decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers find that coloured beads and
trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or
broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts
and coats are given, savages turn them to some ludicrous display, show
how completely the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. Nay,
there are still more extreme illustrations: witness the fact narrated by
Capt. Speke of his African attendants, who strutted about in their
goat-skin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took
them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain!
Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is
developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among
ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its
warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience--when we see that
the function is still in great measure subordinated to the
appearance--we have further reason for inferring such an origin.

It is curious that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental
as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful.
Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that
knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to
that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, music, poetry,
rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until Socrates taught, had but little
bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects; while knowledge aiding
the arts of life had a very subordinate place. And in our own
universities and schools at the present moment, the like antithesis
holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that
throughout his after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies
his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that
in his shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in
playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little