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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1880 Macmillan and Co. edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays + + + + +Contents: + +Woman's Work in a Country Parish +The Science of Health +The Two Breaths +Thrift +Nausicaa in London; or, the Lower Education of Women +The Air-Mothers +The Tree of Knowledge +Great Cities and their Influence for Good and Evil +Heroism +The Massacre of the Innocents +"A mad world, my masters." + + + + +WOMAN'S WORK IN A COUNTRY PARISH {1} + + + +I have been asked to speak a few words to you on a lady's work in +a country parish. I shall confine myself rather to principles +than to details; and the first principle which I would impress on +you is, that we must all be just before we are generous. I must, +indeed, speak plainly on this point. A woman's first duties are +to her own family, her own servants. Be not deceived: if anyone +cannot rule her own household, she cannot rule the Church of God. +If anyone cannot sympathise with the servants with whom she is in +contact all day long, she will not really sympathise with the poor +whom she sees once a week. I know the temptation not to believe +this is very great. It seems so much easier to women to do +something for the poor, than for their own ladies' maids, and +house-maids, and cooks. And why? Because they can treat the poor +as THINGS: but they MUST treat their servants as persons. A lady +can go into a poor cottage, lay down the law to the inhabitants, +reprove them for sins to which she has never been tempted; tell +them how to set things right, which, if she had the doing of them, +I fear she would do even more confusedly and slovenly than they. +She can give them a tract, as she might a pill; and then a +shilling, as something sweet after the medicine; and she can go +out again and see no more of them till her benevolent mood recurs: +but with the servants it is not so. She knows their characters; +and, what is more, they know hers; they know her private history, +her little weaknesses. Perhaps she is a little in their power, +and she is shy with them. She is afraid of beginning a good work +with them, because, if she does, she will be forced to carry it +out; and it cannot be cold, dry, perfunctory, official: it must +be hearty, living, loving, personal. She must make them her +friends; and perhaps she is afraid of doing that, for fear they +should take liberties, as it is called--which they very probably +will do, unless she keeps up a very high standard of self- +restraint and earnestness in her own life--and that involves a +great deal of trouble, and so she is tempted, when she wishes to +do good, to fall back on the poor people in the cottages outside, +who, as she fancies, know nothing about her, and will never find +out whether or not she acts up to the rules which she lays down +for them. Be not deceived, I say, in this case also. Fancy not +that they know nothing about you. There is nothing secret which +shall not be made manifest; and what you do in the closet is +surely proclaimed (and often with exaggeration enough and to +spare) on the house-top. These poor folks at your gate know well +enough, through servants and tradesmen, what you are, how you +treat your servants, how you pay your bills, what sort of temper +you have; and they form a shrewd, hard estimate of your character, +in the light of which they view all that you do and say to them; +and believe me, that if you wish to do any real good to them, you +must begin by doing good to those who lie still nearer to you than +them. And believe me, too, that if you shrink from a hearty +patriarchal sympathy with your own servants, because it would +require too much personal human intercourse with them, you are +like a man who, finding that he had not powder enough to fire off +a pocket-pistol, should try to better matters by using the same +quantity of ammunition in an eighty-four pound gun. For it is +this human friendship, trust, affection, which is the very thing +you have to employ towards the poor, and to call up in them. +Clubs, societies, alms, lending libraries are but dead machinery, +needful, perhaps, but, like the iron tube without the powder, +unable to send the bullet forth one single inch; dead and useless +lumber, without humanity; without the smile of the lip, the light +of the eye, the tenderness of the voice, which makes the poor +woman feel that a soul is speaking to her soul, a heart yearning +after her heart; that she is not merely a THING to be improved, +but a sister to be made conscious of the divine bond of her +sisterhood, and taught what she means when she repeats in her +Creed, "I believe in the communion of saints." This is my text, +and my key-note--whatever else I may say to-day is but a carrying +out into details of the one question, How may you go to these poor +creatures as woman to woman? + +Your next duties are to your husband's or father's servants and +workmen. It is said that a clergyman's wife ought to consider the +parish as HER flock as well as her husband's. It may be so: I +believe the dogma to be much overstated just now. But of a +landlord's, or employer's wife (I am inclined to say, too, of an +officer's wife), such a doctrine is absolutely true, and cannot be +overstated. A large proportion, therefore, of your parish work +will be to influence the men of your family to do their duty by +their dependants. You wish to cure the evils under which they +labour. The greater proportion of these are in the hands of your +men relatives. It is a mockery, for instance, in you to visit the +fever-stricken cottage, while your husband leaves it in a state +which breeds that fever. Your business is to go to him and say, +"HERE IS A WRONG; RIGHT IT!" This, as many a beautiful Middle Age +legend tells us, has been woman's function in all uncivilised +times; not merely to melt man's heart to pity, but to awaken it to +duty. But the man must see that the woman is in earnest: that if +he will not repair the wrong by justice, she will, if possible (as +in those old legends), by self-sacrifice. Be sure this method +will conquer. Do but say: "If you will not new-roof that +cottage, if you will not make that drain, I will. I will not buy +a new dress till it is done; I will sell the horse you gave me, +pawn the bracelet you gave me, but the thing shall be done." Let +him see, I say, that you are in earnest, and he will feel that +your message is a divine one, which he must obey for very shame +and weariness, if for nothing else. This is in my eyes the second +part of a woman's parish work. I entreat you to bear it in mind +when you hear, as I trust you will, lectures in this place upon +that SANITARY REFORM, without which all efforts for the bettering +of the masses are in my eyes not only useless, but hypocritical. + +I will suppose, then, that you are fulfilling home duties in self- +restraint, and love, and in the fear of God. I will suppose that +you are using all your woman's influence on the mind of your +family, in behalf of tenants and workmen; and I tell you frankly, +that unless this be first done, you are paying a tithe of mint and +anise, and neglecting common righteousness and mercy. But you +wish to do more: you wish for personal contact with the poor +round you, for the pure enjoyment of doing good to them with your +own hands. How are you to set about it? First, there are clubs-- +clothing-clubs, shoe-clubs, maternal-clubs; all very good in their +way. But do not fancy that they are the greater part of your +parish work. Rather watch and fear lest they become substitutes +for your real parish work; lest the bustle and amusement of +playing at shopkeeper, or penny-collector, once a week, should +blind you to your real power--your real treasure, by spending +which you become all the richer. What you have to do is to +ennoble and purify the WOMANHOOD of these poor women; to make them +better daughters, sisters, wives, mothers: and all the clubs in +the world will not do that; they are but palliatives of a great +evil, which they do not touch; cloaks for almsgiving, clumsy means +of eking out insufficient wages; at best, kindly contrivances for +tricking into temporary thriftiness a degraded and reckless +peasantry. Miserable, miserable state of things! out of which the +longer I live I see less hope of escape, saving by an emigration, +which shall drain us of all the healthy, strong, and brave among +the lower classes, and leave us, as a just punishment for our +sins, only the cripple, the drunkard, and the beggar. + +Yet these clubs MUST be carried on. They make life a little more +possible; they lighten hearts, if but for a moment; they inculcate +habits of order and self-restraint, which may be useful when the +poor man finds himself in Canada or Australia. And it is a cruel +utilitarianism to refuse to palliate the symptoms because you +cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the +suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip into his grave +at least as painlessly as you can. And so you must use these +charitable societies, remembering all along what a fearful and +humbling sign the necessity for them is of the diseased state of +this England, as the sportula and universal almsgiving was of the +decadence of Rome. + +However, the work has to be done; and such as it is, it is +especially fitted for young unmarried ladies. It requires no deep +knowledge of human nature. It makes them aware of the amount of +suffering and struggling which lies around them, without bringing +them in that most undesirable contact with the coarser forms of +evil which house-visitation must do; and the mere business habits +of accuracy and patience to which it compels them, are a valuable +practical schooling for them themselves in after-life. It is +tiresome and unsentimental drudgery, no doubt; but perhaps all the +better training on that account. And, after all, the magic of +sweetness, grace, and courtesy may shed a hallowing and humanising +light over the meanest work, and the smile of God may spread from +lip to lip, and the light of God from eye to eye, even between the +giver and receiver of a penny, till the poor woman goes home, +saying in her heart, "I have not only found the life of my hand--I +have found a sister for time and for eternity." + +But there is another field of parish usefulness which I cannot +recommend too earnestly, and that is, the school. There you may +work as hard as you will, and how you will--provided you do it in +a loving, hearty, cheerful, HUMAN way, playful and yet earnest; +two qualities which, when they exist in their highest power, are +sure to go together. I say, how you will. I am no pedant about +schools; I care less what is taught than how it is taught. The +merest rudiments of Christianity, the merest rudiments of popular +instruction, are enough, provided they be given by lips which +speak as if they believed what they said, and with a look which +shows real love for the pupil. Manner is everything--matter a +secondary consideration; for in matter, brain only speaks to +brain; in manner, soul speaks to soul. If you want