Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/143

Rh The various persons whose duties have required them to undertake original investigations into the phenomena of physical science have nearly always exhibited a remarkable intellectual growth as one reward of their exertions. They have become more cautious, more sagacious, more diffident than before; and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that they were, in the majority of instances, men of exceptional natural powers. On the contrary, the parallel facts connected with the muscular system, and the remarkable uniformity with which the faculties of reflection and judgment expand and strengthen under proper use, may conjointly be taken to prove that the ordinary life of civilized Europe does not develop either body or mind in a degree at all commensurate with their capacities for action. The cricket-field and the boating-club produce a certain amount of vigor and hardihood; but their most ardent votaries would be exhausted by the pastimes of a savage, or by the daily drill and duty of a soldier of old Rome. From the universities, and from schools of the first order, issue many men unquestionably of high attainments, and some of great and cultivated parts; but the aggregate of both classes may be said to have a point of resemblance to Brummel's finished cravat, and to suggest that a large number of "failures" have been quietly conveyed down-stairs.

In schools of an inferior kind, the attainments of the pupils are less conspicuous; and the existing state of mental education may be summed up in the earnest and weighty words of Prof. Faraday, who declares that, "in physical matters, multitudes are ready to draw conclusions who have little or no power of judgment in the cases; that the same is true of other departments of knowledge; and that, generally, mankind is willing to leave the faculties which relate to judgment almost entirely uneducated, and their decisions at the mercy of ignorance, prepossessions, the passions, or even accident." The same authority says again, that "society, speaking generally, is not only ignorant as respects education of the judgment, but is also ignorant of its ignorance."

It must be conceded, we apprehend, that in the present day no man is called upon to undergo a course of severe physical training, or to exercise the muscular system to the acme of its powers. But it must also be conceded that there have been conditions of society which rendered such training the duty of every one, and in which it was enforced by a public opinion of the most rigid kind. We think that, in the times in which we live, the duty of mental cultivation is at least equally binding, and that its performance requires to be prompted by the same incentive.

For we are convinced that a very large proportion of the stupidity now existing in the world is the direct result of a variety of influences, educational and social, which operate to the prejudice of the growing brain, either by checking its development altogether, or by