from without, and one constant and only duty, is a schooling in perseverance and
sustained effort such as few boys now get in any shape; while city instead of
country life brings so many new, heterogeneous and distracting impressions of
motion rather than rest, and so many privileges with so few corresponding
duties, that with artificial life and bad air the will is weakened, and eupeptic
minds and stomachs, on which its vigor so depends, are rare. Machines
supersede muscles, and perhaps our athleticism gives skill too great
preponderance over strength, or favors intense rather than constant, long-
sustained, unintermittent energy. Perhaps too many of our courses of study are
better fitted to turn out many-sided but superficial paragraphists, than men who
can lay deep plans, and subordinate many complex means to one remote end.
Meanwhile, if there is any one thing of which our industries and practical arts
are in more crying need than another, it is the old-fashioned virtue of
thoroughness, of a kind and degree which does not address merely the eye, is not
limited by the letter of a contract, but which has some regard for its products for
their own sake, and some sense for the future. Whether in science, philosophy,
morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative efforts are wider, more
numerous, and far more needy than in the days when it was the fashion for men
contentedly to concentrate themselves to one vocation, life-work, or mission, or
when cathedrals or other yet vaster public works were transmitted, unfinished
but ever advancing, from one generation of men to another.
It is because the brain is developed, while the muscles are allowed to grow
flabby and atrophied, that the deplored chasm between knowing and doing is so
often fatal to the practical effectiveness of mental and moral culture. The great
increase of city and sedentary life has been far too sudden for the human body—
which was developed by hunting, war, agriculture, and manifold industries now
given over to steam and machinery—to adapt itself healthfully or naturally to its
new environment. Let any of us take down an anatomical chart of the human
muscles, and reflect what movements we habitually make each day, and realize
how disproportionately our activities are distributed compared with the size or
importance of the muscles, and how greatly modern specialization of work has
deformed our bodies. The muscles that move the scribbling pen are insignificant
fraction of those in the whole body, and those that wag the tongue and adjust the
larynx are also comparatively few and small. Their importance is, of course, not
underrated, but it is disastrous to concentrate education upon them too
exclusively or too early in life. The trouble is that few realize what physical
vigor is in man or woman, or how dangerously near weakness often is to
wickedness, how impossible healthful energy of will is without strong muscles