A SOUND MIND IN A SOUND BODY.
Gibons, the historian, says: "Every person has two educations--one
which he receives from others, and one, the most important, which he
gives to himself."
"The best part of every man's education," said Sir Walter Scott, "is
that which he gives to himself." The late Sir Benjamin Brodie
delighted to remember this saying, and he used to congratulate
himself on the fact that professionally he was self-taught. But this
is necessarily the case with all men who have acquired distinction in
letters, science, or art. The education received at school or college
is but a beginning, and is valuable mainly inasmuch as it trains the
mind and habituates it to continuous application and study. That
which is put into us by others is always far less ours than that
which we acquire by our own diligent and persevering effort.
Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession--a property
entirely our own. A greater vividness and permanency of impression is
secured; and facts thus acquired become registered in the mind in a
way that mere imparted information can never effect. This kind of
self-culture also calls forth power and cultivates strength. The
solution of one problem helps the mastery of another; and thus
knowledge is carried into faculty. Our own active effort is the
essential thing; and no facilities, no books, no teachers, no amount
of lessons learnt by rote, will enable us to dispense with it.
The best teachers have been the readiest to recognize the importance
of self-culture, and of stimulating the student to acquire knowledge
by the active exercise of his own faculties. They have relied more
upon _training_ than upon _telling_, and sought to make their pupils
themselves active parties to the work in which they were engaged;
thus making teaching something far higher than the mere passive
reception of the scraps and details of knowledge. This was the spirit
in which the great Dr. Arnold worked; he strove to teach his pupils
to rely upon themselves, and develop their powers by their own active
efforts, himself merely guiding, directing, stimulating, and
encouraging them. "I would far rather," he said, "send a boy to Van
Diemen's Laud, where he must work for his bread, than send him to
Oxford to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail
himself of his advantages." "If there be one thing on earth," he
observed on another occasion, "which is truly admirable, it is to see
God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they
have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated." Speaking of a
pupil of this character, he said, "I would stand to that man hat in
hand." Once at Laleham, when teaching a rather dull boy, Arnold spoke
somewhat sharply to him, on which the pupil looked up in his face and
said, "Why do you speak angrily, sir? _indeed_, I am doing the best I
can." Years afterward, Arnold used to tell the story to his children,
and added, "I never felt so much ashamed in my life--that look and
that speech I have never forgotten."
From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station
who have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be
obvious that labor is by no means incompatible with the highest
intellectual culture. Work in moderation is healthy as well as
agreeable to the human constitution. Work educates the body, as study
educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which
there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure for
every man's work. Even the leisure classes are in a measure compelled
to work, sometimes as a relief from _ennui_, but in most cases to
gratify and instinct which they cannot resist. Some go fox-hunting in
the English counties, others grouse shooting on the Scotch hills,
while many wander away every summer to climb mountains in
Switzerland. Hence the boating, running, cricketing, and athletic
sports of the public schools in which our young men at the same time
so healthfully cultivate their strength both of mind and body. It is
said that the Duke of Wellington, when once looking on at the boys
engaged in their sports in the playground at Eton, where he had spent
many of his own younger days, made the remark, "It was there that the
battle of Waterloo was won!"
Daniel Malthus urged his son when at college to be most diligent in
the cultivation of knowledge, but he also enjoined him to pursue
manly sports as the best means of keeping up the full working power
of his mind, as well as of enjoying the pleasures of intellect.
"Every kind of knowledge," said he, "every acquaintance with nature
and art, will amuse and strengthen your mind, and I am perfectly
pleased that cricket should do the same by your arms and legs; I love
to see you excel in exercises of the body, and I think myself that
the better half, and so much the most agreeable part, of the
pleasures of the mind is best enjoyed while one is upon one's legs."
But a still more important use of active employment is that referred
to by the great divine, Jeremy Taylor. "Avoid idleness," he says,
"and fill up all the spaces of they time with severe and useful
employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the
soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful,
idle person was ever chaste, if he could be tempted; but of all
employments bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest
benefit for driving away the devil."
