Various
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 / A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES
All doubtless remember the story which is told of the witty Charles II. and the Royal Society: How one day the King brought to the attention of its members a most curious and inexplicable phenomenon, which he stated thus: "When you put a trout into a pail full of water, why does not the water overflow?" The savans, naturally enough, were surprised, and suggested many wise, but fruitless explanations; until at last one of their number, having no proper reverence for royalty in his heart, demanded that the experiment should actually be tried. Then, of course, it was proved that there was no phenomenon to be explained. The water overflowed fast enough. Indeed, it is chronicled that the evolutions of this lively member of the piscatory tribe were so brisk, that the difficulty was the exact opposite of what was anticipated, namely, how to keep the water in.
This story may be a pure fable, but the lesson it teaches is true and important. It illustrates forcibly the facility with which even wise men accept doubtful propositions, and then apply the whole power of their minds to explain them, and perhaps to defend them. Latterly one hears constantly of the physical decay which threatens the American people, because of their unwise and disproportioned stimulation of the brain. It is assumed, almost as an axiom, that there is "a deficiency of physical health in America." Especially is it assumed that great mental progress, either of races or of individuals, has been generally purchased at the expense of the physical frame. Indeed, it is one of the questions of the day, how the saints, that is, those devoted to literary and professional pursuits, shall obtain good and serviceable bodies; or, to widen the query, how the finest intellectual culture can exist side by side with the noblest physical development; or, to bring this question into a form that shall touch us most sharply, how our boys and girls can obtain all needful knowledge and mental discipline, and yet keep full of graceful and buoyant vitality.
What do we say to the theories and convictions which are underneath this language? What answer shall we make to these questions? What answer ought we to make? Our first reply would be, We doubt the proposition. We ask for the broad and firm basis of undoubted facts upon which it rests. And we enter an opposite plea. We affirm that the saints have as good bodies as other people, and that they always did have. We deny that they need to be patched up or watched over any more than their neighbors. They live as long and enjoy as much as the rest of mankind. They can endure as many hard buffets, and come out as tough and strong, as the veriest dolt whose intellectual bark foundered in the unsounded depths of his primer. The world's history through, the races which are best taught have the best endowment of health. Nay, in our own New England, with just such influences, physical, mental, and moral, as actually exist, there is no deterioration in real vitality to weep over.
We hold, then, on this subject very different opinions from those which prevail in many quarters. We believe in the essential healthfulness of literary culture, and in the invigorating power of sound knowledge. Emphatically do we believe that our common schools have been in the aggregate a positive physical benefit. We are confident, that, just to the degree that the unseen force within a man receives its rightful development, does vigorous life flow in every current that beats from heart to extremities. With entire respect for the opinions of others, even while we cannot concur with them, with a readiness to admit that the assertion of those opinions may have been indirectly beneficial, we wish to state the truth as it looks to us, to exhibit the facts which bear upon this subject in the shape and hue they have to our own minds, and to give the grounds of our conviction that a cultivated mind is the best friend and ally of the body.
Would it not be singular, if anything different were true? You say, and you say rightly, that the best part of a man is his mind and soul, those spiritual elements which divide him from all the rest of the creation, animate or inanimate, and make him lord and sovereign over them all. You say, and you say wisely, that the body, however strong and beautiful, is nothing,that the senses, however keen and vigorous, are nothing,that the outward glories, however much they may minister to sensual gratification, are nothing,unless they all become the instruments for the upbuilding of the immortal part in man. But what a tremendous impeachment of the wisdom or power of the Creator you are bringing, if you assert that the development of this highest part, whether by its direct influence on the body, or indirectly by the habits of life which it creates, is destructive of all the rest, nay, self-destructive! You may show that every opening bud in spring, and every joint, nerve, and muscle in every animate creature, are full of proofs of wise designs accomplishing their purposes, and it shall all count for less than nothing, if you can demonstrate that the mind, in its highest, broadest development, brings anarchy into the system,or, mark it well, produces, or tends to produce, habits of living ruinous to health, and so ruinous to true usefulness. At the outset, therefore, the very fact that the mind is the highest creation of Divine wisdom would force us to believe that that development of it, that increase of knowledge, that sharpening of the faculties, that feeding of intellectual hunger, which does not promote joy and health in every part, must be false and illegitimate indeed.
