EXERCISE AND DEVELOPMENT. 77 



fro sane man would trust the strength of a rope merely 

 because it is thick, any more than he would endeavour to 

 make a rope of sand because sand will bear his weight 

 ivhen he stands upon it ; yet the phrenologist's predications 

 of human character are just as illogically based and 

 inferred as such conclusions and misdirected efforts 

 would be, and the honest mind, to which truth is every- 

 thing, cannot be too earnestly warned against them. A 

 good deal of what mental and moral power may be in 

 achievement is evidenced by the small piecemeal and 

 inglorious labours of that being, too much despised among 

 mankind the poor Plodder ; for just as the Bees send 

 forth a thousand workers to gather wax and honey for the 

 hive, which at the end of the flower season contains a 

 plentitude of treasure and fortune, so the Plodder, intent 

 on achieving some worthy aim beyond the instantaneous 

 energy of his powers, calculates the value of little by 

 little, and adds under the sanction of forbearing time 

 his thousandth time repeated contribution to his work, 

 until it at last swells by slow but steady increase into 

 the full development of his purpose, and he is enabled to 

 leave a monument of his industry behind him not less 

 respectable, sanctified as it is by the fortitude of patience 

 and the heroism of perseverance, and often as beneficial to 

 mankind as the triumphs and masterpieces of genius 

 itself. Who will say that small things are contemptible 

 only, or that the Ant is not the greater a giant from the 

 very disproportion between its pigmy personality and its 

 mighty hill the exponent of a grander and more heroic 

 will than genius oft can claim as its associate? And 

 so of these small mental organs in men, on the ground 

 of which phrenologists would predicate failure in the 

 intellectual achievements of life. It is the exercised 

 limb of the little man that contains the developed strength, 

 not the idle arm of the giant. And the intellect, too, 