Practical success in life depends more upon physical health than is
generally imagined. Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, writing home to a
friend in England, said, "I believe if I get on well in India, it
will be owing, physically speaking, to a sound digestion." The
capacity for continuous working in any calling must necessarily
depend in a great measure upon this; and hence the necessity for
attending to health, even as a means of intellectual labor. It is
perhaps to the neglect of physical exercise that we find amongst
students so frequent a tendency toward discontent, unhappiness,
inaction, and reverie--displaying itself in contempt for real life
and disgust at the beaten tracks of men--a tendency which in England
has been called Byronism, and in Germany Wertherism. Dr. Channing
noted the same growth in our land, which led him to make the remark,
that "too many of our young men grow up in a school of despair." The
only remedy for this green-sickness in youth is physical exercise--
action, work and bodily occupation.
The use of early labor in self-imposed mechanical employments may be
illustrated by the boyhood of Sir Isaac Newton. Though comparatively
a dull scholar, he was very assiduous in the use of his saw, hammer,
and hatchet--"knocking and hammering in his lodging room"--making
models of windmills, carriages, and machines of all sorts; and as he
grew older, he took delight in making little tables and cupboards for
his friends. Smeaton, Watt, and Stephenson were equally handy with
tools when mere boys; and but for such kind of self-culture in their
youth it is doubtful whether they would have accomplished so much in
their manhood. Such was also the early training of the great
inventors and mechanics described in the preceding pages, whose
contrivance and intelligence were practically trained by the constant
use of their hands in early life. Even where men belonging to the
manual labor class have risen above it, and become more purely
intellectual laborers, they have found the advantages of their early
training in their later pursuits. Elihu Burritt says he found hard
labor _necessary_ to enable him to study with effect; and more than
once he gave up school teaching and study, and taking to his leather
apron again, went back to his blacksmith's forge and anvil for the
health of his body and mind's sake.
The training of young men in the use of tools would at the same time
that it educated them in "common things," teach them the use of their
hands and arms, familiarize them with healthy work, exercise their
faculties upon things tangible and actual, give them some practical
acquaintance with mechanics, impart to them the ability of being
useful, and implant in them the habit of persevering physical effort.
This is an advantage which the working classes, strictly so called,
certainly possess over the leisure classes--that they are in early
life under the necessity of applying themselves laboriously to some
mechanical pursuit or other--thus acquiring manual dexterity, and the
use of their physical powers. The chief disadvantage attached to the
calling of the laborious classes is, not that they are employed in
physical work, but that they are too exclusively so employed, often
to the neglect of their moral and intellectual faculties. While the
youths of the leisure classes, having been taught to associate labor
with servility, have shunned it, and been allowed to grow up
practically ignorant, the poorer classes, confining themselves within
the circle of their laborious callings, have been allowed to grow up,
in a large proportion of cases, absolutely illiterate. It seems,
possible, however, to avoid both these evils by combining physical
training or physical work with intellectual culture; and there are
various signs abroad which seem to mark the gradual adoption of this
healthier system of education.
The success of even professional men depends in no slight degree on
their physical health; and a public writer has gone so far as to say
that "the greatness of our great men is quite as much a bodily affair
as a mental one." A healthy breathing apparatus is as indispensable
to the successful lawyer or politician as a well-cultured intellect.
The thorough aeration of his blood by free exposure to a large
breathing surface in the lungs is necessary to maintain that vital
power on which the vigorous working of the brain in so large a
measure depends. The lawyer has to climb the heights of his
profession through close and heated courts, and the political leader
has to bear the fatigue and excitement of long and anxious debates in
a crowded House. Hence the lawyer in full practice and the
parliamentary leader in full work are called upon to display powers
of physical endurance and activity even more extraordinary than those
of the intellect--such powers as have been exhibited in so remarkable
a degree by Brougham, Lyndhurst and Campbell; by Peel, Graham and
Palmerston--all full-chested men.
Though Sir Walter Scott, when at Edinburgh College, went by the name
of "The Greek Blockhead," he was, notwithstanding his lameness, a
remarkably healthy youth; he could spear a salmon with the best
fisher on the Tweed, and ride a wild horse with any hunter in Yarrow.
