inherently repulsive in ourselves that we should shrink from knowing what our bodies are, what organs they contain, and what are the functions of these organs? "We are fearfully and wonderfully made," and the more we know of ourselves, the more firmly convinced of this fact do we become.
Knowing nothing of their own bodily constitution, the "untutored savage" and the equally ignorant votary of fashion in civilized life, do their best to improve upon perfection, they "paint the lily," and so impair the noble work of Nature. The savage we can pity; he is at a lower stage of evolution than ourselves, and he is unable to appreciate the truths which centuries of development and education have made patent to us. We then smile half in contempt and half in pity at his customs, which we call "barbarous;" but when we see around us customs equally injurious, equally outrageous against nature, we do not consider that they in any way derogate from our lofty position as the intellectual salt of the earth. We merely say that they are the fashion, and, in point of fact, we grow so accustomed to the forms which Fashion has inflicted upon us, that when we see what is natural, it appears quite strange. Deformity has through long custom become to us beauty. If those ladies who deform their own and their children's waists by squeezing, only knew what was inside them, I venture to believe the very thought of tight-lacing would appear horrible and unbearable to them.
For instance the fashionable shape of the waist