And it is hardly too much to say, that, in a rational being, thought is almost synonymous with vitality of all sorts. The brain throws out its network of nerves to every part of the body; and those nerves are the pathways along which it sends, not alone physical volitions, but its mental force and high intelligence, to mingle by a subtile chemistry with every fibre, and give it a finer life and a more bounding elasticity. So one might foretell, before the study of a single fact of experience, that, other things being equal, he who had few or no thoughts would have not only a dormant mind, but also a sluggish and inert body, less active than another, less enduring, and especially less defiant of physical ills. And one might prophesy, too, that he who had high thoughts and wealth of knowledge would have stored up in his brain a magazine of reserved power wherewith to support the faltering body: a prophecy not wide apart, perhaps, from any broad and candid observation of human life.
And who can fail to remember what superior resources a cultivated mind has over one sunk in sloth and ignorance,how much wider an outlook, how much larger and more varied interests, and how these things support when outward props fail, how they strengthen in misfortune and pain, and keep the heart from anxieties which might wear out the body? Scott, dictating "Ivanhoe" in the midst of a torturing sickness, and so rising, by force of a cultivated imagination, above all physical anguish, to revel in visions of chivalric splendor, is but the type of men everywhere, who, but for resources supplied by the mind, would have sunk beneath the blows of adverse fortune, or else sought forgetfulness in brutalizing and destructive pleasures. Sometimes a book is better far than medicine, and more truly soothing than the best anodyne. Sometimes a rich-freighted memory is more genial than many companions. Sometimes a firm mind, that has all it needs within itself, is a watchtower to which we may flee, and from which look down calmly upon our own losses and misfortunes. He who does not understand this has either had a most fortunate experience, or else has no culture, which is really a part of himself, woven into the very texture of the soul. So, if there were no facts, considering the mind, and who made it, and how it is related to the body, and how, when it is a good mind and a well-stored mind, it seems to stand for all else, to be food and shelter and comfort and friend and hope, who could believe anything else than that a well-instructed soul could do nought but good to its servant the body?
After all, we cannot evade, and we ought not to seek to evade, the testimony of facts. No cause can properly stand on any theory, however pleasant and cheering, or however plausible. What, then, of the facts, of the painful facts of experience, which are said to tell so different a tale? This,that the physical value of education is in no way so clearly demonstrated as by these very facts. We know what is the traditional picture of the scholar,pale, stooping, hectic, hurrying with unsteady feet to a predestined early grave; or else morbid, dyspeptic, cadaverous, putting into his works the dark tints of his own inward nature. At best, he is painted as a mere bookworm, bleached and almost mildewed in some learned retirement beneath the shadow of great folios, until he is out of joint with the world, and all fresh and hearty life has gone out of him. Who cannot recall just such pictures, wherein one knows not which predominates, the ludicrous or the pitiful? We protest against them all. In the name of truth and common-sense alike, we indignantly reject them. We have a vision of a sturdier manhood: of the genial, open countenance of an Irving; of the homely, honest strength that shone in every feature of a Walter Scott; of the massive vigor of a Goethe or a Humboldt. How much, too, is said of the physical degeneracy of our own people,how the jaw is retreating, how the frame is growing slender and gaunt, how the chest flattens, and how tenderly we ought to cherish every octogenarian among us, for that we are seeing the last of them! If this is intended to be a piece of pleasant badinage, far be it from us to arrest a single smile it may awaken. But if it is given as a serious description, from which serious deductions can be drawn, then we say, that, as a delineation, it is, to a considerable extent, purely fanciful,as an argument, utterly so. The facts, so far as they are ascertained, point unwaveringly to this conclusion,that every advance of a people in knowledge and refinement is accompanied by as striking an advance in health and strength.
Try this question, if you please, on the largest possible scale. Compare the uneducated savage with his civilized brother. His form has never been bent by confinement in the school-room. Overburdening thoughts have never wasted his frame. And if unremitting exercise amid the free airs of heaven will alone make one strong, then he will be strong. Is the savage stronger? Does he live more years? Can he compete side by side with civilized races in the struggle for existence? Just the opposite is true. Our puny boys, as we sometimes call them, in our colleges, will weigh more, lift more, endure more than any barbarian race of them all. This day the gentle Sandwich-Islanders are wasting like snow-wreaths, in contact with educated races. This day our red men are being swept before advancing civilization like leaves before the breath of the hurricane. And it requires no prophet's eye to see, that, if we do not give the black man education as well as freedom, an unshackled mind as well as unshackled limbs, he, too, will share the same fate.
