LEARNING AFD HEALTH. 



405 



The true intellect of the world, from the first 

 dawn of it until now, has been made up of these 

 two distinct forms. They seem antagonistic; 

 they are so ; but out of their antagonism has 

 come the light of knowledge and wisdom. They 

 are the representative poles of knowledge and of 

 wisdom. The first is knowing, the second wise 

 — two distinct qualities, though commonly con- 

 founded as one. 



In the small school of the youth, as in the 

 great school of the world, these representative 

 orders of mind are ever present. The mistake 

 is, that they are so commonly confounded, and 

 that no change is made in the mode of study to 

 fit the taste of the one or the other. 



The consequence is, that lessons are given to 

 the analytical student which he cannot possibly 

 grasp, and to the synthetical student which he 

 cannot possibly master. Under these conditions 

 both chafe, and worry, and weary, and still do 

 not get on. Then they fall into bad health, grow 

 fretful and feverish, are punished or slighted, and 

 otherwise made sad, and, it may be, revengeful. 

 And so, if they be unduly forced, they grow up 

 unhealthy in body and in mind. They grow up 

 feeling as beings who have in some manner missed 

 their way in life. The occupation into which they 

 have drifted, and in which they have become fixed, 

 is not congenial to them ; at last they fall into 

 listlessness, and, seeking in amusements and pleas- ; 

 ures for the treasure they have lost, are trodden 

 into the crust of the intellectual sphere — the great : 

 mediocrity. 



I said there was a third course of error in 

 educational training in this period of life, and I 

 noted that as the prize system, the forcing of 

 young minds to extremes of competition in learn- 

 ing. This system is bad fundamentally. I have 

 been assured by excellent teachers that it is bad 

 as a system of teaching, and that nothing but 

 the demand for it on the part of ambitious parents 

 and friends could make them permit it as a part 

 of their work. They say it obliges them, as prize- 

 days draw near, to devote excessive time to the 

 most earnest of the competitors. They say that the 

 attention of the whole school is directed toward 

 the competitors, who have their special admirers, 

 and so the masses, who, from fear or from want 

 of ability, do not compete, are doubly neglected, 

 are neglected by their teachers to some extent, 

 and are forgetful of their own prospects in the 

 interest they take as to the success of their idols. 

 In this way, those that are weakest are least, and 

 those that are strongest are most, assisted — 

 another illustration of the proverb, " To him that 



hath shall be given ; but from him that hath not 

 shall be taken away even that which he hath." 



I cannot undertake to confirm this judgment 

 myself, though it sounds like common-sense, but I 

 can affirm that in matter of health, in interference 

 with that blessing, the prize system stands at the 

 bar guilty of the guilty. You have but to go to a 

 prize distribution to see, in the worn, and pale, and 

 languid faces of the successful, the effects of this 

 system. And, when you have seen them, you 

 have not seen a tithe of the evil. You have not 

 seen the anxious young-old boys or girls at the 

 time of the competition ; you have not seen them 

 immediately after it ; you have not seen them be- 

 tween the period of competition and the announce- 

 ment of the awards. You have not seen the in- 

 jury inflicted by the news of success to some, 

 and of failure to others who have contested and 

 lost. If you could, as through a transparent body, 

 have seen all the changes incident to these events ; 

 if you could only have seen one set of phenom- 

 ena alone, the violent over-action and the suc- 

 ceeding depressed action of the beating heart, 

 you would have seen enough to tell you how mad 

 a system you have been following to its results, 

 and how much the dull and neglected scholars are 

 to be envied by the side of the bright and, for 

 the moment, the applauded, and flattered, and tri- 

 umphant. 



These bad physical results the physician alone 

 sees as a rule, and he not readily, since the evil 

 does not of necessity appear at the moment, nor 

 does he, nor do others, see the remaining evils 

 from the physical side. It requires a look into 

 the mental condition produced by the competi- 

 tion, to the effect of that condition on the pas- 

 sions, and to the influence of the passions on the 

 nutrition and maintenance of the body, to know 

 or surmise the secondary mischiefs to health 

 which these fierce mental struggles in girlhood 

 and boyhood inflict on the woman and the man. 



While this lecture has been in preparation, I 

 have received from Dr. Holbrook, the editor of 

 the Herald of Health of New York, one of his 

 miniature tracts on health, in which he records 

 the experiences of men who have lived long, la- 

 borious, and successful lives, and the reasons 

 they assign for having enjoyed such prolonged 

 health and mental activity. The tract before me 

 contains letters from two men of great eminence, 

 namely, William Cullen Bryant and William 

 Howitt. A part of William Howitt's letter so 

 admirably expresses the lesson I am now endeav- 

 oring to teach, that I quote it in full. It refers 

 to his early life, and its perfect freedom of learning : 



