in considerable amount. In fact, the principle teaches us exactly how the thing may be done. Improve the quality and increase the quantity of the food; increase the supply of oxygen by healthy residence; let the habitual muscular exertion be such as to strengthen and not impair the functions; abate as much as possible all excesses and irregularities, bodily and mental; add the enormous economy of an educated disposal of the forces; and you will develop a higher being, a greater aggregate of power. You will then have more to spare for all kinds of expenditure—for the physico-mental, as well as for the strictly physical. What other explanation is needed of the military superiority of the officer over the common soldier? of the general efficiency of the man nourished, but not enervated, by worldly abundance?
It may be possible, at some future stage of scientific inquiry, to compute the comparative amount of oxidation in the brain during severe mental labor. Even now, from obvious facts, we must pronounce it to be a very considerable fraction of the entire work done in the system. The privation of the other interests during mental exertion is so apparent, so extensive, that if the exertion should happen to be long continued, a liberal atonement has to be made in order to stave off general insolvency. Mental excess counts as largely as muscular excess in the diversion of power; it would be com-
