2 74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?* 



By the late HERBERT SPENCER. 



IT has been truly remarked that, in order of time, decoration pre- 

 cedes dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering 

 that they may have themselves handsomely tattooed, extremes- of tem- 

 perature are borne with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt 

 tells us that an Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless of bodily com- 

 fort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith 

 to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not 

 hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would 

 not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. 

 Voyagers uniformly find that colored beads and trinkets are much more 

 prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anec- 

 dotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given, 

 they turn them to some ludicrous display, show how completely the idea 

 of ornament predominates over that of use. Nay, there are still more 

 extreme illustrations: witness the fact narrated by Captain Speke of 

 his African attendants, who strutted about in their goat-skin mantles 

 when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took them off, folded 

 them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the 

 facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of 

 decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most 

 think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more 

 about the cut than the convenience — when we see that the function is 

 still in great measure subordinated to the appearance — we have further 

 reason for inferring such an origin. 



It is not a little curious that the like relations hold with the mind. 

 Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes 

 before the useful. Not only in times past, but almost as much in 

 our own era, that knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has 

 been postponed to that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, 

 music, poetry, rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until Socrates taught, 

 had but little bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects ; while 

 knowledge aiding the arts of life had a very subordinate place. And 

 in our own universities and schools at the present moment the like 



* The opening and concluding parts of an article originally printed in the 

 Westminster Review and republished by Messrs. D. Appleton and Co. in 1860, 

 with other papers, in a volume entitled * Education.' 



