55(5 



BOS. 



the connections which they suggest to the mind, are 

 those of dulness and death. 



The perennial green of the tropical forest, has 

 much the same influence upon the mind. No doubt 

 it has its alternations of wet and dry, just as the polar 

 one has of heat and cold ; but it has these only, with- 

 out the spring and autumn, and their succession is 

 so rapid and so violent, that man can hardly take 

 notice of the changes, and cannot at all profit by their 

 appearance. The perennial leaf, too, makes the reeling 

 of the same dull character as in the opposite extreme ; 

 and, as in the other case, man has no hope but just 

 to leave the world at his death in the very same state 

 in which it appeared to him at the first opening 

 (for, in such places we must not say use,} of his eyes. 



To those who look only for the common descrip- 

 tions of animals as they appear to the eye, and as 

 they might be better understood by one glance at the 

 living animal, or even at a figure of it, than from the 

 most elaborate piece of writing that could be put in 

 words, these remarks may appear lengthy and out of 

 place, in an article having the name of a single genus 

 of animal for its title. But such remarks have been 

 so much neglected by even the best writers on 

 natural history, that they have no names in the voca- 

 bulary of the sciences no titles under which they 

 can be separately treated in an alphabetical arrange- 

 ment, and they are at the same time so much more 

 important than even those other subjects which have 

 names in every book, that we feel not only justified 

 in introducing them, but bound to introduce them, 

 upon every favourable occasion. To know the de- 

 tails of one subject, as fully and accurately as pos- 

 sible, is very proper and very necessary as far as it 

 goes ; but it is a very small matter compared to that 

 of being able to know the part, and the view of 

 nature which shall be to us both book and instructor, 

 which will not only take all the heaviness of task- 

 work out of our attempts to learn, but make the 

 grand function of the mind the acquiring of know- 

 ledge, go on in the same way as the grand functions 

 of the body ; that is, not only without interruption 

 to any of the others, but furthering every other in 

 proportion as it is in itself vigorous. 



This seems an obvious, as well as an admirable 

 view of the acquiring of knowledge ; and one can 

 hardly imagine how it can have escaped all those who 

 have hitherto written on the subject. In the common 

 business of life, the body has a part to perform, and 

 so has the mind. The relations of them to each other 

 vary with the occupation as the body more in him 

 who works as he is directed, and the mind more in 

 him who directs the working of others. Farther, the 

 exercise in this way is, up to a certain degree, healthy 

 both to the body and to the mind. 



Now, we all know that the business of life, what- 

 ever it may be, goes on the more energetically and 

 successfully the more healthy that the body is that 

 is, the more freely and completely that all its natural 

 functions, such as digestion, or the circulation of the 

 blood, are performed. Now, with the knowledge of 

 the universality of this fact, it seems passing strange 

 that there should be, not only a prejudice against the 

 analogy, but a direct denial and denouncement (some- 

 times not a very temperate denouncement) of it in 

 the case of mind! The healthful function of the mind 

 the process of thinking, knowing, planning, and in- 

 venting, can no more fatigue the mind, or divert it 

 from the performance of its part in life, than the 



healthy exercise of the bodily functions can so fatigue 

 or divert the body. Indeed, it cannot so much,, or 

 even at all ; for, though we arc in the habit of 

 speaking of mental fatigue, or distraction, just as we 

 nre in the habit of speaking of mental disease or 

 derangement, yet the mind is equally incapable of 

 the one and the other. Sleeping or waking, the mind 

 is always thinking ; only the idle thought perishes, 

 effectless and useless, like the obscure dream of the 

 sound sleeper, which, because it touches not, the sense, 

 leaves no trace on the waking mind or rather on the 

 mind after the body has awakened. See DHEAM and 

 SLEEP. 



This view of the subject is of the greatest import- 

 ance, and the neglect, or rather denial and resistance 

 of it, cuts mankind off from more of the usefulness 

 and pleasure of life than all other causes put together. 

 The man who thinks the most, is capable of acting 

 the best and the most also; and so conversely, he 

 who is the most active in his body, is also the" best 

 capacitated for being active in his mind. It is some- 

 times said that, men injure their bodily health by 

 study ; but it is quite a mistake, unless 'what is vul- 

 garly called "brown study" be meant that in which 

 the mind stands still, and holds the body in inaction 

 along with it. 



Thus, whether we speak of the interruption given 

 to business by thought, and the acquiring of (a habit 

 of) knowledge in those who are not professedly 

 students, or the injury done to health by the sedentary- 

 habit of those who are, we are equally in error, and 

 thus express ourselves either on account of our 

 ignorance of what knowledge is, of the nature of the 

 human structure as a compound of body and mind, 

 or of both. The healthful state of the whole man, 

 that in which it can best perform that which it has 

 to perform, whatever that may be, is the state in 

 which those functions of the body and of the mind, 

 which may singly be called the life of each, and to- 

 gether, the life of the whole man, are all performed 

 with equal energy. If the one is really active, it will 

 not allow the other 4o be idle ; and when a man of 

 action becomes studious to the neglect of his business, 

 or a man of study to the injury of his health, we may 

 be sure that it is mental dissipation or in<ii Icnce, anil 

 not mental labour, which is the real cvnse of the 

 mischief; and as there can be no indolence of weak- 

 ness or of fatigue in the mind, as there may be in the 

 body, we may be sure that another step of the 

 analysis would bring us to the want of stimulus to 

 a perverted doting and dreaming upon that in which 

 there is not sufficient excitement. 



This would bring us back to the natural pastures 

 of the ox tribe, as the places of the earth most emi- 

 nently fitted for stimulating the human race to civili- 

 sation at the first, and to the animals themselves ; as, 

 from the readiness with which they can be domesti- 

 cated, and their varied uses when this is accomplished, 

 one of the principal means of forwarding that civili- 

 sation which their pastures are so well calculated for 

 beginning. But there is still one general point, upon, 

 which we shall venture to make a remark or two, 

 before we go on to any thing partaking so much of 

 detail as even the account of this numerous and 

 important genus of animals ; and we do this the more 

 readily, that what we have to say has, besides its 

 importance in the general subject of knowledge, and 

 the means of acquiring it, a very strict bearing upon 

 natural history. 



