Note 70 — Chapter VIII

The Mussulmans say, “the physician is before the Imaum, for if your bowels are disordered you cannot play.” Like the Romans, they have superseded the physician by the bath. The Brahmins hold disease to be sinful.

“What worship is there not in mere washing! perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in his power to do. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness—that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection—how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences, to thy very soul! Thou hast an increase of tendency towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest eastern sages with joy and holy gratitude had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker’s gift and will. It remains a religious duty in the East. Nor could Herr Professor Strauss, when I put the question, deny that for us, at present, it is still such here in the West. To that dingy operative emerging from his soot mill, what is the first duty I will prescribe, and offer help towards? That he clean the skin of him. Can he, pray, by any ascertaining method? One knows not to a certainty; but, with a sufficiency of soap and water, he can wash. Even the dull English feel something of this: they have a saying, 'Cleanliness is near of kin to godliness:’ yet never in any country saw I men worse washed, and, in a climate drenched with the softest cloud water, such a scarcity of baths.”—Sauerteig.