"To be healthy is to be half-animal and half-god; to be sickly is to be circumscribedly human; but to be sane is to be triunely god-man-animal."

   In clarification whereof is this book written.

   A whole book to explain a whole sentence? And why not? Libraries have been evolved upon a foundation of three short words, namely "Life is protoplasm." Yet who can define Life, or analyze protoplasm?

   In this opening sentence of mine there is blended all the subtlety of metaphysics with all the simplicity of childhood. By a little effort you may perhaps penetrate the realm of Mind; but ah! who, tell me who, can fathom a child?

   The last place to look for sanity is in a sanitarium; the next to the last in a health resort.

   To be sanitary is not necessarily to be sane--Saneness being the one word that sums this book. If we had always lived sanely, we should never need sanitation. In the Reformers' Stiff-legged Race for Popularity, hygienic hobbies are at present in the lead. Their name is legion, and each ridden more recklessly than all the rest. You'd think surely they must collide--until you remember that hobbies never advance. In this respect are hygienic hobbies as docile as their lay brethren who haven't any "mission" but just to be wood painted red.

   Far be it from me to ridicule any man who believes he has a mission. Such are the world's saviors. I myself have a mission--a part of it being to deliver the world from health cranks. I was a health crank once. Some of you may doubt the past tense--but you should have seen me then! I am haunted yet by the look of dread on the faces of my friends as they saw me approaching from afar. Whereas now, you can at least interpolate a wan smile occasionally.

   I assume at the outset that you have read the books suggested in the Prologue; that you are more or less at home in various branches of Naturism--Dietetics, Hydrotherapy, Lung and Muscle Culture, Suggestion, and the like; that, having read the Prologue, you are prepared to he patient with the author; and that, having learned through suffering to be sincere, you will be able to recognize sincerity of motive--however faulty be the method.

   First a few incoherent remarks on Health in general.

   Pill-time is only pallor-time. And the puzzle is to remove the pallor, yet leave the pill in the box. The druggist never solves it--he makes the patient swallow the pill. The Naturist almost never solves it--he summarily smashes the pill-box but forgets to look at the face of the patient. I did that once--threw the patient's pill-box out of the car-window. He was kind of new to Naturism, just coming to take treatment. When he saw all his concentrated hopes of health vanished forever, he rushed to a telegraph office before I could stop him; wired a friend three hundred miles off to come quick--he was dying; then collapsed into a comatose of despair. He didn't die. He got completely well, went home and cured his whole family connection of whatever ailed them. He cured me of something, too--of throwing away a patient's pill-box. That's a lesson every Naturist must learn in order to succeed. Most of them haven't learned it--and most of them don't succeed. Understand, drugs can't cure. Drugs kill--always. But.

   Drugs are useful so long as they help a man's mind more than they harm his body. This the best physicians recognize, being Naturists in belief--but wise enough to keep still about it. If the patient believes in drugs and his doctor doesn't, the patient lives; if the patient doesn't and his doctor does, the patient dies. The virtue of any medicine being directly proportional to its faith and inversely proportional to its substance.

   Here again is the eternal paradox of Truth verified, since drug-cure is faith-cure. People believe they must "take something" so long as they believe they can "catch something." Nature-cure requires no faith--only sincerity; a Kneipp douche or Kuhne sitzbath will clear out disease whether the sick man believes or not.

   A momentary digression.

   You may have observed I begin certain impersonal words with capitals. I always begin Nature, Truth and Love with large letters. Because Nature is my mother, Truth is my teacher, and Love is my God.

   Disease is a godsend. Never to be dreaded, always to be esteemed beneficent. How microbes are maligned, to be sure. A microbe is a sort of somatic undertaker, his business being to dispose of the dead among the cells. The trouble is we all array ourselves in black and join the mourners at the funeral. Away with funerals! Away with mourning! Away with the earthiness of superstition! For superstition is always earthy, instead of religious as men suppose.

