Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/814

 —and this simply because they have never ascertained whether the study of harmony might not be to them a study of absorbing interest. Or, again, how very rare a thing it is to meet a lady who has even a superficial acquaintance with any one of the sciences; and how vast is the paradise of intellectual enjoyment from which multitudes of intelligent ladies are thus excluded! And similarly with all the other lines of intellectual pursuit for which a certain small amount of rudimentary initiation is required in order to ascertain whether they are suited to individual taste. So that, as I have said, one of the most important aims of a girl's, and also of a boy's, education ought to be to ascertain and specially to cultivate the branch of knowledge in which most interest is taken. Let us not suppose that by following this advice there is any danger of imparting to young ladies that singularly objectionable and not very easily definable character which is most tersely and intelligently conveyed by the word "blue." No one can have a more intense dislike than I have of the cerulean tint; but, wherever I have seen it, I have always been persuaded that it is the previous character which has tinted the learning—not the learning which has tinted the character. Only let a lady be a lady, and nothing but envious ignorance can ever venture to breathe the objectionable word, while cultured refinement in the opposite sex will always discover in the culture of a lady that only which adds to her refinement.

I have now said all that I feel it desirable to say on the principles and the practice of recreation; and I will conclude by adding a few words on what I may call the ethics of recreation.

Health may be taken as implying capacity for work, as well as to a large, though to a less absolute degree, the capacity for happiness; and, as duty means our obligation to promote the general happiness, it follows that in no connection is the voice of duty more urgent than it is in the advancement of all that is conducive to health. By maintaining our own health at the highest point of its natural efficiency, we are doing all that in us lies to secure for ourselves the prime condition for work—that is, the prime condition for benefiting the community to whatever extent our powers may be capable. And, similarly, by promoting the health of others, we are, in proportion to our success, securing to the community a certain amount of additional capacity for work on the part of its constituent members, as well as increasing the individual capacity for happiness on the part of all the members whom our efforts may reach. Therefore, I take it that, if we regard this subject from an ethical point of view, it is clear that we have no duty to perform of a more grave and important kind than this—thoughtfully to study the conditions of health, earnestly to teach these conditions to others, and strenuously to make their observance a law to ourselves. Now, of these conditions one of the most important is suitable recreation. For this is the condition which extends to all classes of the community, and the observance of which is, as we have