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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



poor, the highest ideal that we cau frame to our- 

 selves of human life. 



I believe that this will be regarded as utterly 

 visionary. I fear that even Mr. Ruskin, himself 

 perhaps a visionary in some things, would demur 

 to it. But surely it is only our amazing want of 

 faith and settled conviction of any sort that makes 

 us say so. Look at it in this way. The Bible is 

 not yet driven out of our schools, though many 

 excellent people, from motives which I under- 

 stand and respect, are trying very hard to secure 

 this object. But from a simply secular view, 

 what is the Bible but the highest culture of a 

 remarkable people two thousand years ago ? If 

 Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Isaiah, have 

 become familiar names to the humblest, where 

 lies the impossibility of enlarging the scale a 

 little, and instead of driving out the Bible in or- 

 der to give more time for the study of adverbs, 

 adjectives, industrial products, and the like, add 

 to the Bible some continuous chain of the great 

 poets, thinkers, and statesmen, that make up the 

 tradition of humanity. A Catholic, who has his 

 lives of saints linked together through the middle 

 ages, might understand this better. A Jew, per- 

 haps, or a Chinese, whose tradition is unbroken 

 for three thousand years, might understand it 

 better still. In a word, the education needed for 

 healthful national life is such as to restore to 

 England the old Puritan energy and devotion. 

 But, Puritanism with a larger Bible. 



Do you ask again, What has all this to do with 

 public health ? I reply, It has everything to do 

 with it. Public disease springs from indifference 

 to life, because life has been made worthless. If 

 you would have public health, you must make 

 life valued, and to that end you must make it 

 valuable. 



I need not say that to make these elemental 

 truths living and vital, to bind them not merely 

 by rote upon the tongue, not merely by reason 

 upon the intellect, but to stamp them upon the 

 heart and the character, something more will be 

 needed than philosophic lectures. Of deeds, of 

 conduct, of life, of example, I say nothing here ; 

 but for the mere reception of the thought into the 

 mind something more than speech is needed. 

 Speech is good, but art is better ; and here lies 

 the true future of art — a golden future indeed. 

 The five sisters, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, 

 Poetry, Music, each and all must work their magic 

 in our favor, kindling the dry fuel of philosophic 

 force into the flames of inspiration and energy. 

 Bear with me if I seem to take refuge in Utopia 

 for a moment, remembering only, what you will 



find borne out in history, that the Utopias of one 

 generation are very often the familiar dwelling- 

 places of the next, and that though some are 

 marsh-fires that lead astray, others are stars that 

 guide. 



Is it, after all, so very chimerical to conceive 

 some rich man building somewhere east of the 

 Bank a somewhat stately room, not meaner, per- 

 haps, in its proportions than the beautiful hall of 

 the Reform Club — for this is to be a reform club 

 too — and that the walls and corridors should be 

 trusted to a painter and a sculptor for handling 

 of the noblest subject that human imagination 

 will ever be able to conceive — the growth of 

 social life, symbolically treated as in Homer's 

 shield of Achilles, and the series of great men 

 who best represent the stream of the noblest 

 human progress. Take, if you can find it, some 

 grander programme for this purpose than is set 

 forth in the historical calendar of Auguste Comte ; 

 or take that, if you can find, as I can find, none 

 better : there would be a large agreement between 

 every one on this head, whichever list was chosen. 

 Endow some reader to read at intervals from the 

 great world poets ; some musical choir to render 

 such passages from the great musicians as, be- 

 ing simple and grand and tender, shall take the 

 hearts of all that hear them captive ; finally, from 

 time to time, let some man who knows, by a few 

 simple words, point the moral of the whole, and 

 would you not have in some such scheme as this 

 a civilizing and, in the truest sense, a health-giv- 

 ing agency ? "Would it not, I again say, conduce 

 to the public health, in the narrowest and most 

 superficial as well as in the widest sense of that 

 word, that something of the pomp, and stateli- 

 ness, and dignity, and splendor, of human life 

 should be brought within the reach of the hum- 

 blest? Who that has seen the grand, ragged 

 Roman beggars resting in the warmth and mag- 

 nificence of their vast churches but has had some 

 glimpse of this ? 



Art is far more accessible to the ignorant than 

 we suppose. People who read and write, and 

 who come of parents who read and wrote, are 

 very apt to judge of others by their own incom- 

 petence. But the sons of shoemakers, carpenters, 

 and blacksmiths, are born with hands far better 

 prepared than ours. Let us remember that there 

 were men in the glacial epochs, say fifty thousand 

 years ago, who carved bones and drew pictures 

 of animals very far better than many of us here 

 can do. Or, again, go into the worst hovels of 

 Westminster or Clerkenwell, you will find, no 

 books, but the walls lined with pictures. Science, 



