in their brain-cells, and thus such persons drift day by day nearer and nearer to the grave, or, what is far worse, into the madhouse or prison. Parents have power to prevent insanity! by obedience to laws and conditions sacred to reproduction. Individuals have power to prevent insanity in themselves! by obedience to laws and conditions sacred to life and health in the body. This inheritance may be provocative of mental disorder by incubation. Still it is true that the individual-with the truth of this volume working in his reason and energizing his will— can exorcise all devils (diseases) which would drag him down into their burning and howling retreats.* physical causes of mental insanity are within human life; therefore they are within reach and control. The *The ancients received and manufactured their ideas of everlasting hell-tortures out of the raw material suggested by various acute diseases. One orthodox poet put the horrible scheme in word, thus "Great God, when I have wept a thousand lives away, When torment has grown weary of its prey, When I have raved a thousand years in fire,— The hell of theology is an imaginary red-hot lunatic asylum extended out to an everlasting time, the same being in these days supplied with all modern improvements, furnace in the cellar, gasoline apparatus, etc., a barbaric suggestion and extension of individual suffering, experienced from the burning retreats of evils (diseases) in the globules of blood and in the cells of the brain. Blessed is he who possesses the power (of Knowledge) and the will (of Spirit) to rise triumphant over his incidental discord and hereditary imperfections. DISAGREEABLE EMANATIONS FROM THE INSANE. IN connection with the self-healing and mental cure principles set forth in the last chapter, I have something practical to write about the magnetic evaporations of the skin. Physiologists will not readily concede, what is nevertheless most certainly true, that the odor of the body is fundamentally caused by emanations from the particles comprising the invisible vital (or soul) principles. The beautiful constitution of the skin-the epidermis at the outer surface of the body; and the vera cutis, the skin lying at the foundation; both united by the rete mucosum, an indefinite membrane between the two-proves how perfectly the covering of the body is adapted to indicate the exact state of the spontaneous affections and the voluntary mentality. The skin is supplied with three sets of protective and productive glands-one for water, one for hair, one for oil. The perspirational glands are minute cylindrical tubes rising spirally from beneath to the surface. The capillary glands resemble so many bulbroots, and grow from delicate soils energized by beau tiful nerve-fibres. The sebaceous glands, known as the oil-tubes, rise from the underskin and open at the surface by minute pores; all these indescribably beautiful structures are abundantly interlaced and fed and protected by a wondrous network of nerves, arteries, and veins. The outer skin of the body, called the epidermis, is soft and comparatively destitute of sensibility. It will grow again when lacerated, or if even when destroyed. At all times this membrane is a protecting sheath for the highly sensative skin beneath, called the vera cutis. The outer cuticle is composed principally of albuminous matter; is therefore capable of remarkable hardness and thickness by use; and with the accumulations of moisture and hair and oil, the external membrane is frequently in need of ablution, friction, and a moderate use of soap. THEORIES REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF SKIN ODOR. It is supposed by many that all skin odors arise from the acids and alkalies, the mucous, the serum, and the oily accumulations, which the innumerable absorbents of the skin and the excretory glands bring out from the entire physical organism. True, a large allowance is to be made for the complex" smell" of these chemi cal matters upon the cutaneous investment. But how will you explain the totally different odors emanating from persons of almost exactly similar temperaments, or account for the very different smell of the same person in different bodily and mental states? The middle membrane, rete mucosum, which is somewhat more sensative than the external cuticle, is the residence of all those fluids, ethers, and matters which give color to the complexion and to the surface generally. This mixture on the surface of the middle skin makes the skin white, black, red, brown, and of different shades; so that, in very truth, "beauty is but skin deep," so far as complexion may be considered a part of beauty; but let no one imagine on this principle that the odor of the person is also only "skin deep," for this reason: The very essences and ethers of the soul-principles-out of which is exuded all vital fluids and solids. which compose the body-evolve each an atmosphere of its own, with an odor exactly in accordance with the states of the affections and the intellect. Allow just here a brief digression. Those acquainted with our philosophy need not be told that the substantial man is the elemental spiritual body of the interior and spiritual man; that this interior substance which envelopes the inmost spiritual being has its own undisguisable magnetic odor; and that the odor is varied according |