CONFORMITY TO ENVIRONMENT 183 



It helps and improves the body by giving him a 

 better and more constant supply of more suitable food, 

 and better protection from inclemency of the weather, 

 and in many other ways. Baths and gymnasia are 

 built, and medical science prolongs life. Yet make the 

 items as many as you can, and what a long list of dis- 

 advantages to man physically you must set over against 

 these. Many of these evils will doubtless disappear 

 as society becomes better organized, but some will al- 

 ways remain to plague us. We pamper or abuse our 

 stomachs, and dyspepsia results. We live in hot-houses, 

 and a host of diseases are fostered by them. Indeed 

 it would be hard to count up the diseases for which 

 social life is directly or indirectly responsible. Social 

 life becomes more and more complicated, and our ner- 

 vous systems cannot bear the strain. Medical science 

 saves alive thousands who would otherwise die, and 

 these grow up to bear children as weak as themselves. 

 We are looking now at the pl^sical side alone ; and 

 from this standpoint the survival of the invalid is a 

 sore evil. Now society will and must become health- 

 ier ; we shall not always abuse our bodies as sinfully 

 as we now do. Still, viewed from the standpoint of the 

 body alone, the best, as it seems to me, which we can 

 claim, is that social life does no more harm than good. 

 What has social life done for man intellectually? 

 Much. It gives him schools and colleges. But are 

 our systems of education an unmixed good? How 

 many of our schools and colleges are places where 

 men are stuffed with facts until they have no time nor 

 inclination to think ? They may turn out learned men ; 

 do they produce thinkers ? And how about the 

 spread of knowledge ? Is it not a spread of informa- 



