View report page

16 Pariah of St. George the Martyr, Southward.
whereby may follow as a 'sure result, decent homes, and happy fire-sides. We want a
teaching of the right and free use of brush and besom, and of the necessity of domestic and
personal cleanliness. We are constantly blaming and trying to cure the effect, paying no
attention to the cause. Our tendency is to make man good from without to within; by
hedging up his path that he cannot stray, whilst folly and passion may revel uncurbed
within, and the more so by reason of the external restraint. We would make a mechanical
good man. All real progress must be individual and from within. How often it happens
to us, that in a block of mean decayed wretched-looking houses, we come upon one standing
out quite distinct from the rest; everything outside appearing orderly and clean
everything inside peaceful and comfortable. Yet, there are the same opportunities for the
exercise of the passions, the same temptations, and the same tendency to idleness and untidy
habits. From whence comes this remarkable contrast? Not from external measure
It is said of the Irish, that when admitted into suitable dwellings, they speedily become
dirty and dilapidated. This characteristic unfortunately is not confined to the Irish.
Many a kind and thoughtful landlord has thus been thwarted and disappointed in his hopes
and designs. Landlords are not all bad, neither are tenants all good. One helps to improve
or demoralise the other.
We seem nearing a crisis. There are all the signs of a coming change. Mens' minds
are unsettled and upon the watch. We are gliding on to new thoughts, new ways, new
deeds. As man waxes in years, so does his experience enlarge, and his wisdom increase.
If such is the case with the individual, must it not also be the case with the whole ? A.
higher and wider type of belief is needed. A belief that shall fully and reverently recognise,
the great laws of health which regulate the whole man, and which form a part of the Will
and Moral Government of Providence, equally with those that have specially been revealed,
and which must be received as equally obligatory. From neglect of this, the world has
been deluded with cruelties, crime, and vice. No mind can act justly in a diseased body
for "distempered nerves infect the thoughts; the langour of the frame depresses the soul's
vigour".
The future, however, presents good ground for hope, and hope has the beneficial
tendency of "putting us into a working mood." A writer speaking about that which he
knows, thus prophesies:—"For man there remains a higher and more perfect symmetry
and beauty, as the result of a healthy and well governed body, and refined by the highest
intellectual faculties, a continued advancement and improvement of his mental constitution,
till the world shall again be inhabited by a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual
of which shall be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity (Wallace, B & F.
Medico Chirurgical Eeview).
HENEY BATESON, M.D.
June 6th, 1871.