   The danger in all disease lies in the remedy, and not in the ailment. Left alone, disease would cure itself, through the instinct of the invalid. But the human race is a race of meddlers. Certain highly-respected classes have actually reduced meddling to a science, and make their living by it. Such as lawyers, who interfere between man and man; doctors, who interfere between man and Nature; and preachers, who interfere between man and God. So we have our "bitter medicine"--of therapeutics and theology, the claim being that the worse a thing tastes the better it is, and we should swallow it for no other conceivable reason but that we don't want to. We have also our School of Hysterical Hygiene, most health reformers serving ex-officio on the Faculty. These begoggled brethren tell us many curious and marvelous tales, tales imported from Liliput and Brobdingnag.

   They tell us for instance to drink just two glasses of water on arising, exactly one-and-a-half on retiring, and one, to the drop, every hour between. A harmless occupation that--for a man who has nothing better to do than wander anxiously about all day with a clock in one hand and a water-cooler in the other.

   They tell us never to drink when eating. Nature doesn't tell, us that. Nature says, "Drink only and always when thirsty."

   They tell us to chew each mouthful thirty, forty or fifty times by the metronome; and not dare swallow a morsel till we've looked up in the book whether it will agree with every morsel gone before. Gracious me, if we have to write the biography of each bite as it passes, when do we get time to enjoy our food? Mince-pie served with a smile is quite as hygienic as raw wheat served with a scowl.

   They tell us to take the Milk-Cure, if we would level our corporeal ravines. Well, a porker is fat. And I suppose that by similar process, a man might be fattened--though I should hate to think it of a woman. You know what pâté de foies gras is made of, don't you ? If you fancy that sort of provender, you better take the Milk-and-Egg-Cure to the limit.

   They tell us to repeat certain prescribed "Affirmations" three times a day and on going to bed. With a metaphysical emergency case handy, put up by somebody of the name of Wilmans, or Towne, or Eddy, or Atkinson. Well, a bread pill is easier to remember.

   They tell us to measure so many inches crosswise for a corresponding number up-and-down-wise; and to tip the beam precisely on the dot of a specified ounce. So? Yes, yes, a woman may be a wax figure, a man may be an anatomical model. But not all, not all. A few of us are individuals. And for such there are no standard?, anthropomorphic or otherwise. No standards dietetic, gymnastic, metaphysical, social, political, ethical, or religious. Nothing anywhere but the soul and the Infinite--and the means on earth to blend the two.

   I don't like satire or sarcasm.

   My heart tells me my brain hasn't any business to go bumping into people like that. But still, when they get in the way and you're in a hurry, what are you to do? I guess I'm a good deal like the impetuous mother that castigates her child and then gives it sugar-plums to stop its crying. Because I want to say that all these vagaries of Naturism or New Thought contain more Truth than error; while the leaders who propagate reform theories are without exception benefactors to the race. Their eyes may be skewed; but their hearts are right and their work is redemption. Which same could perhaps be said of me--I don't know.

   Now for the Fast.

   An extreme Fast--say from twenty to forty clays, is just as apt to wreck a man as it is to rescue him. Unless, as I have mentioned before, it be properly conducted and completed. In this book I can but touch on the physiological side. That however has been amply and accurately covered by Doctor Dewey, Mr. Macfadden, Mr. Fletcher, and Mr. Haskell. Better than I could do it--far better. And yet their very thoroughness as scientists has incapacitated them for keen soul-perception. So that they have mostly overlooked the mental, psychic and spiritual phases. Which in the long view are vastly more important than the physical.

   Sane Fasting never injured anybody--sanitary Fasting has often done it. And people shrink from the Fast because of the follies that usually accompany it. Milton Rathbun for instance --Doctor Dewey's star case--fasted thirty-five days, then made his first meal of oysters, soda crackers, beef broth and Oolong tea. All of which iniquities a really hungry man cannot crave. If the pupil of so famous a teacher didn't clarify his instinct any better than that, what could you expect from common folks, uninstructed and uninspired?

   Fasting in itself is purely a negative process.

   It must be supplemented by a positive regime.

