cumstances which give an unquestioned superiority to bodily strength, we may find evidences of special care to foster and increase it. The "games" obligatory upon the little Spartans, the exercises of "gentle youth" during the age of chivalry, the description given by Mr. Catlin of the early training of the American aborigines, are all instances in point; and all show the recognition, under circumstances widely dissimilar, of the principle that the powers of the human organism are bestowed only in possibility—to be developed by culture, or to dwindle under neglect.
The state of physiological knowledge permits us to lay it down as an axiom that what is true of one system or apparatus, among those given to man, must also be true, mutatis mutandis (the necessary changes being made), of the rest. Without in the least degree failing to perceive the dependence of the higher faculties upon a spiritual nature, we must also perceive their dependence, during this life, upon the qualities of their material organs, the nervous centres; and the dependence of these qualities upon the laws which regulate nutrition and cell-growth. We are therefore entitled to assume, a priori, that, precisely as the methods of the trainer raise the physical powers of his disciples to the highest point attainable by each organism, so analogous methods would raise the intellectual powers in the same manner and degree. The conclusion which may be formed by reasoning is not unsupported by experience; but the masters of the art are few, and the examples of their skill are rare.
In an age of bodily repose, with nearly all locomotion artificial, with money as the principal purveyor, it is not surprising that men are careless about their physical powers, and think them hardly worth the trouble which their full cultivation would entail. Under circumstances in which strength of arm and fleetness of foot have afforded the chief sources of security, or have opened the most direct paths to renown, there has never been an approach to indifference about the means by which these qualities might be attained. If physical education be now almost wholly neglected, it is because the utility of its results has been diminished by the progress of civilization.
But this age of bodily sloth and weakness is also, it must be remembered, an age of intellectual activity and strength. The wide diffusion of knowledge, the facilities for travel, and the application of philosophy to the comforts and conveniences of life, have increased a thousand-fold the value, to each possessor, and to the whole human race, of the perceptive and conceptive faculties of the mind. Every one who observes the facts within his sphere, and reflects upon them, may find the key to some, as yet, unopened door in the temple of Nature, or may excogitate results calculated to increase the happiness of man. The career that offers itself to the intellect surpasses immeasurably all that has ever been offered to the corporeal powers; and it might, therefore, reasonably be expected that intellectual