To all this it may naturally be objected, that the reason so many savage races do not display the greatest physical stamina is not so much intellectual barrenness as their vices, native or acquired,or because they bring no wisdom to the conduct of life, but dwell in smoky huts, eat unhealthy food, go from starvation to plethora and from plethora to starvation again, exchange the indolent lethargy which is the law of savage life for the frantic struggles of war or the chase which diversify and break up its monotony. Allow the objection; and then what have we accomplished, but carrying the argument one step back? For what are self-control and self-care, but the just fruits of intelligence? But in truth it is a combination of all these influences, and not any of them alone, that enables the civilized man to outlive and outrival his barbarian brother. He succeeds, not simply because of the superior address and sagacity which education gives him, though that, no doubt, has much to do with it; not altogether because his habits of life are better, though we would not underrate their value; but equally because the culture of the brain gives a finer life to every red drop in his arteries, and greater hardihood to every fibre which is woven into his flesh. If it is not so, how do you explain the fact that our colored soldier, fighting in his native climate, with the same exposure in health and the same care in sickness, succumbs to wounds and diseases over which his white comrade triumphs? Or how will you explain analogous facts in the history of disease among other uneducated races? Our explanation is simple. As the slightest interfusion of carbon may change the dull iron into trenchant steel, so intelligence working through invisible channels may add a new temper to the physical nature. And thus it may be strictly true that it is not only the mind and soul which slavery and ignorance wrong, but the body just as much.
It may be said, and perhaps justly, that a comparison between races so unlike is not a fair comparison. Take, then, if you prefer, the intelligent and unintelligent periods in the history of the same race. The old knights! Those men with mail-clad bodies and iron natures, who stand out in imagination as symbols of masculine strength! The old knights! They were not scholars. Their constitutions were not ruined by study, or by superfluous sainthood of any kind. They were more at home with the sword than the pen. They loved better "to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak." So their minds were sufficiently dormant. How was it with their bodies? Were they sturdier men? Did they stand heavier on their feet than their descendants? It is a familiar fact that the armor which inclosed them will not hold those whom we call their degenerate children. A friend tells me that in the armory of London Tower there are preserved scores, if not hundreds, of the swords of those terrible Northmen, those Vikings, who, ten centuries ago, swept the seas and were the dread of all Europe, and that scarcely one of them has a hilt large enough to be grasped by a man of this generation. Of races who have left behind them no methodical records, and whose story is preserved only in the rude rhymes of their poets and ruder chronicles, it is not safe to make positive affirmations; but all the indications are that the student of to-day is a larger and stronger man than the warrior of the Middle Ages.
If we come down to periods of historical certainty, no one will doubt that the England of the present hour is more educated than the England of fifty years ago, or that the England of fifty years since had a broader diffusion of intelligence than the England of a century previous. Yet that very intelligence has prolonged life. An Englishman lives longer to-day than he did in 1800, and longer yet than in 1700. Here is a curious proof. Annuities calculated on a certain rate of life in 1694 would yield a fortune to those who issued them. Calculated at the same rate in 1794, they would ruin them; for the more general diffusion of knowledge and refinement had added, I am not able to say how many years to the average British life. Observe how this statement is confirmed by some wonderful statistics preserved at Geneva. From 1600 to 1700 the average length of life in that city was 13 years 3 months. From 1700 to 1750 it was 27 years 9 months. From 1750 to 1800, 31 years 3 months. From 1800 to 1833, 43 years 6 months.
One more pertinent fact. Take in England any number of families you please, whose parents can read and write, and an equal number of families whose parents cannot read and write, and the number of children in the latter class of families who will die before the age of five years will greatly exceed that in the former class,some thirty or forty per cent. So surely does a thoughtful ordering of life come in the train of intelligence. If faith is to be placed in statistics of any sort, then it holds true in foreign countries that human life is long in proportion to the degree that knowledge, refinement, and virtue are diffused. That is, sainthood, so far from destroying the body, preserves it.