Life of the Spirit
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Make them give you the diagnosis and treatment for the case from the saint and from the other and you will see that men are elected to be doctors for diseases they do not know.35 To keep in health this rule is wise:* Eat only when you want and sup light. Chew well, and let what you take be well cooked and simple. He who takes medicine is ill advised. Beware of anger and avoid grievous moods. Keep standing when you rise from table. Do not sleep at midday. Let your wine be mixed (with water), take little at a time, not between meals and not on an empty stomach. Go regularly to stool. If you take exercise, let it be light. Do not be with the belly upwards, or the head lowered; Be covered well at night. Rest your head and keep your mind cheerful. Shun wantonness, and pay attention to diet.36 It seems to me that coarse men of bad habits and little power of reason do not deserve so fine an instrument or so great a variety of mechanism as those endowed with ideas and great reasoning power, but merely a sack where food is received and whence it passes. For in truth they cannot be reckoned otherwise than as a passage for food, because it does not seem to me that they have anything in common with the human race except voice and shape. And all else is far below the level of beasts.37 III. LIFE OF THE SPIRIT And thou, man, who in this work of mine dost look upon the wonderful works of nature, if thou judgest it to be a criminal thing to destroy it, reflect how much more criminal it is to take the life of man; and if this external form appears to thee