   There are only two excuses for taking a crutch from a cripple; when you can give him a better, or when he can stand alone. The whole human race is crippled. And their crutch is the food-habit. Be careful, brother, how you attempt to remove it. Have you a substitute men can use?

   I know people who have acquired the Fast-habit. They starve about a third of the time. Just as foolish as to eat all the time. And a lot more uncomfortable.

   Having once solved the Personal Equation in Wholeness, you need not resort to the Fast, unless you care to. But how many have solved it ? Perhaps a score of humans--since time began. The greatest Messiah that has thus far voiced his message had to take the extreme Fast, to get perfectly clear. And I have yet to find the Freethinker who is more worthy of emulation than Jesus, the Master Christ. Not of imitation, mind. If all of God outside of me were to incarnate suddenly into one colossal Being and appear thus stupendous in Its might, think you I should bow the knee ? The God in my own soul would rise majestic and answer calmly, "I am Your Equal."

   Fasting is not merely denying oneself food--I don't believe in self-denial. Self is God. Self-denial is therefore blasphemy. The extreme Fast must be based upon, and adapted to, some dominant purpose. Most people fast with the sole idea of cleansing their bodies. I call that starving--not Fasting. And to distinguish what I consider the real Fast, that taken sanely and with a four-fold motive, I have given it throughout this book a special name. I call it

Whenever therefore you find this term, you will recognize the Fast designated by this book and no other.

   The first surprising statement to be made of the Conquest Fast for health of body is this: I do not recommend it.

   It ensures health of body quicker than any other one measure of Naturism. But not to those who put health of body above health of mind and soul. For purely therapeutic purposes, a number of short Fasts would be better, ranging from two to seven days each, and occurring at intervals of say three times their own duration. Moreover their effect will usually be enhanced if you take acid fruit-juice unsweetened, in addition to pure water. The juice of a half-dozen oranges a day, or three lemons diluted, or half a pint of grape-juice in a pint of water; such gentle febrifuge, stimulant, laxative and germicide will hasten physical recovery perceptibly. Indeed a strict fresh fruit dietary adhered to for a week or two every Spring and Fall would almost obviate any need for a Fast at any time.

   Assuming however that we believe in the unity indivisible of body, mind and soul, nor would attempt to perfect one at the expense of the others, let us ask wherein the Conquest Fast directly heightens health of body.

   From experience I cull a few out of the many benefits you also would realize.

   1. The Conquest Fast solves finally and forever that most perplexing problem--"What shall I eat?" This is the first question a sick man asks--and the last one a well man answers. You ask it for yourself, you must answer it from yourself. Answers from without only bewilder you. The wisest dietist on earth--and there isn't any yet--could do no more than give you data you must forget before you eat sanely. I have studied, practiced--and disproved for me, a score of the most popular dietetic theories. So long as they keep to physiological fact they are useful. But the moment they add inference and generalisation--that moment they verge on fallacy. Most men, for instance, are undoubtedly herbivorous by nature. They are sheep--they should eat grass. Still I know men who are lions. Such demand meat. Whether a lion or a lamb be further up in the scale of evolution we will leave to the verdict in that famous case, New York Vegetarian Society vs. New York Evening Journal. Each of these disputants is final authority--and each calls the other imbecile.

   Back to the Fast--back quick; I guess I must have been cut out for a preacher after all. First though let us bid fond farewell to the gastronomic proselyters. In a chunk of advice on how to give advice under all circumstances;--"Go into another room and whisper it."

   Hearken ye to the Conquest Fast.

   Eat always and only what Instinct tells you; but be sure it IS Instinct speaking.

   Let me illustrate. When I was in College, I ate mostly mush. This was perhaps excusable since all the facts they made me swallow were dry as dust. But it wasn't wholesome, it wasn't natural. I liked gravies, sauces, custards and puddings with an unholy liking. I used to sneak off on my bicycle to the nearest bake-shop, seven miles distant, where fat cream-puffs were to be had cheap. Salving my conscience by saving one--the smallest and emptiest--for my little sister. I didn't care for fruits and vegetables--but I reveled in fried liver and hot soda biscuits. Particularly was salt essential to me--I would entomb it till the tears came.

