THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 



H9 



industrial development, we have, like other sick 

 people, to think a great deal about our symptoms, 

 and to surround ourselves, so to speak, with 

 medicine-bottles and nursing appliances. But 

 pitiable, indeed, were the prospect if this state 

 were to be the normal condition of civilized man. 

 One should be tempted in that case to try Pla- 

 to's drastic remedies — banish all physicians from 

 the republic, let Death work his will, and let none 

 but the sound and strong survive. 



Nay, as I said before, it is one of the condi- 

 tions of cure, even in the practical present that 

 surrounds us, that we do not concentrate too dis- 

 proportionate an amount of attention on the 

 physical and material side of the malady. There 

 are many of the evils and dangers which con- 

 front us which it is best to attack indirectly rath- 

 er than directly — by a flank movement as it 

 were, or by the slow process of undermining the 

 citadel. The temperance problem is a case in 

 point. People are now beginning to see the fu- 

 tility of adding an eleventh commandment to the 

 Decalogue, Thou shalt not drink gin ; or rather 

 they now propose to alter it thus : Thou shalt 

 forget the dull dreariness of thy daily burden in 

 bright, wholesome, social pleasures, a sufficient 

 share of which we will provide for thee. 



I have tried to show that the health prob- 

 lem is but the visible outcropping of far deeper- 

 rooted spiritual evils ; one among the many re- 

 sults of a disorganization of life visible and ex- 

 plicable to those who try to render to themselves 

 an account of the changes of faith and opinion 

 in later European history. There is no use in 

 disguising it, the root of the matter lies here. 

 A very fundamental change in our way of re- 

 garding man and his life upon this earth ; a 

 careful examination of the laws of development 

 by which we have reached all that is good in our 

 present state of progress ; a reverential study of 

 the lives of the great men who in accordance 

 with these laws of development have been the 

 agents of this progress ; a submission to this 

 human order, and the conviction of the possibil- 

 ity of wisely modifying it, and, as the final up- 

 shot of all this, a new ideal set before all men, 

 the humblest no less than the wisest, toward 

 which they may set their faces and their foot- 

 steps in steadfast hope and courage: all this, 

 nothing less than this, is in the world now, is 

 surely and silently germinating, and when it has 

 branched out a little, the public-health question, 

 like a good many other questions, will find their 

 natural and speedy solution. 



To put it in another way : it is universally 



held that for individual sick men, medicine with- 

 out physiology, the art of healing without a 

 knowledge of the laws of life and growth, is 

 mere quackery and empiricism. So it is with 

 public health and public diseases. There must 

 be a study of the laws of social life and social 

 growth before there can be any attempt to 

 cure. 



It will be seen, then, that, like a previous lect- 

 urer before this society, I believe in the effica- 

 ciousness of education. Only, are we sure that we 

 all mean the same thing by this word ? We know 

 what Aristotle meant by it. He meant an agency 

 for the implanting of sound and virtuous habits. 

 Nothing else would satisfy him for a moment. 

 And what he wanted was not realized till three 

 hundred years afterward, when St. Paul planted 

 the shores of the Mediterranean with Catholic 

 societies. And to take lower ground for a mo- 

 ment, I cannot but think that we have gone a 

 little backward and downward in our notion of 

 education from the time when, fifty years ago, 

 Owen and his band of dreamers included in that 

 word all the influences that surround life and 

 that form character. I would not disparage the 

 London School Board for a moment, entertaining 

 as I do a great respect for their operations ; but 

 it has always seemed to me that education was a 

 rather ambitious word to use for the process by 

 which many thousands of little children are taught 

 by other children nearly as little to read and 

 write imperfectly. 



If, however, I were asked, What or where is 

 my solution of the public-health problem, my 

 cure for the degradation of civilized life which 

 makes it needful to consider that problem ? I, 

 too, should say with others, Nowhere but in educa- 

 tion can it be found. But then I should propose 

 to define education, not the teaching the little 

 children of the poor to read and write imperfect- 

 ly, combined in the case of a few clever ones with 

 a "laborious inacquaintance " with geography 

 and English grammar ; nor even the technical 

 teaching now so much in vogue, which is to teach 

 men trades, make them better instruments of 

 production, and enable us to hold our own in the 

 European struggle for commercial existence ; nor 

 even that creme de la creme of university culture, 

 the capacity for writing mediocre verses in a dead 

 language. Of all these things I would speak with 

 the varying measure of respect which belongs to 

 them ; but for the purpose before us, namely, the 

 purpose of securing the healthful life of a nation, 

 I would define education as the effort to place be- 

 fore children, men, and women, whether rich or 



