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THE CONDITIONS OF HEALTH. 257
benefits of exercise in its narrower sense, and with
reference to the organic functions and the locomotive
What men and women need for health is
system.
varied employments, varied amusements, attractive in
dustry, pleasant society, the gratification of their talents,
tastes, and desires. They demand full and free exer
cise for their whole natures. Nothing short of this is
worthy of humanity. Now we are all slaves—slaves of
perverted habits ; slaves of custom and fashion, which
are to society what habit is to the individual ; slaves of
a public opinion, which is ready to crush the smallest
exercise of the sovereignty of the individual; slaves of
—
creeds and laws which the world has long outgrown
which may have been necessary garments
protection,
once for our
but which are now fetters to hinder our
progress ; slaves of " time-honored institutions," well
enough, perhaps, in their day, but dead now, and de
manding to be buried. Compared with these slaveries
of the soul, all external bonds and outward forms of
slavery, such as Russian Czarism, or Austrian Imperial
ism, or Spanish Fanaticism, or are
negro slavery, of
less account. As long as a man wishes to enslave, re
press, or control any other human being with his be
liefs, moralities, tastes, customs, or affections, he has no
right to complain of any slavery in the world, I re
nounce and I denounce them all. There can be no
true health for the individual, or for society, until we
have the substance of freedom, as we have the shadow;
until every individual is as independent of every other,
as this nation is, "and of right ought to be," independ
ent of other nations—bound to them only by the bonds
of mutual interest and attraction.