Appreciation for Life: Selections From “Tablets” by Amos Bronson Alcott (vegan), Part 2 of 2

Let us continue with selections from “The Fountains” in “The Tablets” by Amos Bronson Alcott (vegan), in which he explains that cheerfulness and tranquility are powerful virtues that lift us out of life’s darkness and help us create an uplifting atmosphere wherever we go.

RECREATION The Fountains

“‘Every day is a festival, and that which makes it the more splendid is gladness. For as the world is a spacious and beautiful temple, so is life the most perfect institution that introduces us into it. And it is but just that it should be full of cheerfulness and tranquility.’ Our dispositions are the atmosphere we breathe, and we carry our climate and world in ourselves. Good humor, gay spirits are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchymy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers. And he who smiles never is beyond redemption. […]”

The Cheap Physician

“‘That which makes us have no need Of physic, that’s physic indeed. Hark, hither, reader, will thou see Nature her own physician be? Will see a man all his own wealth, His own music, his own health, A man whose sober soul can tell How to wear her garments well: Her garments that upon her sit, As garments should do, close and fit; A well-clothed soul that’s not oppressed, Nor choked with what she should be dressed; A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine, Through which all her bright features shine, As when a piece of wanton lawn, A thin, aerial veil is drawn Over beauty’s face, seeming to hide, More sweetly shows the blushing bride: A soul, whose intellectual beams No mists do mask, no lazy streams: A happy soul that all the way To Heaven rides in a summer’s day? Would see a man whose well-warmed blood Bathes him in a genuine flood, A man whose tuned humors be A seat of rarest harmony? […]”