Christ's lost- +lambs really to believe that He died for them, you will do it +better by one little act of interest and affection, than by making +them learn by heart whole commentaries--even as Miss Nightingale +has preached Christ crucified to those poor soldiers by acts of +plain outward drudgery, more livingly, and really, and +convincingly than she could have done by ten thousand sermons, and +made many a noble lad, I doubt not, say in his heart, for the +first time in his wild life, "I can believe now that Christ died +for me, for here is one whom He has taught to die for me in like +wise." And this blessed effect of school-work, remember, is not +confined to the children. It goes home with them to the parents. +The child becomes an object of interest and respect in their eyes, +when they see it an object of interest and respect in yours. If +they see that you look on it as an awful and glorious being, the +child of God, the co-heir of Christ, they learn gradually to look +on it in the same light. They become afraid and ashamed (and it +is a noble fear and shame) to do and say before it what they used +to do and say; afraid to ill-use it. It becomes to them a +mysterious visitor (sad that it should be so, but true as sad) +from a higher and purer sphere, who must be treated with something +of courtesy and respect, who must even be asked to teach them +something of its new knowledge; and the school, and the ladies' +interest in the school, become to the degraded parents a living +sign that those children's angels do indeed behold the face of +their Father which is in heaven. + +Now, there is one thing in school-work which I wish to press on +you; and that is, that you should not confine your work to the +girls; but bestow it as freely on those who need it more, and who +(paradoxical as it may seem) will respond to it more deeply and +freely--THE BOYS. I am not going to enter into the reasons WHY. +I only entreat you to believe me, that by helping to educate the +boys, or even (when old enough), by taking a class (as I have seen +done with admirable effect) of grown-up lads, you may influence +for ever not only the happiness of your pupils, but of the girls +whom they will hereafter marry. It will be a boon to your own sex +as well as to ours to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, +reverence for physical weakness, admiration of tenderness and +gentleness; and it is one which only a lady can bestow. Only by +being accustomed in youth to converse with ladies, will the boy +learn to treat hereafter his sweetheart or his wife like a +gentleman. There is a latent chivalry, doubt it not, in the heart +of every untutored clod; if it dies out in him (as it too often +does), it were better for him, I often think, if he had never been +born: but the only talisman which will keep it alive, much more +develop it into its fulness, is friendly and revering intercourse +with women of higher rank than himself, between whom and him there +is a great and yet a blessed gulf fixed. + +I have left to the last the most important subject of all; and +that is, what is called "visiting the poor." It is an endless +subject; if you go into details, you might write volumes on it. +All I can do this afternoon is to keep to my own key-note, and +say, Visit whom, when, and where you will; but let your visits be +those of woman to woman. Consider to whom you go--to poor souls +whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and +soul, and spirit--and do as you would be done by; instead of +reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage. +They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thornbrakes, +clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things! But why, in +the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady, rolling along +the smooth turnpike-road in her comfortable carriage, to be +calling out all day long to the poor soul who drags on beside her +over hedge and ditch, moss and moor, bare-footed and weary- +hearted, with half-a-dozen children at her back: "You ought not +to have fallen here; and it was very cowardly to lie down there; +and it was your duty, as a mother, to have helped that child +through the puddle; while, as for sleeping under that bush, it is +most imprudent and inadmissible?" Why not encourage her, praise +her, cheer her on her weary way by loving words, and keep your +reproofs for yourself--even your advice; for SHE does get on her +way, after all, where YOU could not travel a step forward; and she +knows what she is about perhaps better than you do, and what she +has to endure, and what God thinks of her life-journey. The heart +knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with +its joy. But do not be a stranger to her. Be a sister to her. I +do not ask you to take her up in your carriage. You cannot; +perhaps it is good for her that you cannot. It is good sometimes +for Lazarus that he is not fit to sit at Dives's feast--good for +him that he should receive his evil things in this life, and be +comforted in the life to come. All I ask is, do to the poor soul +as you would have her do to you in her place. Do not interrupt +and vex her (for she is busy enough already) with remedies which +she does not understand, for troubles which you do not understand. +But speak comfortably to her, and say: "I cannot feel WITH you, +but I do feel FOR you: I should enjoy helping you, but I do not +know how--tell me. Tell me where the yoke galls; tell me why that +forehead is grown old before its time: I may be able to ease the +burden, to put fresh light into the eyes; and if not, still tell +me, simply because I am a woman, and know the relief of pouring +out my own soul into loving ears, even though in the depths of +despair." Yes, paradoxical as it may seem, I am convinced that +the only way to help these poor women humanly and really, is to +begin by confessing to them that you do not know how to help them; +to humble yourself to them, and to ask their counsel for the good +of themselves and of their neighbours, instead of coming proudly +to them, with nostrums ready compounded, as if a doctor should be +so confident in his own knowledge of books and medicine as to give +physic before asking the patient's symptoms. + +Therefore, I entreat you to bear in mind (for without this all +visiting of the poor will be utterly void and useless), that you +must regulate your conduct to them, and in their houses, even to +the most minute particulars, by the very same rules which apply to +persons of your own class. Never let any woman say of you +(thought fatal to all confidence, all influence!): "Yes, it is +all very kind: but she does not behave to me as she would to one +of her own quality." Piety, earnestness, affectionateness, +eloquence--all may be nullified and stultified by simply keeping a +poor woman standing in her own cottage while you sit, or entering +her house, even at her own request, while she is at meals. She +may decline to sit; she may beg you to come in, all the more +reason for refusing utterly to obey her, because it shows that +that very inward gulf between you and her still exists in her +mind, which it is the object of your visit to bridge over. If you +know her to be in trouble, touch on that trouble as you would with +a lady. Woman's heart is alike in all ranks, and the deepest +sorrow is the one of which she speaks the last and least. We +should not like anyone--no, not an angel from heaven, to come into +our houses without knocking at the door, and say: "I hear you are +very ill off--I will lend you a hundred pounds. I think you are +very careless of money, I will take your accounts into my own +hands;" and still less again: "Your son is a very bad, +profligate, disgraceful fellow, who is not fit to be mentioned; I +intend to take him out of your hands and reform him myself." +Neither do the poor like such unceremonious mercy, such untender +tenderness, benevolence at horse-play, mistaking kicks for +caresses. They do not like it, they will not respond to it, save +in parishes which have been demoralised by officious and +indiscriminate benevolence, and where the last remaining virtues +of the poor, savage self-help and independence, have been +exchanged (as I have too often seen them exchanged) for organised +begging and hypocrisy. + +I would that you would all read, ladies, and consider well the +traits of an opposite character which have just come to light (to +me, I am ashamed to say, for the first time) in the Biography of +Sidney Smith. The love and admiration which that truly brave and +loving man won from everyone, rich or poor, with whom he came in +contact, seems to me to have arisen from the one fact, that +without perhaps having any such conscious intention, he treated +rich and poor, his own servants and the noblemen his guests, +alike, and ALIKE courteously, considerately, cheerfully, +affectionately--so leaving a blessing and reaping a blessing +wheresoever he went. + +Approach, then, these poor women as sisters, and you will be able +gradually to reverse the hard saying of which I made use just now: +"Do not apply remedies which they do not understand, to diseases +which you do not understand." Learn lovingly and patiently (aye, +and reverently, for there is that in every human being which +deserves reverence, and must be reverenced if we wish to +understand it)--learn, I say, to understand their troubles, and by +that time they will have learnt to understand your remedies, and +they will appreciate them. For you HAVE remedies. I do not +undervalue your position. No man on earth is less inclined to +undervalue the real power of wealth, rank, accomplishments, +manners--even physical beauty. All are talents from God, and I +give God thanks when I see them possessed by any human being; for +I know that they, too, can be used in His service, and brought to +bear on the true emancipation of woman--her emancipation, not from +man (as some foolish persons fancy), but from the devil, "the +slanderer and divider" who divides her from man, and makes her +live a life-long tragedy, which goes on in more cottages than in +palaces--a vie e part, a vie incomprise--a life made up half of +ill-usage, half of unnecessary, self-willed, self-conceited +martyrdom, instead of being (as God intended) half of the human +universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot which makes +this world endurable. Towards making her that, and so realising +the primeval mission by every cottage hearth, each of you can do +something; for each of you have some talent, power, knowledge, +attraction between soul and soul, which the cottager's wife has +not, and by which you may draw her to you with (as the prophet +says) human bonds and the cords of love: but she must be drawn by +them alone, or your work is nothing, and though you give the +treasures of Ind, they are valueless equally to her and to Christ; +for they are not given in His name, which is that boundless +tenderness, consideration, patience, self-sacrifice, by which even +the cup of cold water is a precious offering--as God grant your +labour may be! + + + +THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH {2} + + + +Whether the British race is improving or degenerating? What, if +it seem probably degenerating, are the causes of so great an evil? +How they can be, if not destroyed, at least arrested? These are +questions worthy attention, not of statesmen only and medical men, +but of every father and mother in these isles. I shall say +somewhat about them in this Essay; and say it in a form which +ought to be intelligible to fathers and mothers of every class, +from the highest to the lowest, in hopes of convincing some of +them at least that the science of health, now so utterly neglected +in our curriculum of so-called education, ought to be taught--the +rudiments of it at least--in every school, college, and +university. + +We talk of our hardy forefathers; and rightly. But they were +hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy, because none but the +hardy lived. They may have been able to say of themselves--as +they do in a State paper of 1515, now well known through the pages +of Mr. Froude: "What comyn folk of all the world may compare with +the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and +all prosperity? What comyn folk is so mighty, and so strong in +the felde, as the comyns of England?" They may have been fed on +"great shins of beef," till they became, as Benvenuto Cellini +calls them, "the English wild beasts." But they increased in +numbers slowly, if at all, for centuries. Those terrible laws of +natural selection, which issue in "the survival of the fittest," +cleared off the less fit, in every generation, principally by +infantile disease, often by wholesale famine and pestilence; and +left, on the whole, only those of the strongest constitutions to +perpetuate a hardy, valiant, and enterprising race. + +At last came a sudden and unprecedented change. In the first +years of this century, steam and commerce produced an enormous +increase in the population. Millions of fresh human beings found +employment, married, brought up children who found employment in +their turn, and learnt to live more or less civilised lives. An +event, doubtless, for which God is to be thanked. A quite new +phase of humanity, bringing with it new vices and new dangers: +but bringing, also, not merely new comforts, but new noblenesses, +new generosities, new conceptions of duty, and of how that duty +should be done. It is childish to regret the old times, when our +soot-grimed manufacturing districts were green with lonely farms. +To murmur at the transformation would be, I believe, to murmur at +the will of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground. + + +The old order changeth, yielding place to the new, +And God fulfils himself in many ways, +Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. + + +Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old custom, to take +care of the good new custom, lest it should corrupt the world in +like wise. And it may do so thus: + +The rapid increase of population during the first half of this +century began at a moment when the British stock was specially +exhausted; namely, about the end of the long French war. There +may have been periods of exhaustion, at least in England, before +that. There may have been one here, as there seems to have been +on the Continent, after the Crusades; and another after the Wars +of the Roses. There was certainly a period of severe exhaustion +at the end of Elizabeth's reign, due both to the long Spanish and +Irish wars and to the terrible endemics introduced from abroad; an +exhaustion which may have caused, in part, the national weakness +which hung upon us during the reign of the Stuarts. But after +none of these did the survival of the less fit suddenly become +more easy; or the discovery of steam power, and the acquisition of +a colonial empire, create at once a fresh demand for human beings +and a fresh supply of food for them. Britain, at the beginning of +the nineteenth century, was in an altogether new social situation, + +At the beginning of the great French war; and, indeed, ever since +the beginning of the war with Spain in 1739--often snubbed as the +"war about Jenkins's ear"--but which was, as I hold, one of the +most just, as it was one of the most popular, of all our wars; +after, too, the once famous "forty fine harvests" of the +eighteenth century, the British people, from the gentleman who led +to the soldier or sailor who followed, were one of the mightiest +and most capable races which the world has ever seen, comparable +best to the old Roman, at his mightiest and most capable period. +That, at least, their works testify. They created--as far as man +can be said to create anything--the British Empire. They won for +us our colonies, our commerce, the mastery of the seas of all the +world. But at what a cost! + + +Their bones are scattered far and wide, +By mount, and stream, and sea. + + +Year after year, till the final triumph of Waterloo, not battle +only, but worse destroyers than shot and shell--fatigue and +disease--had been carrying off our stoutest, ablest, healthiest +young men, each of whom represented, alas! a maiden left unmarried +at home, or married, in default, to a less able man. The +strongest went to the war; each who fell left a weaklier man to +continue the race; while of those who did not fall, too many +returned with tainted and weakened constitutions, to injure, it +may be, generations yet unborn. The middle classes, being mostly +engaged in peaceful pursuits, suffered less of this decimation of +their finest young men; and to that fact I attribute much of their +increasing preponderance, social, political, and intellectual, to +this very day. One cannot walk the streets of any of our great +commercial cities without seeing plenty of men, young and middle- +aged, whose whole bearing and stature shows that the manly vigour +of our middle class is anything but exhausted. In Liverpool, +especially, I have been much struck not only with the vigorous +countenance, but with the bodily size of the mercantile men on +'Change. But it must be remembered always, first, that these men +are the very elite of their class; the cleverest men; the men +capable of doing most work; and next, that they are, almost all of +them, from the great merchant who has his villa out of town, and +perhaps his moor in the Highlands, down to the sturdy young +volunteer who serves in the haberdasher's shop, country-bred men; +and that the question is, not what they are like now, but what +their children and grandchildren, especially the fine young +volunteer's, will be like? A very serious question I hold that to +be, and for this reason. + +War is, without doubt, the most hideous physical curse which +fallen man inflicts upon himself; and for this simple reason, that +it reverses the very laws of nature, and is more cruel even than +pestilence. For instead of issuing in the survival of the +fittest, it issues in the survival of the less fit: and +therefore, if protracted, must deteriorate generations yet unborn. +And yet a peace such as we now enjoy, prosperous, civilised, +humane, is fraught, though to a less degree, with the very same +ill effect. + +In the first place, tens of thousands--who knows it not?--lead +sedentary and unwholesome lives, stooping, asphyxiated, employing +as small a fraction of their bodies as of their minds. And all +this in dwellings, workshops, what not?--the influences, the very +atmosphere of which tend not to health, but to unhealth, and to +drunkenness as a solace under the feeling of unhealth and +depression. And that such a life must tell upon their offspring, +and if their offspring grow up under similar circumstances, upon +their offspring's offspring, till a whole population may become +permanently degraded, who does not know? For who that walks +through the by-streets of any great city does not see? Moreover, +and this is one of the most fearful problems with which modern +civilisation has to deal--we interfere with natural selection by +our conscientious care of life, as surely as does war itself. If +war kills the most fit to live, we save alive those who--looking +at them from a merely physical point of view--are most fit to die. +Everything which makes it more easy to live; every sanitary +reform, prevention of pestilence, medical discovery, amelioration +of climate, drainage of soil, improvement in dwelling-houses, +workhouses, gaols; every reformatory school, every hospital, every +cure of drunkenness, every influence, in short, which has--so I am +told--increased the average length of life in these islands, by +nearly one-third, since the first establishment of life +insurances, one hundred and fifty years ago; every influence of +this kind, I say, saves persons alive who would otherwise have +died; and the great majority of these will be, even in surgical +and zymotic cases, those of least resisting power, who are thus +preserved to produce in time a still less powerful progeny. + +Do I say that we ought not to save these people if we can? God +forbid. The weakly, the diseased whether infant or adult, is here +on earth; a British citizen; no more responsible for his own +weakness than for his own existence. Society, that is, in plain +English, we and our ancestors, are responsible for both; and we +must fulfil the duty, and keep him in life; and, if we can, heal, +strengthen, develop him to the utmost; and make the best of that +which "fate and our own deservings" have given us to deal with. I +do not speak of higher motives still; motives which, to every +minister of religion, must be paramount and awful. I speak merely +of physical and social motives, such as appeal to the conscience +of every man--the instinct which bids every human-hearted man or +woman to save life, alleviate pain, like Him who causes His sun to +shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain to fall on the +just and on the unjust. + +But it is palpable that in doing so we must, year by year, +preserve a large percentage of weakly persons who, marrying freely +in their own class, must produce weaklier children, and they +weaklier children still. Must, did I say? There are those who +are of opinion--and I, after watching and comparing the histories +of many families, indeed of every one with whom I have come in +contact for now five-and-thirty years, in town and country, can +only fear that their opinion is but too well founded on fact--that +in the great majority of cases, in all classes whatsoever, the +children are not equal to their parents, nor they, again, to their +grand-parents of the beginning of the century; and that this +degrading process goes on most surely and most rapidly in our +large towns, and in proportion to the antiquity of those towns, +and therefore in proportion to the number of generations during +which the degrading influences have been at work. + +This and cognate dangers have been felt more and more deeply, as +the years have rolled on, by students of human society. To ward +them off, theory after theory has been put on paper, especially in +France, which deserve high praise for their ingenuity, less for +their morality, and, I fear, still less