When devoting himself in after life to literary pursuits, Sir Walter
never lost his taste for field sports, but while writing "Waverley"
in the morning he would in the afternoon course hares. Professor
Wilson was a very athlete, as great at throwing the hammer as in his
flights of eloquence and poetry; and Burns, when a youth, was
remarkable chiefly for his leaping, putting, and wrestling. Some of
the greatest divines were distinguished in their youth for their
physical energies. Isaac Barrow, when at the Charterhouse School, was
notorious for his pugilistic encounters, in which he got many a
bloody nose; Andrew Fuller, when working as a farmer's lad at Soham,
was chiefly famous for his skill in boxing; and Adam Clarke, when a
boy, was only remarkable for the strength displayed by him in
"rolling large stones about"--the secret, possibly, of some of the
power which he subsequently displayed in rolling forth large thoughts
in his manhood.
While it is necessary, then, in the first place to secure this solid
foundation of physical health, it must also be observed that the
cultivation of the habit of mental application is quite indispensable
for the education of the student. The maxim that "labor conquers all
things" holds especially true in the case of the conquest of
knowledge. The road into learning is alike free to all who will give
the labor and the study requisite to gather it; nor are there any
difficulties so great that the student of resolute purpose may not
surmount and overcome them. It was one of the characteristic
expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his creatures into the
world with arms long enough to reach anything if they chose to be at
the trouble. In study, as in business, energy is the great thing.
There must be "fervet opus;" we must not only strike the iron while
it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot. It is astonishing how
much may be accomplished in self-culture by the energetic and the
persevering, who are careful to avail themselves of opportunities,
and use up the fragments of spare time which the idle permit to run
to waste. Thus Ferguson learnt astronomy from the heavens while
wrapped in a sheepskin on the highland hills. Thus Stone learnt
mathematics while working as a journeyman gardener; thus Drew studied
the highest philosophy in the intervals of cobbling shoes; and thus
Miller taught himself geology while working as a day laborer in a
quarry.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we have already observed, was so earnest a
believer in the force of industry that he held that all men might
achieve excellence if they would but exercise the power of assiduous
and patient working. He held that drudgery lay on the road to genius,
and that there was no limit to the proficiency of an artist except
the limit of his own painstaking. He would not believe in what is
called inspiration, but only in study and labor. "Excellence," he
said, "is never granted to man but as the reward of labor. If you
have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but
moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is
denied to well-directed labor; nothing is to be obtained without it."
Sir Fowell Buxton was an equal believer in the power of study; and he
entertained the modest idea that he could do as well as other men if
he devoted to the pursuit double the time and labor that they did. He
placed his great confidence in ordinary means and extraordinary
application.
"I have known several men in my life," says Dr. Ross, "who may be
recognized in days to come as men of genius, and they were all
plodders, hard-working _intent_ men. Genius is known by its works;
genius without works is a blind faith, a dumb oracle. But meritorious
works are the result of time and labor, and cannot be accomplished by
intention or by a wish . . . Every great work is the result of vast
preparatory training. Facility comes by labor. Nothing seems easy,
not even walking, that was not difficult at first. The orator whose
eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose lips pour out a flood of
noble thoughts, startling by their unexpectedness and elevating by
their wisdom and truth, has learned his secret by patient repetition,
and after many bitter disappointments."
Thoroughness and accuracy are two principal points to be aimed at in
study. Francis Horner, in laying down rules for the cultivation of
his mind, placed great stress upon the habit of continuous
application to one subject for the sake of mastering it thoroughly;
he confined himself with this object to only a few books, and
resisted with the greatest firmness "every approach to a habit of
desultory reading." The value of knowledge to any man consists, not
in its quantity, but mainly in the good uses to which he can apply
it. Hence a little knowledge of an exact and perfect character is
always found more valuable for practical purposes than any extent of
superficial learning.
It is not the quantity of study that one gets through, or the amount
of reading, that makes a wise man; but the appositeness of the study
to the purpose for which it is pursued; the concentration of the
mind, for the time being, on the subject under consideration; and the
habitual discipline by which the whole system of mental application
is regulated. Abernethy was even of opinion that there was a point of
saturation in his own mind, and that if he took into it something
more than it could hold, it only had the effect of pushing something
else out. Speaking of the study of medicine, he said: "If a man has a
clear idea of what he desires to do, he will seldom fail in selecting
the proper means of accomplishing it."
