He might find the mud
of society at the bottom, instead of at the top, but I fear that the sum
total would be a deserving of swift judgment as at the time of the
Restoration. And it would be our duty to explain once more, and this
time not without shame, that we have no reason to believe that it is
the improvement of our faith, nor that of our morals, which keeps the
plague from our city; but, again, that it is the improvement of our
natural knowledge.
We have learned that pestilences will only take up their abode among
those who have prepared unswept and ungarnished residences for them.
Their cities must have narrow, unwatered streets, foul with accumulated
garbage. Their houses must be ill-drained, ill-lighted,
ill-ventilated. Their subjects must be ill-washed, ill-fed,
ill-clothed. The London of 1665 was such a city. The cities of the
East, where plague has an enduring dwelling, are such cities. We, in
later times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her.
Because of this partial improvement of our natural knowledge and of
that fractional obedience, we have no plague; because that knowledge is
still very imperfect and that obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our
companion and cholera our visitor.
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