p. 629 | Fast Living

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 40.

Fast Living.

How to live morally in reality includes how to live physically. Yet it is to be feared that a great many in this world forget what it is to be just to the body. The impositions upon our human natures are often self-inflicted. The race of fast livers is rapidly increasing. It is not wonderful that in these days of rapidity man himself should rush on and in many ways lose his balance. It is altogether probable that Methuselah had very little to hurry him, and that the modes of doing business as late as the Roman Empire had but little of the hot haste of the present day. When we are rushed along by steam at the rate of fifty or sixty miles per hour, and can have intelligence from around the globe in a day, it is inevitable that business methods will receive a like impetus, and that men and women will seek to crowd into a day what formerly took a week. The influence extends into every walk and run of human life. Just as every mile of speed added to the locomotive after it has attained a high rate adds tenfold to wear and tear, so, in this human race, it is the stress and strain beyond a certain mark that puts the whole framework into a state of tension. It is true that, by early and continued training, method may be so attained, and an automatic response so secured, that one does with ease what would exhaust another. But the measure of the capacity must be known to the person himself.

Rapid eating is one of the first developments of this haste. It must be ludicrous to a restaurant boy to see a cow chewing the cud, and quietly resting in placid enjoyment. The idea of rest and recreation and deliberation in eating no longer occupies the thought of the average American boy, much less of the business man. Yet the power of life depends as much upon this as upon any one conduct of life. The relation of the chewing and the juices of the mouth to the after digestion, all along the digestive track, and to that assimilation which is to give force and vigor to work, is such that we cannot afford to forget the essential relationship.

The failure of this part of the apparatus to do its part does not involve immediate loss of power or bed-ridden sickness, but is a more frequent limitation upon forceful life than any one disability. A thorough digestion not only leaves the mind clear and the nervous system placid, but so provides the physical and mental machinery with its propelling power as to make thought as natural as if it were a physical function. It is not difficult to see in the work, as well as in the writings of some men, the traces of a bad physical condition. Emerson overstated the case when he said that the sick man is on the road to rascality, but, nevertheless, did indicate what is true, that a man in a chronic state of embarrassed digestion is out of gear with himself and the rest of mankind. We believe that the foundations of many an incapacity is laid in this want of quiet, deliberate eating.

Methods of study, to a large degree, have similar errors. The cramming process is still too popular. It is not always that the amount of study assigned is too great. Oftener the child leaves the work to be crowded into too small a space of time, or to hours which are those of tire and sleepiness. The mind is with difficulty goaded on to its work, and what is accomplished is at a much greater expenditure of vital force. So as to methods of business. Too much is done under the pressure and excitement of hurry and in order that as few hours as possible may be occupied.

Irregular meals and irregular sleep come in for their share of influence. Because the system seeks to some degree to adjust itself to the forced conditions, the person is too apt to conclude that it is no serious matter. But observers even on change are noting the effects. There are fewer middle-aged and old men that continue to do business than formerly. Young life is at the head of most mercantile and banking establishments. The number that are retiring too early from actual break-down or premature old age is undisguised. There is need to order a halt as to all this fast living. Most men are happier not to retire too early from active life, even if they have a competency. All are happier with employment, if the cessation is the result of damaged health. We cannot cross the ocean, or tarry a summer or a winter at any great resort, without noting how many there are who are only partial invalids, and yet whose life-work is restricted by imprudence as to the care of life. If, now, a man past sixty is found in the full enjoyment of business activity, he is looked upon as rather a wonder. Such men as Metternich, Nesselrode, Palmerston, Gladstone, and Victor Hugo are scarce on this side of the water. While there are a very few that survive fast living, if you will gather the histories of 1,000 persons over 65 years of age, it will be found that, both by good inheritance and careful living, the race is prolonged. The laws of self-control and self-restraint need to be brought more thoroughly to bear on each individual life. For, next to character, health is the best capital to have in this world. He who spends the thrift of a good constitution is a spendthrift more than he who is careless as to accumulating wealth.—Independent.