The most profitable study is that which is conducted with a definite
aim and object. By thoroughly mastering any given branch of knowledge
we render it more available for use at any moment. Hence it is not
enough merely to have books, or to know where to read for information
as we want it. Practical wisdom, for the purposes of life, must be
carried about with us, and be ready for use at call. It is not
sufficient that we have a fund laid up at home, but not a farthing in
the pocket: we must carry about with us a store of the current coin
of knowledge ready for exchange on all occasions, else we are
comparatively helpless when the opportunity for using it occurs.
Decision and promptitude are as requisite in self-culture as in
business. The growth of these qualities may be encouraged by
accustoming young people to rely upon their own resources, leaving
them to enjoy as much freedom of action in early life as is
practicable. Too much guidance and restraint hinder the formation of
habits of self-help. They are like bladders tied under the arms of
one who has not taught himself to swim. Want of confidence is perhaps
a greater obstacle to improvement than is generally imagined. It has
been said that half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's
horse while he is leaping. Dr. Johnson was accustomed to attribute
his success to confidence in his own powers. True modesty is quite
compatible with a true estimate of one's own merits, and does not
demand the abnegation of all merit. Though there are those who
deceive themselves by putting a false figure before their ciphers,
the want of confidence, the want of faith in one's self, and
consequently the want of promptitude in action, is a defect of
character which is found to stand very much in the way of individual
progress; and the reason why so little is done, is generally because
so little is attempted.
There is usually no want of desire on the part of most persons to
arrive at the results of self-culture, but there is a great aversion
to pay the inevitable price for it, of hard work. Dr. Johnson held
that "impatience of study was the mental disease of the present
generation;" and the remark is still applicable. We may not believe
that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem to believe very
firmly in the "popular" one. In education, we invent labor-saving
processes, seek short cuts to science, learn French and Latin "in
twelve lessons," or "without a master." We resemble the lady of
fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condition that he did
not plague her with verbs and participles. We get our smattering of
science in the same way; we learn chemistry by listening to a short
course of lectures enlivened by experiments, and when we have inhaled
laughing-gas, seen green water turned to red, and phosphorus burnt in
oxygen, we have got our smattering, of which the most that can be
said is, that though it may be better than nothing, it is yet good
for nothing. Thus we often imagine we are being educated while we are
only being amused.
The facility with which young people are thus induced to acquire
knowledge, without study and labor, is not education. It occupies but
does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and
produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without
an implanted purpose and a higher object that mere pleasure, it will
bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces
but a passing impression; a sensation, gut no more; it is, in fact,
the merest epicurism of intelligence--sensuous, but certainly not
intellectual. Thus the best qualities of many minds, those which are
evoked by vigorous effort and independent action, sleep a deep sleep,
and are often never called to life, except by the rough awakening of
sudden calamity or suffering, which, in such cases comes as a
blessing, if it serves to rouse up a courageous spirit that, but for
it, would have slept on.
Accustomed to acquire information under the guise of amusement, young
people will soon reject that which is presented to them under the
aspect of study and labor. Learning their knowledge and science in
sport, they will be too apt to make sport of both; while the habit of
intellectual dissipation, thus engendered, cannot fail, in course of
time, to produce a thoroughly emasculating effect both upon their
mind and character. "Multifarious reading," said Robertson, of
Brighton, "weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its
lying dormant. It is the idlest of all idlenesses, and leaves more of
impotency than any other."
The evil is a growing one, and operates in various ways. Its least
mischief is shallowness; its greatest, the aversion to steady labor
which it induces, and the low and feeble tone of mind which it
encourages. If we would be really wise, we must diligently apply
ourselves, and confront the same continuous application which our
forefathers did; for labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable
price set upon everything which is valuable. We must be satisfied to
work with a purpose, and wait the results with patience. All
progress, of the best kind, is slow; but to him who works faithfully
and zealously the reward will, doubtless, be vouchsafed in good time.