for their common sense. +For the theorist in his closet is certain to ignore, as +inconvenient to the construction of his Utopia, certain of those +broad facts of human nature which every active parish priest, +medical man, or poor-law guardian has to face every day of his +life. + +Society and British human nature are what they have become by the +indirect influences of long ages, and we can no more reconstruct +the one than we can change the other. We can no more mend men by +theories than we can by coercion--to which, by-the-bye, almost all +these theorists look longingly as their final hope and mainstay. +We must teach men to mend their own matters, of their own reason, +and their own free-will. We must teach them that they are the +arbiters of their own destinies; and, to a fearfully large degree, +of their children's destinies after them. We must teach them not +merely that they ought to be free, but that they are free, whether +they know it or not, for good and for evil. And we must do that +in this case, by teaching them sound practical science; the +science of physiology as applied to health. So, and so only, can +we cheek--I do not say stop entirely--though I believe even that +to be ideally possible; but at least cheek the process of +degradation which I believe to be surely going on, not merely in +these islands, but in every civilised country in the world, in +proportion to its civilisation. + +It is still a question whether science has fully discovered those +laws of hereditary health, the disregard of which causes so many +marriages disastrous to generations yet unborn. But much valuable +light has been thrown on this most mysterious and most important +subject during the last few years. That light--and I thank God +for it--is widening and deepening rapidly. And I doubt not that +in a generation or two more, enough will be known to be thrown +into the shape of practical and provable rules; and that, if not a +public opinion, yet at least, what is more useful far, a +widespread private opinion will grow up, especially among educated +women, which will prevent many a tragedy and save many a life. + +But, as to the laws of personal health: enough, and more than +enough, is known already, to be applied safely and easily by any +adults, however unlearned, to the preservation not only of their +own health, but of that of their children. + +The value of healthy habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure +air and pure water, of various kinds of food, according as each +tends to make bone, fat, or muscle, provided only--provided only-- +that the food be unadulterated; the value of various kinds of +clothing, and physical exercise, of a free and equal development +of the brain power, without undue overstrain in any one direction; +in one word, the method of producing, as far as possible, the +mentem sanam in corpore sano, and the wonderful and blessed +effects of such obedience to those laws of nature, which are +nothing but the good will of God expressed in facts--their +wonderful and blessed tendency, I say, to eliminate the germs of +hereditary disease, and to actually regenerate the human system-- +all this is known; known as fully and clearly as any human +knowledge need be known; it is written in dozens of popular books +and pamphlets. And why should this divine voice, which cries to +man, tending to sink into effeminate barbarism through his own +hasty and partial civilisation: "It is not too late. For your +bodies, as for your spirits, there is an upward, as well as a +downward path. You, or if not you, at least the children whom you +have brought into the world, for whom you toil, for whom you +hoard, for whom you pray, for whom you would give your lives,-- +they still may be healthy, strong, it may be beautiful, and have +all the intellectual and social, as well as the physical +advantages, which health, strength, and beauty give."--Ah, why is +this divine voice now, as of old, Wisdom crying in the streets, +and no man regarding her? I appeal to women, who are initiated, +as we men can never be, into the stern mysteries of pain, and +sorrow, and self-sacrifice;--they who bring forth children, weep +over children, slave for children, and, if they have none of their +own, then slave, with the holy instinct of the sexless bee, for +the children of others--Let them say, shall this thing be? + +Let my readers pardon me if I seem to write too earnestly. That I +speak neither more nor less than the truth, every medical man +knows full well. Not only as a very humble student of physiology, +but as a parish priest of thirty years' standing, I have seen so +much unnecessary misery; and I have in other cases seen similar +misery so simply avoided; that the sense of the vastness of the +evil is intensified by my sense of the easiness of the cure. + +Why, then--to come to practical suggestions--should there not be +opened in every great town in these realms a public school of +health? It might connect itself with--I hold that it should form +an integral part of--some existing educational institute. But it +should at least give practical lectures, for fees small enough to +put them within the reach of any respectable man or woman, however +poor, I cannot but hope that such schools of health, if opened in +the great manufacturing towns of England and Scotland, and, +indeed, in such an Irish town as Belfast, would obtain pupils in +plenty, and pupils who would thoroughly profit by what they hear. +The people of these towns are, most of them, specially accustomed +by their own trades to the application of scientific laws. To +them, therefore, the application of any fresh physical laws to a +fresh set of facts, would have nothing strange in it. They have +already something of that inductive habit of mind which is the +groundwork of all rational understanding or action. They would +not turn the deaf and contemptuous ear with which the savage and +the superstitious receive the revelation of nature's mysteries. +Why should not, with so hopeful an audience, the experiment be +tried far and wide, of giving lectures on health, as supplementary +to those lectures on animal physiology which are, I am happy to +say, becoming more and more common? Why should not people be +taught--they are already being taught at Birmingham--something +about the tissues of the body, their structure and uses, the +circulation of the blood, respiration, chemical changes in the air +respired, amount breathed, digestion, nature of food, absorption, +secretion, structure of the nervous system--in fact, be taught +something of how their own bodies are made and how they work? +Teaching of this kind ought to, and will, in some more civilised +age and country, be held a necessary element in the school course +of every child, just as necessary as reading, writing, and +arithmetic; for it is after all the most necessary branch of that +"technical education" of which we hear so much just now, namely, +the technic, or art, of keeping oneself alive and well. + +But we can hardly stop there. After we have taught the condition +of health, we must teach also the condition of disease; of those +diseases specially which tend to lessen wholesale the health of +townsfolk, exposed to an artificial mode of life. Surely young +men and women should be taught something of the causes of zymotic +disease, and of scrofula, consumption, rickets, dipsomania, +cerebral derangement, and such like. They should be shown the +practical value of pure air, pure water, unadulterated food, sweet +and dry dwellings. Is there one of them, man or woman, who would +not be the safer and happier, and the more useful to his or her +neighbours, if they had acquired some sound notions about those +questions of drainage on which their own lives and the lives of +their children may every day depend? I say--women as well as men. +I should have said women rather than men. For it is the women who +have the ordering of the household, the bringing up of the +children; the women who bide at home, while the men are away, it +may be at the other end of the earth. + +And if any say, as they have a right to say--"But these are +subjects which can hardly be taught to young women in public +lectures;" I rejoin--of course not, unless they are taught by +women--by women, of course, duly educated and legally qualified. +Let such teach to women, what every woman ought to know, and what +her parents will very properly object to her hearing from almost +any man. This is one of the main reasons why I have, for twenty +years past, advocated the training of women for the medical +profession; and one which countervails, in my mind, all possible +objections to such a movement. And now, thank God, we are seeing +the common sense of Great Britain, and indeed of every civilised +nation, gradually coming round to that which seemed to me, when I +first conceived of it, a dream too chimerical to be cherished save +in secret--the restoring woman to her natural share in that sacred +office of healer, which she held in the Middle Ages, and from +which she was thrust out during the sixteenth century. + +I am most happy to see, for instance, that the National Health +Society, {3} which I earnestly recommend to the attention of my +readers, announces a "Course of Lectures for Ladies on Elementary +Physiology and Hygiene," by a lady, to which I am also most happy +to see, governesses are admitted at half-fees. Alas! how much +misery, disease, and even death might have been prevented, had +governesses been taught such matters thirty years ago, I, for one, +know too well. May the day soon come when there will be educated +women enough to give such lectures throughout these realms, to +rich as well as poor--for the rich, strange to say, need them +often as much as the poor do--and that we may live to see, in +every great town, health classes for women as well as for men, +sending forth year by year more young women and young men taught, +not only to take care of themselves and of their families, but to +exercise moral influence over their fellow-citizens, as champions +in the battle against dirt and drunkenness, disease and death. + +There may be those who would answer--or rather, there would +certainly have been those who would have so answered thirty years +ago, before the so-called materialism of advanced science had +taught us some practical wisdom about education, and reminded +people that they have bodies as well as minds and souls--"You say, +we are likely to grow weaklier, unhealthier. And if it were so, +what matter? Mind makes the man, not body. We do not want our +children to be stupid giants and bravos; but clever, able, highly +educated, however weakly Providence or the laws of nature may have +chosen to make them. Let them overstrain their brains a little; +let them contract their chests, and injure their digestion and +their eyesight, by sitting at desks, poring over books. Intellect +is what we want. Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the +world. We would rather see our son a genius than a mere athlete." +Well: and so would I. But what if intellect alone does not even +make money, save as Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, Sampson Brass, and +Montagu Tigg were wont to make it, unless backed by an able, +enduring, healthy physique, such as I have seen, almost without +exception, in those successful men of business whom I have had the +honour and the pleasure of knowing? What if intellect, or what is +now called intellect, did not make the world, or the smallest +wheel or cog of it? What if, for want of obeying the laws of +nature, parents bred up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only +an incapable unhappy personage, with a huge upright forehead, like +that of a Byzantine Greek, filled with some sort of pap instead of +brains, and tempted alternately to fanaticism and strong drink? +We must, in the great majority of cases, have the CORPUS SANEM if +we want the MENTEM SANEM; and healthy bodies are the only +trustworthy organs for healthy minds. Which is cause and which is +effect, I shall not stay to debate here. But wherever we find a +population generally weakly, stunted, scrofulous, we find in them +a corresponding type of brain, which cannot be trusted to do good +work; which is capable more or less of madness, whether solitary +or epidemic. It may be very active; it may be very quick at +catching at new and grand ideas--all the more quick, perhaps, on +account of its own secret malaise and self-discontent; but it will +be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake +capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for +earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often; cruelty for +justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality, +originality; and when men act, they will act from the +consciousness of personal weakness, like sheep rushing over a +hedge, leaning against each other, exhorting each other to be +brave, and swaying about in mobs and masses. These were the +intellectual weaknesses which, as I read history, followed on +physical degradation in Imperial Rome, in Alexandria, in +Byzantium. Have we not seen them reappear, under fearful forms, +in Paris but the other day? + +I do not blame; I do not judge. My theory, which I hold, and +shall hold, to be fairly founded on a wide induction, forbids me +to blame and to judge; because it tells me that these defects are +mainly physical; that those who exhibit them are mainly to be +pitied, as victims of the sins or ignorance of their forefathers. + +But it tells me too, that those who, professing to be educated +men, and therefore bound to know better, treat these physical +phenomena as spiritual, healthy, and praiseworthy; who even +exasperate them, that they may make capital out of the weaknesses +of fallen man, are the most contemptible and yet the most +dangerous of public enemies, let them cloak their quackery under +whatsoever patriotic, or scientific, or even sacred words. + +There are those again honest, kindly, sensible, practical men, +many of them; men whom I have no wish to offend; whom I had rather +ask to teach me some of their own experience and common sense, +which has learned to discern, like good statesmen, not only what +ought to be done, but what can be done--there are those, I say, +who would sooner see this whole question let alone. Their +feeling, as far as I can analyse it, seems to be that the evils of +which I have been complaining, are on the whole inevitable; or, if +not, that we can mend so very little of them, that it is wisest to +leave them alone altogether, lest, like certain sewers, "the more +you stir them, the more they smell." They fear lest we should +unsettle the minds of the many for whom these evils will never be +mended; lest we make them discontented; discontented with their +houses, their occupations, their food, their whole social +arrangements; and all in vain. + +I should answer, in all courtesy and humility--for I sympathise +deeply with such men and women, and respect them deeply likewise-- +but are not people discontented already, from the lowest to the +highest? And ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy, +sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be anything but +discontented? If he thinks that things are going all right, must +he not have a most beggarly conception of what going right means? +And if things are not going right, can it be anything but good for +him to see that they are not going right? Can truth and fact harm +any human being? I shall not believe so, as long as I have a +Bible wherein to believe. For my part, I should like to make +every man, woman, and child whom I meet discontented with +themselves, even as I am discontented with myself. I should like +to awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their +moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first +of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to +fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with +the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is +the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at +first, as boys begin when they grumble at their school and their +schoolmasters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented with +their circumstances--the things which stand around them; and to +cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I had that!" But by that way +no deliverance lies. That discontent only ends in revolt and +rebellion, social or political; and that, again, still in the same +worship of circumstances--but this time desperate--which ends, let +it disguise itself under what fine names it will, in what the old +Greeks called a tyranny; in which--as in the Spanish republics of +America, and in France more than once--all have become the +voluntary slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one +man can improve his circumstances for him. + +But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the +slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion--and in what baser and uglier +circumstances could human being find himself?--to find out the +secret of being truly free; namely, to be discontented with no man +and no thing save himself. To say not--"Oh that I had this and +that!" but "Oh that I were this and that!" Then, by God's help-- +and that heroic slave, heathen though he was, believed and trusted +in God's help--"I will make myself that which God has shown me +that I ought to be and can be." + +Ten thousand a year, or ten million a year, as Epictetus saw full +well, cannot mend that vulgar discontent with circumstances which +he had felt--and who with more right?--and conquered, and +despised. For that is the discontent of children, wanting always +more holidays and more sweets. But I wish my readers to have, and +to cherish, the discontent of men and women. + +Therefore I would make men and women discontented, with the divine +and wholesome discontent, at their own physical frame, and at that +of their children. I would accustom their eyes to those precious +heirlooms of the human race, the statues of the old Greeks; to +their tender grandeur, their chaste healthfulness, their +unconscious, because perfect might: and say--There; these are +tokens to you, and to all generations yet unborn, of what man +could be once; of what he can be again if he will obey those laws +of nature which are the voice of God. I would make them +discontented with the ugliness and closeness of their dwellings; I +would make them discontented with the fashion of their garments, +and still more just now the women, of all ranks, with the fashion +of theirs; and with everything around them which they have the +power of improving, if it be at all ungraceful, superfluous, +tawdry, ridiculous, unwholesome. I would make them discontented +with what they call their education, and say to them--You call the +three Royal R's education? They are not education: no more is +the knowledge which would enable you to take the highest prizes +given by the Society of Arts, or any other body. They are not +education: they are only instruction; a necessary groundwork, in +an age like this, for making practical use of your education: but +not the education itself. + +And if they asked me, What then education meant? I should point +them, first, I think, to noble old Lilly's noble old "Euphues," of +three hundred years ago, and ask them to consider what it says +about education, and especially this passage concerning that mere +knowledge which is nowadays strangely miscalled education. "There +are two principal and peculiar gifts in the nature of man, +knowledge and reason. The one"--that is reason--"commandeth, and +the other"--that is knowledge--"obeyeth. These things neither the +whirling wheel of fortune can change, nor the deceitful cavillings +of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, nor age abolish." +And next I should point them to those pages in Mr. Gladstone's +"Juventus Mundi," where he describes the ideal training of a Greek +youth in Homer's days; and say--There: that is an education fit +for a really civilised man, even though he never saw a book in his +life; the full, proportionate, harmonious educing-that is, +bringing out and developing--of all the faculties of his body, +mind, and heart, till he becomes at once a reverent yet self- +assured, a graceful and yet a valiant, an able and yet an eloquent +personage. + +And if any should say to me--"But what has this to do with +science? Homer's Greeks knew no science;" I should rejoin--But +they had, pre-eminently above all ancient races which we know, the +scientific instinct; the teachableness and modesty; the clear eye +and quick ear; the hearty reverence for fact and nature, and for +the human body, and mind, and spirit; for human nature in a word, +in its completeness, as the highest fact upon this earth. +Therefore they became in after years, not only the great +colonisers and the great civilisers of the old world--the most +practical people, I hold, which the world ever saw; but the +parents of all sound physics as well as of all sound metaphysics. +Their very religion, in spite of its imperfections, helped forward +their education, not in spite of, but by means of that +anthropomorphism which we sometimes too hastily decry. As Mr. +Gladstone says: "As regarded all other functions of our nature, +outside the domain of the life to Godward--all those functions +which are summed up in what St. Paul calls the flesh and the mind, +the psychic and bodily life, the tendency of the system was to +exalt the human element, by proposing a model of beauty, strength, +and wisdom, in all their combinations, so elevated that the effort +to attain them required a continual upward strain. It made +divinity attainable; and thus it effectually directed the thought +and aim of man + + +Along the line of limitless desires. + + +Such a scheme of religion, though failing grossly in the +government of the passions, and in upholding the standard of moral +duties, tended powerfully to produce a lofty self-respect, and a +large, free, and varied conception of humanity. It incorporated +itself in schemes of notable discipline for mind and body, indeed +of a lifelong education; and these habits of mind and action had +their marked results (to omit many other greatnesses) in a +philosophy, literature, and art, which remain to this day +unrivalled or unsurpassed." + +So much those old Greeks did for their own education, without +science and without Christianity. We who have both: what might +we not do, if we would be true to our advantages, and to +ourselves? + + + +THE TWO BREATHS {4} + + + +Ladies,--I have been honoured by a second invitation to address +you, and I dare not refuse it; because it gives me an opportunity +of speaking on a matter, knowledge and ignorance about which may +seriously affect your health and happiness, and that of the +children with whom you may have to do. I must apologise if I say +many things which are well known to many persons in this room: +they ought to be well known to all: but it is generally best to +assume total ignorance in one's hearers, and to begin from the +beginning. + +I shall try to be as simple as possible; to trouble you as little +as possible with scientific terms; to be practical; and at the +same time, if possible, interesting. + +I should wish to call this lecture "The Two Breaths:" not merely +"The Breath;" and for this reason: every time you breathe you +breathe two different breaths; you take in one, you give out +another. The composition of those two breaths is different. +Their effects are different. The breath which has been breathed +out must not be breathed in again. To tell you why it must not +would lead me into anatomical details, not quite in place here as +yet; though the day will come, I trust, when every woman entrusted +with the care of children will be expected to know something about +them. But this I may say: Those who habitually take in fresh +breath will probably grow up large, strong, ruddy, cheerful, +active, clear-headed, fit for their work. Those who habitually +take in the breath which has been breathed out by themselves, or +any other living creature, will certainly grow up, if they grow up +at all, small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work, and +tempted continually to resort to stimulants, and become drunkards. + +If you want to see how different the breath breathed out is from +the breath taken in, you have only to try a somewhat cruel +experiment, but one which people too often try upon themselves, +their children, and their workpeople. If you take any small +animal with lungs like your own--a mouse, for instance--and force +it to breathe no air but what you have breathed already; if you +put it in a close box, and while you take in breath from the outer +air, send out your breath through a tube, into that box, the +animal will soon faint: if you go on long with this process, it +will die. + +Take a second instance, which I beg to press most seriously on the +notice of mothers, governesses, and nurses. If you allow a child +to get into the habit of sleeping with its head under the bed- +clothes, and thereby breathing its own breath over and over again, +that child will assuredly grow pale, weak, and ill. Medical men +have cases on record of scrofula appearing in children previously +healthy, which could only be accounted for from this habit, and +which ceased when the habit stopped. Let me again entreat your +attention to this undoubted fact. + +Take another instance, which is only too common: If you are in a +crowded room, with plenty of fire and lights and company, doors +and windows all shut tight, how often you feel faint--so faint +that you may require smelling-salts or some other stimulant. The +cause of your faintness is just the same as that of the mouse's +fainting in the box; you and your friends, and, as I shall show +you presently, the fire and the candles likewise, having been all +breathing each other's breaths, over and over again, till the air +has become unfit to support life. You are doing your best to +enact over again the Highland tragedy, of which Sir James Simpson +tells in his lectures to the working-classes of Edinburgh, when at +a Christmas meeting thirty-six persons danced all night in a small +room with a low ceiling, keeping the doors and windows shut. The +atmosphere of the room was noxious beyond description; and the +effect was, that seven of the party were soon after seized with +typhus fever, of which two died. You are inflicting on yourselves +the torments of the poor dog, who is kept at the Grotto del Cane, +near Naples, to be stupefied, for the amusement of visitors, by +the carbonic acid gas of the Grotto, and brought to life again by +being dragged into the fresh air; nay, you are inflicting upon +yourselves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Calcutta: +and, if there was no chimney in the room, by which some fresh air +could enter, the candles would soon burn blue, as they do, you +know, when ghosts appear; your brains become disturbed; and you +yourselves ran the risk of becoming ghosts, and the candles of +actually going out. + +Of this last fact there is no doubt; for if, instead of putting a +mouse into the box, you will put a lighted candle, and breathe +into the tube as before, however gently, you will in a short time +put the candle out. + +Now, how is this? First, what is the difference between the +breath you take in and the breath you give out? And next, why has +it a similar effect on animal life and a lighted candle? + +The difference is this. The breath which you take in is, or ought +to be, pure air, composed, on the whole, of oxygen and nitrogen, +with a minute portion of carbonic acid. + +The breath which you give out is an impure air, to which has been +added, among other matters which will not support life, an excess +of carbonic acid. + +That this is the fact you can prove for yourselves by a simple +experiment. Get a little lime-water at the chemist's, and breathe +into it through a glass tube; your breath will at once make the +lime-water milky. The carbonic acid of your breath has laid hold +of the lime, and made it visible as white carbonate of lime--in +plain English, as common chalk. + +Now I do not wish, as I said, to load your memories with +scientific terms: but I beseech you to remember at least these +two, oxygen gas and carbonic acid gas; and to remember that, as +surely as oxygen feeds the fire of life, so surely does carbonic +acid put it out. + +I say, "the fire of life." In that expression lies the answer to +our second question: Why does our breath produce a similar effect +upon the mouse and the lighted candle? Every one of us is, as it +were, a living fire. Were we not, how could we be always warmer +than the air outside us? There is a process; going on perpetually +in each of us, similar to that by which coals are burnt in the +fire, oil in a lamp, wax in a candle, and the earth itself in a +volcano. To keep each of those fires alight, oxygen is needed; +and the products of combustion, as they are called, are more or +less the same in each case--carbonic acid and steam. + +These facts justify the expression I just made use of--which may +have seemed to some of you fantastical--that the fire and the +candles in the crowded room were breathing the same breath as you +were. It is but too true. An average fire in the grate requires, +to keep it burning, as much oxygen as several human beings do; +each candle or lamp must have its share of oxygen likewise, and +that a very considerable one, and an average gas-burner--pray +attend to this, you who live in rooms lighted with gas--consumes +as much oxygen as several candles. All alike are making carbonic +acid. The carbonic acid of the fire happily escapes up the +chimney in the smoke: but the carbonic acid from the human beings +and the candles remains to poison the room, unless it be +ventilated. + +Now, I think you may understand one of the simplest, and yet most +terrible, cases of want of ventilation--death by the fumes of +charcoal. A human being shut up in a room, of which every crack +is closed, with a pan of burning charcoal, falls asleep, never to +wake again. His inward fire is competing with the fire of +charcoal for the oxygen of the room; both are making carbonic acid +out of it: but the charcoal, being the stronger of the two, gets +all the oxygen to itself, and leaves the human being nothing to +inhale but the carbonic acid which it has made. The human being, +being the weaker, dies first: but the charcoal dies also. When +it has exhausted all the oxygen of the room, it cools, goes out, +and is found in the morning half-consumed beside its victim. If +you put a giant or an elephant, I should conceive, into that room, +instead of a human being, the case would be reversed for a time: +the elephant would put out the burning charcoal by the carbonic +acid from his mighty lungs; and then, when he had exhausted all +the air in the room, die likewise of his own carbonic acid. + +Now, I think, we may see what ventilation means, and why it is +needed. + +Ventilation means simply letting out the foul air, and letting in +the fresh air; letting out the air which has been breathed by men +or by candles, and letting in the air which has not. To +understand how to do that, we must remember a most simple chemical +law, that a gas as it is warmed expands, and therefore becomes +lighter; as it cools, it contracts, and becomes heavier. + +Now the carbonic acid in the breath which comes out of our mouth +is warm, lighter than the air, and rises to the ceiling; and +therefore in any unventilated room full of people, there is a +layer of foul air along the ceiling. You might soon test that for +yourselves, if you could mount a ladder and put your heads there +aloft. You do test it for yourselves when you sit in the +galleries of churches and theatres, where the air is palpably more +foul, and therefore more injurious, than down below. + +Where, again, work-people are employed in a crowded house of many +storeys, the health of those who work on the upper floors always +suffers most. + +In the old monkey-house of the Zoological Gardens, when the cages +were on the old plan, tier upon tier, the poor little fellows in +the uppermost tier--so I have been told--always died first of the +monkey's constitutional complaint, consumption, simply from +breathing the warm breath of their friends below. But since the +cages have been altered, and made to range side by side from top +to bottom, consumption--I understand--has vastly diminished among +them. + +The first question in ventilation, therefore, is to get this +carbonic acid safe out of the room, while it is warm and light and +close to the ceiling; for if you do not, this happens: The +carbonic acid gas cools and becomes heavier; for carbonic acid, at +the same temperature as common air, is so much heavier than common +air, that you may actually--if you are handy enough--turn it from +one vessel to another, and pour out for your enemy a glass of +invisible poison. So down to the floor this heavy carbonic acid +comes, and lies along it, just as it lies often in the bottom of +old wells, or old brewers' vats, as a stratum of poison, killing +occasionally the men who descend into it. Hence, as foolish a +practice as I know is that of sleeping on the floor; for towards +the small