   Note the revolution wrought by the Fast. I wasn't hungry at all through the first three weeks--whereas before I never could get enough; overeating is the commonest cause of starvation, let us remark in passing. When I began to gravitate slowly toward the cupboard, along about the twenty-fifth day, I found two-thirds of the foods there were actually impossible for me to eat. Yet all were hygienic, well-prepared, pure. They simply wouldn't satisfy my individual hunger--a hunger I hadn't known before, since babyhood. Nuts and fruits I craved most, with a few vegetables and natural grains a close second. Nothing else. Fried foods nauseated me. Ice-cream soda was so much swill. "Dainties" usually thrust on an invalid seemed but sickening; imitations of nutriment. The very thought of "cream-puffs"-- and I did recall the soggy things--made me shudder. Salt was as superfluous as star-dust; I don't care for it now even on eggs. Instinct was once more alive and active. In point of hunger at least I was a perfect animal--first. Note this also; I didn't want any Grape-Nuts, Malted Milk, or Protose Steak, such concoctions being sanitary but not sane. Since the Fast, I have never hesitated for one moment over what to eat. I always know. Do you?

   2. The Conquest Fast simplifies diagnosis. Do you really know what ails you? Does the doctor? Does anybody? I always know what ails me--if anything does; and exactly how to remedy it. A few months ago I had the measles. A severe case, too. Resulting from the unnaturalness of city life, which I am at present undergoing for a purpose. I was absolutely alone during the whole ten days of illness, save for a few hours when a friend happened in. I not only knew what to do for myself--I did it. And delirious half the time, at that. A doctor's diagnosis? What for?

   A doctor's diagnosis is the first rehearsal for that tragedy known as the Post-mortem Examination. If he doesn't say it right (and a doctor stammers by profession), he calls in a surgeon to prompt him;--together they enact the final rehearsal with an operating-table for a stage. Then all they need for a perfect performance is the corpse. Which usually arrives in good time.

   During a long Fast, you learn for yourself what's the matter with you. Both physically and psychically. Because the Fast reaches direct the three vital centres whence all disturbance arises --Digestion, Thought and Sex. The Conquest Fast rejuvenates, whereas common measures of Naturopathy only renovate.

   3. The Conquest Fast conserves vital force. Other systems tend to waste it. Gymnastics for instance, or the Water-Cure. "Healed while you wait"--that's Fasting. More--healed while you rest; healed while you regain the instincts, desires and sensibilities of childhood. A point not to be overlooked by the American, so proverbially spendthrift of his energies. Just be still and trust Nature.

   4. The Conquest Fast dispels therapeutic errors, saving thereby valuable time, thought, and financial outlay. Three examples, (a). There is no such thing as "brain food"--either fish or phosphates. The less food, the clearer brain; the purer food, the stronger brain; that's all. (b). Nothing can cure disease that does not also enhance health. Medicine does neither--the Conquest Fast does both. In short, "Specifics" are absurd; whether for brain alone, soul alone, or body alone in whole or in part. (c). You needn't "travel for your health"--that's the wrong direction, health residing equally beneath you and above you. Where Nature is, there is health. Where civilization is, there is disease. Be less human, more natural, more divine; this is the clue to saneness. Take your mind off your symptoms and put it on your soul. Break through human barriers. Transcend human limitations. Learn of the animals--and live as the animals do. Learn of the gods--and love as the gods do. Learn of the human immortals who have dared do both these things, facing simultaneously the world's present condemnation, with its eternal gratitude echoing through the future.

   "To be healthy is to be half-animal and half-god; to be sickly is to be circumscribedly human; but to be sane is to be triunely god-man-animal."

   Naturism may make you half-animal.

   Divine Science may make you half-god.

   Nothing can make you so completely yourself, god-man-animal you were born to be, as the Conquest Fast with what should ensue therefrom.

   Don't believe my word.

   Don't believe anything you haven't lived and proved. But be willing to believe--for your own sake, not for mine.

   Man's one irredeemable error is to scoff at what he cannot understand and will not investigate.