various organs of the body as well as by the brain and nervous system, is entirely an animal organ, made up of blood and tissues as much so as is the brain of a tiger or of a horse. I believe that research and experiment on the part of scientists in time to come, added to what is known positively of the locale and operation of the mind, will give us all that is to be known of this hitherto obscure and occult department of our existence. My belief is founded on the practical methods at present in use by investigators, both in the laboratory and dissecting-room, as well as in the philosopher's study. These problems of life and mind will have to be thought out, as well as worked out, by experimental demonstration. The sciences of Evolution and Physiognomy combined throw a flood of light upon the origin of the human mind.

The human soul, whatever and wherever that may be, I believe is not known to any man, and, inasmuch as it is popularly believed to be the part of us which is immortal, the individuality which is to take a leading part after death in the next world, it strikes me that it would be the most practical way to defer the consideration of it until our perfect possession of it is assured and our environment in harmony with its highest cultivation. We are sure of the body and mind here, and it would seem that the best way to enhance the welfare of the soul hereafter would be to pay strict attention to the conditions of the mind and body in this life. Surely there is great room for improvement in this department, and entirely too little known on these subjects. Would it not be far better if all would devote more time to the consideration of the real and tangible, the possible and the probable; and would it not be less confusing if the mind was studied apart from any idea of its connection with a soul, and in relation to its connection with a body? I believe, if such a course were pursued and the knowledge thus gained practically applied for one generation only, that there would be more perfect bodies and minds, consequently more perfect souls, and infinitely better-balanced dispositions. That this method will be pursued to a considerable extent in the present and following ages I do not for a moment doubt. It is not that the "wish is father to the thought" in my case, but that I see in the "Signs of the Times a true renaissance, a new birth, a baptism of science, an attempt to return to natural methods. What has brought this new departure about? Several circumstances have contributed, but the chief factor is the wide-spread knowledge of scientific thought and demonstration. Notwithstanding the opposition of nearly all religious sects to science, the fact remains that absolute, provable, scientific truth is attractive to large numbers of persons, and these truths are being rapidly adopted.

The enlightenment which the printing-press has shed abroad has dissolved the darkness and superstition engendered by mediæval ecclesiasticism, and a more healthful and natural or normal condition of the mind is developing under these influences. We are in a fair way of knowing in what true religion consists. My conception of religion is that it is obedience to the laws of God, as indicated by the laws of Nature. All religious systems should conform to and work in harmony with the fundamental laws of our existence, or give up all claim to being "religious." Certain it is that the attempts at "regeneration" never have succeeded in making healthful moral bodies and minds out of unhealthful bodies and weak or defective minds. In order that the numerous abnormal manifestations of mental and moral faculties shall cease to be perpetuated, there must be had a practical knowledge of the source of each faculty, and the law of self-control taught as paramount to all others. When these are taught as zealously and applied as conscientiously as have theological conceptions of religion in the past, the result will be shown in that equilibrated state of mind from which all taint of unbridled will, ungoverned temper, and uncontrolled lust and passion have disappeared.

ANALYSIS OF SELFISHNESS.

Selfishness is one of the traits of human nature which has two entirely distinct and opposite methods of action and purposeone of which may be commended, the other reprehended. Selfishness, like all other faculties, has its use and purpose in the human economy. Its primal and essential use is the preservation of the body and to provide for its perpetuation and maintenance. Its next legitimate use is for the protection and sustenance of those who are dependent upon us. All manifestations of selfishness that seek to please self and to acquire by the suffering, misery, and unhappiness of others are wrong and should be repressed. Speaking for myself, if I wished to pursue a course with the view of gaining the most, I would act the most unselfish and benevolent part in order to gain my purpose, for we get in this world very much what we give. If we strew our pathway through life with love, kindness, sympathy, noble deeds, justice, and gentleness, we shall receive back the same with interest; but if, on the contrary, we pursue a malevolent career, and deal out hatred, malice, contempt, jealousy, suspicion, secretiveness, and anger, we shall reap a harvest of these passions a thousandfold.

An undue degree of selfishness is indicative of an undeveloped nature. This trait is both inherited and acquired, increases by use, and in excess causes unhappiness to its possessor. The most

selfish people are never the happiest; they cut themselves off from the pleasures and enjoyments of the benevolent, and thus limit the range of their happiness. They belong to that class which Lavater describes thus:

Which desires much, but enjoys little, and whoever enjoys little. gives little.

I have never studied a character which possessed an excess of selfishness that did not have also some serious deficiency in the mental or moral construction. Like the other passions treated of in this chapter, it shows undevelopment. The dark races are, as a rule, more selfish than the light ones. They are less perfect, less progressive, generally.

All Nature attests this truth, that the more refined the person the lighter the color; it is the same with animals. The most destructive, revengeful, and jealous are the darkest, while the white or mixed colors are the most docile, amiable, and teachable. This is a general principle. Of course, there are exceptions; some undeveloped light persons being more selfish than very highly organized dark persons, but this can be discerned by reference to the quality of the skin, etc.

