You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The author of this book is a well known physician and writer who has made a special study of human nature, particularly in its expressions of what is known as “charity.” He has here presented two essays, viz., “Cornucopia” and “Caritas,” the former comprising an analysis of
prosperity and the latter including a discussion of the genesis of social inequality, of the origin and nature of charity and of the present aspects of charity.
The relationships between happiness, labor, prosperity and degenerative trends are discussed in the light of the different levels of mental and cultural development from ancient Greece to the present time with particular attention to the rôle played by slavery throughout the ages. His attitude toward the psychic components of disease is perhaps expressed in the following quotation, “In the days when all members of society were ‘aristocratic’ ill-health was not the all-absorbing topic of interest it has since become. Man at one time was undoubtedly quite immune to infectious diseases, though his ignorance of sanitation when he moved into caves must have let him in for some sickness. Until he knew mental affliction, however, and the depression that went with it he must have possessed a high state of resistance to the incursion of disease germs. Indubitably the psychic effects of slavery let down the natural barriers and opened the way to the bodily invasion of many microörganisms. It is the serene mind that, as we may observe today, rises best above the liability to infections and those disorders which follow in the footsteps of anxiety and fear. Those in the unhappy state of bondage it was who furnished a fertile soil for the culture of disease bacteria which now transfer themselves so readily to all humanity.”
Man's self-sustaining faculty, his free agency, desire to possess prosperity and slavery are considered to be prominent factors underlying our present social problem, but the possibilities of making permanent and desirable modificat