The spirit of industry, embodies in a man's daily life, will
gradually lead him to exercise his powers on objects outside himself,
of greater dignity and more extended usefulness. And still we must
labor on; for the work of self-culture is never finished. "To be
employed," said the poet Gray, "is to be happy." "It is better to
wear out that rust out," said Bishop Cumberland. "Have we not all
eternity to rest in?" exclaimed Arnauld. "Repos ailleurs" (rest for
others) was the motto of Marnix de St. Aldegonde, the energetic and
ever-working friend of William the Silent.
It is the use we make of the powers entrusted to us which constitutes
our only just claims to respect. He who employs his one talent aright
is as much to be honored as he to whom ten talents have been given.
There is really no more personal merit attaching to the possession of
superior intellectual powers than there is in the succession to a
large estate. How are those powers used--how is that estate employed?
The mind may accumulate large stores of knowledge without any useful
purpose; but the knowledge must be allied to goodness and wisdom, and
embodied in upright character, else it is naught. Pestalozzi even
held intellectual training by itself to be pernicious; insisting that
the roots of all knowledge must strike and feed in the soil of the
rightly-governed will. The acquisition of knowledge may, it is true,
protect a man against the meaner felonies of life; but not in any
degree against its selfish vices, unless fortified by sound
principles and habits. Hence do we find in daily life so many
instances of men who are well-informed in intellect, but utterly
deformed in character; filled with the learning of the schools, yet
possessing little practical wisdom, and offering examples for warning
rather than imitation. An often-quoted expression at this day is that
"Knowledge is power;" but also, are fanaticism, despotism, and
ambition. Knowledge of itself, unless wisely directed might merely
make bad men more dangerous, and the society in which it was regarded
as the highest good, as little better than pandemonium.
It is not then how much a man may know, that is of importance, but
the end and purpose for which he knows it. The object of knowledge
should be to mature wisdom and improve character, to render us
better, happier, and more useful; more benevolent, more energetic,
and more efficient in the pursuit of every high purpose in life.
"When people once fall into the habit of admiring and encouraging
ability as such, without reference to moral character--and religious
and political opinions are the concrete form of moral character--they
are on the highway to all sorts of degradation." We must ourselves
_be_ and _do_, and not rest satisfied merely with reading and
meditating over what other men have been and done. Our best light
must be made life, and our best thought action. At least we ought to
be able to say, as Richter did, "I have made as much out of myself as
could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more;" for it
is every man's duty to discipline and guide himself, with God's help,
according to his responsibilities and the faculties with which he has
been endowed.
Self-discipline and self-control are the beginnings of practical
wisdom; and these must have their root in self-respect. Hope springs
from it--hope, which is the companion of power, and the mother of
success; for whoso hopes strongly has within him the gift of
miracles. The humblest may say, "To respect myself, to develop
myself--this is my true duty in life. An integral and responsible
part of the great system of society, I owe it to society and to its
Author not to degrade of destroy either my body, mind, or instincts.
On the contrary, I am bound to the best of my power to give to those
parts of my constitution the highest degree of perfection possible. I
am not only to suppress the evil, but to evoke the good elements in
my nature. And as I respect myself, so am I equally bound to respect
others, as they on their part are bound to respect me." Hence mutual
respect, justice, and order, of which law becomes the written record
and guarantee.
Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man may clothe
himself--the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be
inspired. One of Pythagoras' wisest maxims, in his "Golden Verses,"
is that with which he enjoins the pupil to "reverence himself." Borne
up by this high idea, he will not defile his body by sensuality, nor
his mind by servile thoughts. This sentiment, carried into daily
life, will be found at the root of all the virtues--cleanliness,
sobriety, chastity, morality, and religion. "The pious and just
honoring of ourselves," said Milton, "may be thought the radical
moisture and fountain-head from whence every laudable and worthy
enterprise issues forth." To think meanly of one's self, is to sink
in one's own estimation as well as in the estimation of others. And
as the thoughts are, so will the acts be. Man cannot aspire if he
looks down; if he will rise, he must look up. The very humblest may
be sustained by the proper indulgence of this feeling. Poverty itself
may be lifted and lighted up by self-respect; and it is truly a noble
sight to see a poor man hold himself upright amidst his temptations,
and refuse to demean himself by low actions.