The excessive exercise and indulgence of jealousy, suspicion, secretiveness, and anger produce morbid and abnormal conditions of health, and herein is another proof of the relation of the physical organs to mental conditions. Many infants, even, have been made ill with jealousy by the petting and attentions bestowed by the mothers or nurses upon another child. Anger indulged in has wrecked the health of many. Suspicion often leads to insanity, and secretiveness almost to nonentity. Jealousy, the meanest and lowest of the passions, tends to murder and suicide, and self-conceit in excess to insanity. These excesses should be avoided, not only for our own preservation, but for the sake of those who are to inherit our individuality. All traits that are All traits that are cultivated and indulged in are transmitted with increasing power, and we have in this way the ability to become the benefactors of the race or to curse it beyond redemption.

Hippocrates, the celebrated Greek physician and physiognomist, says of envy:

The effects of envy are visible even in children; they become thin and easily fall into consumption. Envy takes away the appetite and sleep, and causes feverish motions; it produces gloom, shortness of breath, impatience, restlessness, and a narrow chest.

The possessor of all these passions is antagonistic not only to the health of the possessor, but very much against his interest.

Their action produces misery and unhappiness, both to the subject and to the object. These conditions can be partially remedied by seeking out the defect and making a constant struggle to correct it.

Selfishness has its normal scope and action. Unselfishness is often so excessive as to work injury to its possessor as well as its objects. Yet there is very little danger of the majority suffering in this manner. The undue action of selfishness is founded in defective organization of some sort. An excess of the vegetative system exhibits a lack of sympathy and an incapacity through excess of fat to move actively in efforts for the relief of others. An excess of muscles also is often accompanied by selfishness through lack of sufficient sensitiveness to feel for others, or by reason of insufficient intelligence to comprehend the duties and rights of others, or by reason of too little sensitiveness of the nervous system to enable its possessor to feel for others. The muscles are not endowed with a great degree of sensitiveness, and where they are well developed, without a due share of sensitiveness such as a normal development of the nervous system and brain bestow, the mind is apt to exhibit a large degree of selfishness.

Another form of selfishness is caused by an insufficient development of the glandular system. This defect impoverishes the system to such a degree as to render one incapable of feeling, hence of expressing, sympathy. Many of the celebrated misers exhibit this defect. If the glands are normal and supplied with plentiful nutriment the system will be, by reason of the normal supply of the body, in a normal condition; hence warmth, sympathy, and the active expression of it will be the result. Unless one is well sustained by nutriment and all his own bodily wants supplied, he will feel unable to make any very active efforts for others, and with a low grade of development of the active agents—the glands—there is an absence of that faculty which proceeds from their activity, viz., Sympathy; hence Selfishness results; and in the case of misers the sense of what is due to their own bodies and minds is quite weak, and they continue a course of semi-starvation of both body and mind until they are wholly incapable of judging of the rights of self any more than they are of the rights of others.

When Selfishness gets to this stage it is seldom perpetuated; for a law of Nature here steps in and protects the world from the propagation of monsters. Misers seldom have children, at least not after this idiosyncrasy has become marked. The cause of this incapacity to perpetuate lies in the fact that the glands involved in the action of the reproductive system are as defective as are the glands which produce or evolve warmth and sympathy, and as they are as impoverished as the other glands of the system there is little desire

to use them, and probably there would be no practical results if it were attempted. Then, too, misers lacking warmth of feeling or emotion, by reason of the defective action of the glands, rarely manifest that degree of love for the opposite sex which those do who are normally constituted, hence there arises neither the emotion of love nor its accompanying physical desire, thus evidencing the vitiated condition of that system upon which not only sound manhood but sound morals rest. The hoarding faculty which is the peculiar characteristic of the squirrel, rat, and magpie, and similar lowly animals, appears in the case of misers to have drawn off the strength from all other faculties and concentrated it in acquiring, but more particularly in hoarding.

All persons who exhibit an excess of selfishness are defective either in their mental or moral natures. All disproportion and inharmony of character denote lack of equilibrium in the physiological elements of the mind. Selfishness is a trait which can be greatly modified in youth by judicious training; yet many parents cultivate this trait and make it excessive by making idols of children who might be easily influenced to become useful and balanced members of society. I do not know of one defect of character which is more easily modified than Selfishness, if it be attempted in early childhood. There is so much then that is plastic to appeal to, and the selfish propensities have not crystallized with years of use.

I am often asked where the sign for Selfishness is located in the face; there is no single sign for this faculty. It will be observed as a general quality dependent upon the want of balance in an individual. The excessively fat are usually quite selfish, for fat is a tissue which is negative in its nature and is not endowed with feeling or sensitiveness; besides, where it is excessive in its development, its possessor is too busy looking after his own comfort to think of others, and too weighty and bulky to more actively in those acts of friendship and benevolence which require personal effort. Persons in whom the muscular system is dominant and who have an inferior development of the brain and nervous system are selfish to a degree. This class of persons are noted for round heads, not high above the ears, but wide over the ears, with short, broad, squat bodies. The cause of their selfishness is twofold. One cause is found in the excess of muscle. Now muscle is, in itself, unfeeling, not sensitive, like nerve; and muscle, too, is the dominant system of the natural commercialist class, which is in its last analysis a robber-class, just as are the birds of prey, living off the industries of others, without producing anything themselves, yet exacting tribute from both consumer and producer on their own terms.