LEARNING AND HEALTH. 



407 



the paper of another examiner, and see what he 

 would do. The unhappy student has to answer 

 them all. 



The system is doing sufficient evil to men ; 

 but what is to happen to the world if women, 

 anxious to emulate, are to have their way, and, 

 like moths, follow their sterner mates into the 

 midnight candle of learning ? Up to this time 

 the stability of the race in physical and mental 

 qualities has greatly rested on the women. Let 

 the fathers do what they might — in this age dis- 

 sipate and duel and fight; in that age smoke, 

 drink, and luxuriate; in another age run after 

 the vain shadows of competitive exercises, men- 

 tal or physical ; still the women remained un- 

 vitiated, so that one-half the authorship of the 

 race was kept intact as reasonable and responsi- 

 ble beings. In other words, there were mothers 

 as well as fathers. But if in these days women, 

 catching the infection of the present system, 

 succeed in their clamor for admission into the 

 inquisition, and mothers thereupon go out,- as 

 they certainly will, just in proportion as they go 

 in, the case will be bad indeed for the succeeding 

 generations. 



Some wise man has given us, if we would 

 read his lesson correctly, the moral of this kind 

 of effort in the wonderful story of Babel. 



It is quite true. You cannot build a temple 

 that reaches to heaven, though all the world try. 

 It is not, that is to say, by forcing the minds of 

 men to learn, that man can penetrate the secrets 

 of Nature and know them. If one learned man 

 could seize and hold and apply the knowledge of 

 two learned men, there might be a progression 

 of knowledge in geometrical ratio, and soon, in 

 truth — 



"Men would be angels, angels would be gods." 



To this Nature says No ; and, when the attempt 

 is made, she corrects it by the interruption she 

 sets up, through the corporeal mechanism, to 

 the mental strife and contagion. 



To let this struggle against Nature progress 

 up to confusion of tongues, in which one learned 

 man shall not understand another, is a far easier 

 thing than many suppose: for Nature is un- 

 swerving in her course, and the struggle now is 

 far advanced toward its natural consummation. 



For a time yet it may be necessary to subject 

 men who are to take part in responsible profes- 

 sional labors, in the practice of which life or 

 property is concerned, to certain efficient tests 

 as proofs of knowledge and skill. Such examina- 

 tional tests may easily be conducted without be- 



ing made in any sense competitive, and without 

 in any sense doing an injury to health and life. 



At best, such tests are arbitrary, and define 

 no more than the capacity of a man at the period 

 of his entry into manhood. At that period there 

 is presented but one phase of mental life among 

 many varying phases ; and to let the brand of 

 superiority stamped at that age, however distin- 

 guished the superiority then may be, stand forth 

 as the all-sufficient distinguishing mark for a life- 

 time, would indeed be, and indeed is, unjust fool- 

 ishness. 



It is a very bad system that suggests such a 

 mode of obtaining a claim to permanent superi- 

 ority, and the effects of the present system are 

 shown as most mischievous in this very partic- 

 ular. 



The man who succeeds in gaining these great 

 competitive honors is usually content to rest on 

 them, and rarely wins other distinctions in after- 

 life. It is doubtful whether the training is not 

 fatal to the after-distinction, and whether the 

 great geniuses of the world would ever have ap- 

 peared at all, if, in their early days, they had 

 been oppressed by the labor, strain, and anxiety, 

 of the competition on the one hand, or had been 

 bound by the hard-and-fast lines of dogmatic 

 learning on the other. I believe myself that 

 great after-distinction is impossible with early 

 competitive superiority gained by the struggles I 

 have indicated, and that the evils now so wide- 

 spread among our better-class communities will 

 find their full correction in the circumstance that 

 the geniuses of the nation and the leaders of the 

 nation will henceforth be derived, unless there be 

 a reformation of system, from those simple pupils 

 of the board-schools who, entering into the con- 

 flicts of life able to read, write, and calculate, 

 are left free of brain for the acquirement of learn- 

 ing of any and every kind in the full powers of 

 developed manhood. 



Be this as it may, I am sure that the present 

 plan, which strands men and women on the world 

 of active life, old in knowledge before their time, 

 and ready to rest from acquirement on mere de- 

 votion of an automatic kind to some one particu- 

 lar pursuit, is directly injurious to health both of 

 body and mind. 



Continued action of the mind and varied ac- 

 tion of the mind are essentials to length of life 

 and health of life, and those brain-workers who 

 have shown the greatest skill in varied pursuits, 

 even when their works have been laborious, have 

 lived longest and happiest and best. 



The truth is that, when men do not die of 



