MAHf 233 



ment ? Are we not eminently " penny-wise and pound- 

 foolish ? " A ship which uses only its donkey-engines, 

 and does nothing but take in and get out cargo is a 

 dismantled hulk. A captain who thinks only of cargo, 

 and engines, and the length of the daily run, but who 

 takes no observations and consults no chart, wiU make 

 land only to run upon rocks. Are we not too much 

 like such dismantled hulks, or ships sailing with price- 

 less cargoes but with mad captains ? 



But we have not yet seen the worst results of this 

 waste of our highest powers. The sessile animal, 

 which lives mainly for digestion, does not attain as 

 good digestive organs as his more active neighbor, 

 who subordinates digestion to muscle. Lower powers 

 reach their highest development only in proportion 

 as they are strictly subordinated to higher. This 

 may be called a law of biology. And our lower 

 mental powers fail of their highest development and 

 capacity mainly because of the lack of this subordina- 

 tion. 



But a disused organ is very likely to become a seat 

 of disease and to thus enfeeble or destroy the whole 

 body. And this disease effects the most complete 

 ruin when its seat is in the highest organs. Dyspepsia 

 is bad enough, but mania or idiocy is infinitely worse. 

 And our moral powers are always enfeebled, and often 

 diseased, from lack of strong exercise. And some 

 blind guides, seeing only the disease, cry out for the 

 extirpation of the whole faculty, as some physicians 

 are said to propose the removal of the vermiform ap- 

 pendage in children. Similarly might the drunkard 

 argue against the value of brain, because it aches after 

 a debauch. Our work is hard labor, and we gain no 



