ON BRAIN-FORCING. 223 



Europe is a long display of the successive triumphs of the men of cold- 

 er over the men of warmer regions ; of the hardy, lusty, and hungry 

 races over the softer, more indolent, and more abstemious. Northern 

 drunkenness is a survival of northern feasting and northern prowess ; 

 and the hearty Bishop of Peterborough touched a deep truth when he 

 said he had liefer Englishmen to be drunkards than slaves. It is quan- 

 tity, then, rather than other conditions of nerve-power, which is favored 

 by " physical education," quantity without which quality may flag ; but 

 quality is also indirectly increased, for quality is born, doubtless, out of 

 the fountains of quantity. 



If it be true that the sons of genius are often fools, the explanation 

 may be that the parent has spent his great fortune of intellect and pas- 

 sion, and transmitted to his offspring a sapless and atonic brain. It 

 may be true, also, that as from the lesser robustness of women the 

 streams of vitality in them are more slender and less perennial, so the 

 buddings of higher genius in them are fewer and less fertile. The weav- 

 ing of the higher thought and emotion is found in our experience, even 

 of individuals, to be especially exhausting, and apt, therefore, to alter- 

 nate in its function with hours of indolence, and even of depression. 

 The greatest master cannot be unconscious of these tides in his creative 

 work; and the lesser, seeking relief and distraction between whiles, 

 drifts into the " Bohemian." To secure, then, quantity of nerve-force 

 directly, and quality indirectly, the encouragement of bodily vigor and 

 sturdy gain is fundamentally necessary. "Without wealth of bone and 

 blood, volume of nerve-force will dwindle, and the rarest quality may 

 fail of proof, or lose its splendor. Before women can hope to do hard 

 and high work, sense must expel sensibility, and school-giris must cease 

 to walk out in a row, to veil their faces, to wear stays, and to eat deli- 

 cately. 1 Nay, if a certain ruggedness be not foreign to mental strength 

 and growth, it may be that women, as a class, if they will excel in origi- 

 nality and endurance, must cease, as a class, to seek after the charms 

 of daintiness and sentiment. 



I am not, therefore, of those who think that the love of athletics is 

 as yet in excess. Here and there men may expend in the hunting-field 

 or on the river that which should have been given to their tripos, to 

 their profession, or to their country ; yet this at worst is but an indi- 

 vidual loss, far outweighed by the impulse given to the hardy, hungry 

 vitality by which the nation thrives, and its general volume of nervous 

 force is augmented. Again, it is an old truth that in youth production 

 and growth or development are in a measure opponent. The gardener, 

 the stock-breeder, the trainer, all know this and act upon the rule. The 

 spontaneous and equable play of all sides of life favors growth and 



1 In the Girls' High-School at Leeds, a well-managed school in many respects, the 

 girls are at work from breakfast to dinner and after dinner, with no interval for diges- 

 tion, till four for much of the year, that is, during all the daytime. Their cheeks know 

 not wind nor sunshine. 



