dominance over spiritual interests, and in the con- 
 summation of events the ambitions for temporal 
 power and material welfare became the leading 
 motives in history. 
 
 It is here, in the attitude of egotism, that the 
 forces of limitation begin to discover the individual 
 from his spiritual motor power and give rise to the 
 
 91
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 slowly increasing nervous exhausture which must 
 inevitably follow from a departure of life which 
 proposes to sustain individual evolution on the 
 basis of its own isolated reactions. Cut off from 
 the constructive and regenerative currents of the 
 larger life of humanity, where moral and spiritual 
 currents vitalize and sustain individual conscious- 
 ness, like the circulating fluids of the body sustain 
 the vital needs of his physical organism the self- 
 centered egotist will find his moral nature turn 
 into a stagnant pool of moral putrefaction. 
 
 Out of this degeneracy, caused by an all-absorb- 
 ing interest in himself and a corresponding dis- 
 regard for other selves, the individual generates in 
 his own nature the seeds of sorrow and suffering 
 which, in due time, will bring forth the dead-sea- 
 fruit in the tragedies of civilization, which in the 
 form of class hatred, revolutions, wars and strikes, 
 have from time immemorial terriorized humanity. 
 It is the historical actualization of the ancient par- 
 able where the house built on sand points out the 
 eternal warning to every builder, be it of houses 
 or nations, of structures of the mind or structures 
 of matter, that the life work not founded on the 
 rock of human solidarity shall fail to weather the 
 storms of evolutionary or revolutionary changes. 
 
 Plato was right ideals rule the world. The 
 ideals of the good, the true and the beautiful are 
 yet the unvarying standards for the valuation of 
 human progress. And every departure from this 
 universal "rule of three," be it in art, science or 
 religion when human actions cease to be gauged 
 by this world standard of conduct the individual 
 will find himself removed from reciprocal rela- 
 tionship with the great regenerating and sustain- 
 
 92
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LIVING 
 
 ing forces of physical, mental or moral evolution. 
 
 It is the failure of modern society to apply this 
 Platonic "rule of three" to its general culture and 
 art life that has brought about the hollow mockery 
 of its prestations, the grotesqueness of its pos- 
 tures, the shallowness of its interpretations, and 
 self-indulgence of its motives. Art, to be creative, 
 ennobling and graceful, must forget itself in its 
 motives. Art for art's sake is as stupid and non- 
 productive as science for science's sake, or reli- 
 gion for religion's sake. In either domain the 
 attitude spells self-consumption, mental tubercu- 
 losis with the subsequent moral infection of the 
 personality. 
 
 Life is essentially moral and universal. Its flow 
 has only one course, and that course is upward. In 
 this course every motive must have its confluence 
 if the evolution of man shall be crowned by suc- 
 cess. On the other hand, to divert from this course 
 means infraction of fundamental, life-determining 
 laws, with its inevitable consequence in moral 
 blindness, mental confusion, esthetic delirium and 
 physical degeneracy. 
 
 It is his desire to escape from the stern duties of 
 pressing realities that so often lead the mind of 
 the self-seeking "New Thought" devotee to the 
 p^yground of placid abstractions and fairy spun 
 theories. The practice of ordinary, concrete vir- 
 tues and social duties seems too slow and disin- 
 te^sting for his soaring ambitions which prefer 
 t v ^ ""ckle hide-and-seek game of a "sixth sense" 
 a^;~ a "fourth dimension" to the trying responsi- 
 b ''es involved in the practice of square ethics 
 Common sense. In his straining for personal
 
 NEW LIGHT ON LINING 
 
 advance and advantage he forgets that every ef- 
 fort of functional development, be it psychic, in- 
 tellectual or metaphysical, which has not its inspir- 
 ing, qualifying and determining motive in the 
 mral elevation and universal comradeship of 
 man, so far from being of any real essential value 
 to the individual himself, is a more or less danger- 
 ous juggling with uncontrollable psychic forces 
 a squandering with energies which could and 
 should be used on the moral plane in practical 
 altruistic service.
 
 Blood and Nerve Diseases 
 
 Cloth, $1.50 
 
 "This is Dr. Gibson's latest contribution to the 
 science of human nutrition. Through a series of 
 ingenious and self-administrative processes, involv- 
 ing the healing forces, both of Body and Mind, 
 through the agencies of food, motion, breath, and 
 thought,- the author brings out a system of treat- 
 ment by which the most deep-reaching and destruc- 
 tive disease of blood and nerves syphilis can be 
 cured." 
 
 This book is based upon many years of exper- 
 ience in the handling of problems connected with 
 the all-important subject of food values. It covers, 
 in non-technical language, all of the diseases of 
 Nerves and Blood, sets forth the best way to rem- 
 edy them; and discusses in plain language problems 
 of the utmost importance to all men and women. 
 
 "Diet and What It Isn't" 
 
 Popular Edition, $1.00 
 
 A treatise dealing with the latest findings of sci- 
 ence, applied to the practical ways of preparing, 
 ating and digesting our foodstuffs.
 
 Facts and Fancies in 
 "Health Foods" 
 
 Castilian Cover. 128 Pages. 
 
 PRICK: $1.00 Postpaid 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 1. Basis for Longevity True or False. 
 
 2. The Failure of the Calories. 
 
 3. Food Mixtures that Disturb Digestion. 
 
 4. The Psychic Factor in Digestion. 
 
 5. Does Bran and Hull Cure Constipation? 
 
 6. Temperament and Nutrition. 
 
 7. The Psychology of Meat-eating. 
 
 8. The Law of Individuality in Diet. 
 
 9. Acid-free Diet More Important than 
 
 "Mucous-free." 
 
 10. The "Bulgarized" Milk Indulgence. 
 
 11. The Deeper Effects of "Food" Yeast. 
 
 12. Sugar Food or Poison? 
 
 13. Right and Wrong Side of Coffee. 
 
 14. The Use and Misuse of Honey. 
 
 15. Health-Foods that spell Health. 
 
 16. The Scientifically Balanced Bill-of-Fare. 
 
 17. Things to be Avoided. 
 
 18. General Constructive Therapeutics.
 
 "Sugar and Salt" 
 
 Popular Edition, $1.OO 
 
 Dear Mr. Gibson: 
 
 .... You have written a splendid book which 
 ought to give you a lot of well-earned reputation. 
 The public needs a clearly defined understanding 
 of the relation of their health to sugar and salt. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 J. H. TILDEN, Denver, Colo. 
 
 Dr. Axel Emil Gibson, a recognized authority on 
 diet, has brought out a new book entitled, "Sugar 
 and Salt Foods or Poisons?" It is, probably, the 
 most complete treatise on these articles ever pub- 
 lished. He treats not only of the chemical con- 
 stituents of these articles and their effect upon the 
 physical system, but he also shows the effect upon 
 the intellectuality and the morals of the consumer. 
 "Hygienic and Dietetic Gazette," New York City. 
 
 In the 34 chapters of this interesting book the 
 readers will find unsuspected informations con- 
 cerning the practical, medicinal value contained 
 in a judicious use of sugar and salt. 
 
 The book has 135 pages, and contains a portrait 
 of the author. "Health Culture Magazine."
 
 - .in tifxANGH 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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