ago, before the so-called materialism of advanced science had
taught us some practical wisdom about education, and reminded
people that they have bodies as well as minds and souls--"You say,
we are likely to grow weaklier, unhealthier. And if it were so,
what matter? Mind makes the man, not body. We do not want our
children to be stupid giants and bravos; but clever, able, highly
educated, however weakly Providence or the laws of nature may have
chosen to make them. Let them overstrain their brains a little;
let them contract their chests, and injure their digestion and
their eyesight, by sitting at desks, poring over books. Intellect
is what we want. Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the
world. We would rather see our son a genius than a mere athlete."
Well: and so would I. But what if intellect alone does not even
make money, save as Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, Sampson Brass, and
Montagu Tigg were wont to make it, unless backed by an able,
enduring, healthy physique, such as I have seen, almost without
exception, in those successful men of business whom I have had the
honour and the pleasure of knowing? What if intellect, or what is
now called intellect, did not make the world, or the smallest
wheel or cog of it? What if, for want of obeying the laws of
nature, parents bred up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only
an incapable unhappy personage, with a huge upright forehead, like
that of a Byzantine Greek, filled with some sort of pap instead of
brains, and tempted alternately to fanaticism and strong drink?
We must, in the great majority of cases, have the CORPUS SANEM if
we want the MENTEM SANEM; and healthy bodies are the only
trustworthy organs for healthy minds. Which is cause and which is
effect, I shall not stay to debate here. But wherever we find a
population generally weakly, stunted, scrofulous, we find in them
a corresponding type of brain, which cannot be trusted to do good