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Both of these and, I believe, all the other lesser hygienic principles are special phases of one central principle of wholesome life, which seems to me to be coincident with the most characteristic and fundamental part of the Christian revelation. It is not our purpose here to discuss the question of origins. Whether the principle is intrinsically religious and consequently hygienic, or vice versa; whether, in any adequate conception of the world, the religious and the wholesome are identical, is for the present a secondary problem. Our object is to show that from whichever standpoint we view the matter, Christianity in its essence as attitude and activity is not only wholesome, but the only absolutely wholesome attitude and activity. It is a truism that healthy organic life depends on the complete organization of all parts of the individual into one whole. Foreign matter must either be absorbed or expelled or it menaces the total welfare of the individual. Independent growths within the organism are always pathological. It is equally true that the organization of thought and activity is a condition of wholesome mental life. The most universal manifestation of deteriorated mind is what the pathologist calls its disorganization. A lack of unity through memory results in a "change of personality," or in dementia. A lack of unifying interest and the control of active attention results in a weak and vacillating existence, the prey of momentary temptations, the slave of every chance impulse. Morphine, alcohol, and other nerve poisons work the fearful havoc by which we know them, not merely through the short periods of lost self-control and irresponsibility directly following their use, but through the permanent weakening of mental organization, and inhibitory systems which condition the delicate restraints and balance of normal life. It is not the mere habit of taking opium or alcohol that enslaves men and makes brutes of them, it is the disorganization of mental life they produce, which gradually weakens every controlling motive, and leaves the victim no longer an individual, but an incoherent mass of conflicting tendencies, swayed by the first impulsive idea; no longer a personality, but a mob in which every consciousness of duty and justice is stampeded by the first blind passion. A similar phenomenon is presented by the disorganization of judgment. Whenever the criteria of truth and falsehood are consciously or unconsciously ignored, the first forceful idea presented by an imposing personality or reiterated with sufficient frequency assumes all the prerogatives of truth. Typical forms of such disorganization occur in the unsystematized paranoia of dementia precox and in our dreams. When the disorganization of action and thought becomes so complete as to endanger the individual's physical existence or society he is universally accounted insane; but I insist that insanity consists not in any special degree of disorganization but in the disorganization itself. Only the completely organized life is thoroughly healthy.

Primitive mental organization we call foresight. The laws of physical well-being force us to forego many an indulgence to escape future pain. Indeed we often accept a present pain to avoid a greater. We submit to the merciful discomfort of the dentist's chair, to the washing of a wound, to the setting of a broken limb, not because of any intrinsic satisfaction in the operation, but because it belongs to a more or less far-reaching plan. He who allows each momentary impulse unbridled force is not only weak and unstable, his activity is ultimately self-destructive and suicidal. The plan according to which the various impulses of our lives are controlled and selected never remains for the fully developed human being at the level of the primitive mental organization. Man is a social being, and we sacrifice the present for the future, not merely with reference to self, but also with reference to others. The welfare of the family, the social system, or the state becomes part of our plan of life. This sacrifice readies its extreme limit when the individual voluntarily abrogates his right to live for the sake of the welfare of others.

The first type of organization is the type of material organic adaptation to the totality of the physical environment. The second is social and ethical. It presupposes a larger unit of existence than the first, and in it the individual becomes an organic part of a greater whole. It is interesting to note how large a part these two stages of organization played in the religious life of the ancient Jews. The prayer, "O Lord. avenge me of mine adversary," grows out of a religious activity which seeks in God a powerful ally for the accomplishment of selfish ends. It is a little more than an extended primitive organization of the ego-centric type. The hope for the coming of the kingdom of the Messiah with its personal sacrifices ever looking toward Jerusalem in its prayers is typical of the second form. The individual forgets himself for social ends. It must be evident that there is a still higher type of organization corresponding not to the temporal and spatial, nor yet to the family and social environment. It is none other than that absolute organization which is conditioned by the attempt to effect a correspondence with the Infinite and the Eternal. This highest type of organization is preeminently the religious. It is the very essence of religion, I am convinced, to recognize a supersensuous reality and to attempt to effect correspondence with it. The standpoint may be ego-centric as in fetichism when the worshiper prays, "My will be done." It may be socio-centric. Or, finally, it may be absolute, when the true worshiper prays, "Thy will, O infinite and eternal God, be done!" This absolute organization, I insist, it is the unique service of Christ to have made tangible and real for us, partly by his discourse, most fully in his life.