only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the
accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use
of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We
observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper
Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but
with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat
greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to
begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del
Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting
close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were
farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming
with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the
New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers
in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these
savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to
Liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the
internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm
less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and
disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of
fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course
the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for
analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the
expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression,
animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up
the fire within us- and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to
increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without- Shelter
and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and
absorbed.

  The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to
keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only
with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are
our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare
this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and
leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that
this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we
refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates,
makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his
Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits
are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more
various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly
or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I
find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade,
a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery,
and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be
obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other
side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote
themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may
live- that is, keep comfortably warm- and die in New England at
last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but
unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course a
la mode.

  Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life,
are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the
elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the
wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.
The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were
a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so
rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that
we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more
modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an
impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground
of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the
fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature,
or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not
philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once
admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle
thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live
according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence,
magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life,
not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars
and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not
manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as
their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race
of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out?
What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations?
Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher
is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is
not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How
can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better
methods than other men?

  When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described,
what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as
more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and
more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires,
and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to
life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities;
and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler
toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed,
for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot
upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in
the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the
heavens above?- for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they
bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not
treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be
biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root,
and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not
know them in their flowering season.