EDITOR'S TABLE. 



119 



activities which directly minister to self- 

 preservation " ; and, next, "those activi- 

 ties which secure the necessaries of life, 

 and so indirectly minister to self-pres- 

 ervation " ; and then " those which have 

 for their end the rearing and discipline 

 of offspring." The social and political 

 relations come next in importance ; and, 

 finally, those matters of literature and 

 art which belong to the leisure part of 

 life. Mr. Sill says that this scheme is 

 fundamentally erroneous, and, in fact, 

 " the exact reverse of the truth." Bod- 

 ily and material interests are studiously 

 belittled. Mr. Sill says: " The ordinary 

 man, unenlightened by education, man- 

 ages pretty well this matter of getting a 

 living for his body ; which is, no doubt, 

 a necessary condition to any intellectual 

 life, but is intrinsically of considerably 

 less importance than that higher end, 

 which alone, indeed, gives it any value 

 whatever." Again, " As to the body, 

 and as to the getting a living for it, and 

 even as to the care of offspring, some- 

 thing may be left to nature and to natu- 

 ral instinct"; and yet again, when a 

 youth has first become " an intelligent 

 man," according to the traditional ideal, 

 " he will be able to get his handy infor- 

 mation for himself afterward, as hap- 

 pens to be most useful to him." 



This undisguised contempt of a 

 knowledge of the human constitution 

 and the conditions of its welfare is 

 more than classical. The ancients were 

 ignorant of these things, and therefore 

 indifferent to them ; it is only in the 

 degraded scholastic ages that we find 

 the body and bodily interests systemat- 

 ically undervalued and despised. But 

 better reasons could be given in those 

 days for hating and crucifying the cor- 

 poreal nature than can now be given 

 for neglecting to study and understand 

 it. Mr. Sill reasons that it is only the 

 " higher end " which it subserves which 

 gives man's bodily organism any value 

 whatever ; and this higher end is " spir- 

 itual enlargement," and, as spiritual en- 

 largement is to come by vital contact 



" with the living men who thought in 

 Latin and Greek," we arrive at the 

 luminous conclusion that the final pur- 

 pose of the human constitution is to 

 acquire a knowledge of the dead lan- 

 guages. If this is the upshot of our 

 existence, Mallock's question, "Is life 

 worth living? " is not, after all, so fu- 

 tile. But, if we grant that it is worth 

 living, that knowledge is of first im- 

 portance which qualifies us to preserve 

 it. To disparage this knowledge, to 

 discourage it, or to crowd it out by any 

 other knowledge whatever, on any pre- 

 text, is nothing less than a crime. That 

 life is imperiled on all sides, by agencies 

 working so variously and so fatally, and 

 to the ignorant so mysteriously, that 

 Divine Providence is constantly accused 

 of arbitrary interference to destroy it, 

 is undeniable. Science alone has fur- 

 nished that knowledge of the human 

 organism and of surrounding nature 

 that confers the power of warding off 

 the causes of death, and thus leads to a 

 more reverent view of the government 

 of the world. Eight and left, and every 

 day, and all around us, men, women, 

 and children are struck down and sent 

 to unripe graves for lack of the knowl- 

 edge which science has given of the 

 avoidable causes of death. And the 

 same thing may be said of a great num- 

 ber of the diseases by which, if life is 

 not ended, it is turned into a calamity 

 and a curse. Again, science informs us 

 concerning the operation of those nu- 

 merous causes by which vitality is de- 

 pressed, the bodily and mental consti- 

 tution enfeebled and undermined, and 

 existence made worthless for all its 

 better purposes. And, yet again, we 

 owe to science the knowledge of those 

 laws and conditions of the human or- 

 ganism by which it may be improved, 

 increased in its capacities of enjoyment, 

 and augmented in its powers of effect- 

 ive action. 



Classical education is worthless for 

 all these objects. It leaves its victims 

 in a state of ignorance as baleful as that 