hours, when the room gets cold, the sleeper on the floor +is breathing carbonic acid. + +And here one word to those ladies who interest themselves with the +poor. The poor are too apt in times of distress to pawn their +bedsteads and keep their beds. Never, if you have influence, let +that happen. Keep the bedstead, whatever else may go, to save the +sleeper from the carbonic acid on the floor. + +How, then, shall we get rid of the foul air at the top of the +room? After all that has been written and tried on ventilation, I +know no simpler method than putting into the chimney one of +Arnott's ventilators, which may be bought and fixed for a few +shillings; always remembering that it must be. fixed into the +chimney as near the ceiling as possible. I can speak of these +ventilators from twenty-five years' experience. Living in a house +with low ceilings, liable to become overcharged with carbonic +acid, which produces sleepiness in the evening, I have found that +these ventilators keep the air fresh and pure; and I consider the +presence of one of these ventilators in a room more valuable than +three or four feet additional height of ceiling. I have found, +too, that their working proves how necessary they are, from this +simple fact: You would suppose that, as the ventilator opens +freely into the chimney, the smoke would be blown down through it +in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is just what +does not happen. If the ventilator be at all properly poised, so +as to shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other +moments keep itself permanently open; proving thereby that there +is an up-draught of heated air continually escaping from the +ceiling up the chimney. Another very simple method of ventilation +is employed in those excellent cottages which Her Majesty has +built for her labourers round Windsor. Over each door a sheet of +perforated zinc, some eighteen inches square, is fixed; allowing +the foul air to escape into the passage; and in the ceiling of the +passage a similar sheet of zinc, allowing it to escape into the +roof. Fresh air, meanwhile, should be obtained from outside, by +piercing the windows, or otherwise. And here let me give one hint +to all builders of houses: If possible, let bedroom windows open +at the top as well as at the bottom. + +Let me impress the necessity of using some such contrivances, not +only on parents and educators, but on those who employ workpeople, +and above all on those who employ young women in shops or in work- +rooms. What their condition may be in this city I know not; but +most painful it has been to me in other places, when passing +through warehouses or workrooms, to see the pale, sodden, and, as +the French would say, "etiolated" countenances of the girls who +were passing the greater part of the day in them; and painful, +also, to breathe an atmosphere of which habit had, alas! made them +unconscious, but which to one coming out of the open air was +altogether noxious, and shocking also; for it was fostering the +seeds of death, not only in the present but future generations. + +Why should this be? Everyone will agree that good ventilation is +necessary in a hospital, because people cannot get well without +fresh air. Do they not see that by the same reasoning good +ventilation is necessary everywhere, because people cannot remain +well without fresh air? Let me entreat those who employ women in +workrooms, if they have no time to read through such books as Dr. +Andrew Combe's "Physiology applied to Health and Education," and +Madame de Wahl's "Practical Hints on the Moral, Mental, and +Physical Training of Girls," to procure certain tracts published +by Messrs. Jarrold, Paternoster Row, for the Ladies' Sanitary +Association; especially one which bears on this subject: "The +Black-hole in our own Bedrooms;" Dr. Lankester's "School Manual of +Health;" or a manual on ventilation, published by the Metropolitan +Working Classes Association for the Improvement of Public Health. + +I look forward--I say it openly--to some period of higher +civilisation, when the Acts of Parliament for the ventilation of +factories and workshops shall be largely extended, and made far +more stringent; when officers of public health shall be empowered +to enforce the ventilation of every room in which persons are +employed for hire: and empowered also to demand a proper system +of ventilation for every new house, whether in country or in town. +To that, I believe, we must come: but I had sooner far see these +improvements carried out, as befits the citizens of a free +country, in the spirit of the Gospel rather than in that of the +Law; carried out, not compulsorily and from fear of fines, but +voluntarily, from a sense of duty, honour, and humanity. I +appeal, therefore, to the good feeling of all whom it may concern, +whether the health of those whom they employ, and therefore the +supply of fresh air which they absolutely need, are not matters +for which they are not, more or less, responsible to their country +and their God. + +And if any excellent person of the old school should answer me: +"Why make all this fuss about ventilation? Our forefathers got on +very well without it"--I must answer that, begging their pardons, +our ancestors did nothing of the kind. Our ancestors got on +usually very ill in these matters: and when they got on well, it +was because they had good ventilation in spite of themselves. + +First. They got on very ill. To quote a few remarkable instances +of longevity, or to tell me that men were larger and stronger on +the average in old times, is to yield to the old fallacy of +fancying that savages were peculiarly healthy, because those who +were seen were active and strong. The simple answer is, that the +strong alone survived, while the majority died from the severity +of the training. Savages do not increase in number; and our +ancestors increased but very slowly for many centuries. I am not +going to disgust my audience with statistics of disease: but +knowing something, as I happen to do, of the social state and of +the health of the Middle and Elizabethan Ages, I have no +hesitation in saying that the average of disease and death was far +greater then than it is now. Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, +ague, plague--all diseases which were caused more or less by bad +air--devastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible +intensity, to which even the choleras of our times are mild. The +back streets, the hospitals, the gaols, the barracks, the camps-- +every place in which any large number of persons congregated, were +so many nests of pestilence, engendered by uncleanliness, which +defiled alike the water which was drunk and the air which was +breathed; and as a single fact, of which the tables of insurance +companies assure us, the average of human life in England has +increased twenty-five per cent. since the reign of George I., +owing simply to our more rational and cleanly habits of life. + +But secondly, I said that when our ancestors got on well, they did +so because they got ventilation in spite of themselves. Luckily +for them, their houses were ill-built; their doors and windows +would not shut. They had lattice-windowed houses, too; to live in +one of which, as I can testify from long experience, is as +thoroughly ventilating as living in a lantern with the horn broken +out. It was because their houses were full of draughts, and still +more, in the early Middle Age, because they had no glass, and +stopped out the air only by a shutter at night, that they sought +for shelter rather than for fresh air, of which they sometimes had +too much; and, to escape the wind, built their houses in holes, +such as that in which the old city of Winchester stands. Shelter, +I believe, as much as the desire to be near fish in Lent, and to +occupy the rich alluvium of the valleys, made the monks of Old +England choose the river-banks for the sites of their abbeys. +They made a mistake therein, which, like most mistakes, did not go +unpunished. These low situations, especially while the forests +were yet thick on the hills around, were the perennial haunts of +fever and ague, produced by subtle vegetable poisons, carried in +the carbonic acid given off by rotten vegetation. So there, +again, they fell in with man's old enemy--bad air. Still, as long +as the doors and windows did not shut, some free circulation of +air remained. But now, our doors and windows shut only too tight. +We have plate-glass instead of lattices; and we have replaced the +draughty and smoky, but really wholesome open chimney, with its +wide corners and settles, by narrow registers, and even by stoves. +We have done all we can, in fact, to seal ourselves up +hermetically from the outer air, and to breath our own breaths +over and over again; and we pay the penalty of it in a thousand +ways unknown to our ancestors, through whose rooms all the winds +of heaven whistled, and who were glad enough to shelter themselves +from draughts in the sitting-room by the high screen round the +fire, and in the sleeping-room by the thick curtains of the four- +post bedstead, which is now rapidly disappearing before a higher +civilisation. We therefore absolutely require to make for +ourselves the very ventilation from which our ancestors tried to +escape. + +But, ladies, there is an old and true proverb, that you may bring +a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. And in like +wise it is too true, that you may bring people to the fresh air, +but you cannot make them breath it. Their own folly, or the folly +of their parents and educators, prevents their lungs being duly +filled and duly emptied. Therefore the blood is not duly +oxygenated, and the whole system goes wrong. Paleness, weakness, +consumption, scrofula, and too many other ailments, are the +consequences of ill-filled lungs. For without well-filled lungs, +robust health is impossible. + +And if anyone shall answer: "We do not want robust health so much +as intellectual attainment; the mortal body, being the lower +organ, must take its chance, and be even sacrificed, if need be to +the higher organ--the immortal mind"--To such I reply, You cannot +do it. The laws of nature, which are the express will of God, +laugh such attempts to scorn. Every organ of the body is formed +out of the blood; and if the blood be vitiated, every organ +suffers in proportion to its delicacy; and the brain, being the +most delicate and highly specialised of all organs, suffers most +of all, and soonest of all, as everyone knows who has tried to +work his brain when his digestion was the least out of order. +Nay, the very morals will suffer. From ill-filled lungs, which +signify ill-repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not +merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, +madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crime--the sum of which will +never be known till that great day when men shall be called to +account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be good or +evil. + +I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew Combe's +"Physiology," especially chapters iv. and vii.; and also to +chapter x. of Madame de Wahl's excellent book. I will only say +this shortly, that the three most common causes of ill-filled +lungs, in children and in young ladies, are stillness, silence, +and stays. + +First, stillness; a sedentary life, and want of exercise. A girl +is kept for hours sitting on a form writing or reading, to do +which she must lean forward; and if her schoolmistress cruelly +attempts to make her sit upright, and thereby keep the spine in an +attitude for which Nature did not intend it, she is thereby doing +her best to bring on that disease, so fearfully common in girls' +schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But practically the girl +will stoop forward. And what happens? The lower ribs are pressed +into the body, thereby displacing more or less something inside. +The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the +lungs, remains loose; the lungs are never properly filled or +emptied; and an excess of carbonic acid accumulates at the bottom +of them. What follows? Frequent sighing to get rid of it; +heaviness of head; depression of the whole nervous system under +the influence of the poison of the lungs; and when the poor child +gets up from her weary work, what is the first thing she probably +does? She lifts up her chest, stretches, yawns, and breathes +deeply--Nature's voice, Nature's instinctive cure, which is +probably regarded as ungraceful, as what is called "lolling" is. +As if sitting upright was not an attitude in itself essentially +ungraceful, and such as no artist would care to draw. As if +"lolling," which means putting the body in the attitude of the +most perfect ease compatible with a fully-expanded chest, was not +in itself essentially graceful, and to be seen in every reposing +figure in Greek bas-reliefs and vases; graceful, and like all +graceful actions, healthful at the same time. The only tolerably +wholesome attitude of repose, which I see allowed in average +school-rooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping +board, in which case the lungs must be fully expanded. But even +so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed under the +small of the back: or the spine will be strained at its very +weakest point. + +I now go on to the second mistake--enforced silence. Moderate +reading aloud is good: but where there is any tendency to +irritability of throat or lungs, too much moderation cannot be +used. You may as well try to cure a diseased lung by working it, +as to cure a lame horse by galloping him. But where the breathing +organs are of average health let it be said once and for all, that +children and young people cannot make too much noise. The parents +who cannot bear the noise of their children have no right to have +brought them into the world. The schoolmistress who enforces +silence on her pupils is committing--unintentionally no doubt, but +still committing--an offence against reason, worthy only of a +convent. Every shout, every burst of laughter, every song--nay, +in the case of infants, as physiologists well know, every moderate +fit of crying--conduces to health, by rapidly filling and emptying +the lung, and changing the blood more rapidly from black to red, +that is, from death to life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a +large charity school, in which the young girls were, for the sake +of their health, shut up in the hall and school-room during play +hours, from November till March, and no romping or noise allowed. +The natural consequences were, the great majority of them fell +ill; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from +time to time contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through +this one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other there +must be for the amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails +especially among girls of the middle classes in towns, who have +not, poor things, the opportunities which richer girls have, of +keeping themselves in strong health by riding, skating, archery,-- +that last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and lungs, and +far preferable to croquet, which involves too much unwholesome +stooping.--Even a game of ball, if milliners and shop-girls had +room to indulge in one after their sedentary work, might bring +fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a cheek. + +I spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will all allow that +the Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which +the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were also +the cleverest of all races; and, next to his Bible, thanks, God +for Greek literature. + +Now, these people had made physical as well as intellectual +education a science as well as a study. Their women practised +graceful, and in some cases even athletic, exercises. They +developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain +everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty: but--to +come to my third point--they wore no stays. The first mention of +stays that I have ever found is in the letters of dear old +Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast of Africa, about +four hundred years after the Christian era. He tells us how, when +he was shipwrecked on a remote part of the coast, and he and the +rest of the passengers were starving on cockles and limpets, there +was among them a slave girl out of the far East, who had a pinched +wasp-waist, such as you may see on the old Hindoo sculptures, and +such as you may see in any street in a British town. And when the +Greek ladies of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her +from house to house, to behold, with astonishment and laughter, +this new and prodigious, waist, with which it seemed to them it +was impossible for a human being to breathe or live; and they +petted the poor girl, and fed her, as they might a dwarf or a +giantess, till she got quite fat and comfortable, while her owners +had not enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our +present fashion to the descendants of those who, centuries before, +had imagined, because they had seen living and moving, those +glorious statues which we pretend to admire, but refuse to +imitate. + +It seems to me that a few centuries hence, when mankind has learnt +to fear God more, and therefore to obey more strictly those laws +of nature and of science which are the will of God--it seems to +me, I say, that in those days the present fashion of tight lacing +will be looked back upon as a contemptible and barbarous +superstition, denoting a very low level of civilisation in the +peoples which have practised it. That for generations past women +should have been in the habit--not to please men, who do not care +about the matter as a point of beauty--but simply to vie with each +other in obedience to something called fashion--that they should, +I say, have been in the habit of deliberately crushing that part +of the body which should be specially left free, contracting and +displacing their lungs, their heart, and all the most vital and +important organs, and entailing thereby disease, not only on +themselves but on their children after them; that for forty years +past physicians should have been telling them of the folly of what +they have been doing; and that they should as yet, in the great +majority of cases, not only turn a deaf ear to all warnings, but +actually deny the offence, of which one glance of the physician or +the sculptor, who know what shape the human body ought to be, +brings them in guilty--this, I say, is an instance of--what shall +I call it?--which deserves at once the lash, not merely of the +satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that God made +the physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common +sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, +whether for strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, +the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the +ribs; the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that +will be the animal's general healthiness, power of endurance, and +value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and +famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age, you will see +that in every case they are men, like the late Lord Palmerston, +and others whom I could mention, of remarkable size, not merely in +the upper, but in the lower part of the chest; men who had, +therefore, a peculiar power of using the diaphragm to fill and to +clear the lungs, and therefore to oxygenate the blood of the whole +body. Now, it is just these lower ribs, across which the +diaphragm is stretched like the head of a drum, which stays +contract to a minimum. If you advised owners of horses and hounds +to put their horses or their hounds into stays, and lace them up +tight, in order to increase their beauty, you would receive, I +doubt not, a very courteous, but certainly a very decided, refusal +to do that which would spoil not merely the animals themselves, +but the whole stud or the whole kennel for years to come. And if +you advised an orator to put himself into tight stays, he, no +doubt, again would give a courteous answer; but he would reply--if +he was a really educated man--that to comply with your request +would involve his giving up public work, under the probable +penalty of being dead within the twelve-month. + +And how much work of every kind, intellectual as well as physical, +is spoiled or hindered; how many deaths occur from consumption and +other complaints which are the result of this habit of tight +lacing, is known partly to the medical men, who lift up their +voices in vain, and known fully to Him who will not interfere with +the least of His own physical laws to save human beings from the +consequences of their own wilful folly. + +And now--to end this lecture with more pleasing thoughts--What +becomes of this breath which passes from your lips? Is it merely +harmful; merely waste? God forbid! God has forbidden that +anything should be merely harmful or merely waste in this so wise +and well-made world. The carbonic acid which passes from your +lips at every breath--ay, even that which oozes from the volcano +crater when the eruption is past--is a precious boon to thousands +of things of which you have daily need. Indeed there is a sort of +hint at physical truth in the old fairy tale of the girl, from +whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds; for the +carbonic acid of your breath may help hereafter to make the pure +carbonate of lime of a pearl, or the still purer carbon of a +diamond. Nay, it may go--in such a world of transformations do we +live--to make atoms of coal strata, which after being buried for +ages beneath deep seas, shall be upheaved in continents which are +yet unborn, and there be burnt for the use of a future race of +men, and resolved into their original elements. Coal, wise men +tell us, is on the whole breath and sunlight; the breath of living +creatures who have lived in the vast swamps and forests of some +primeval world, and the sunlight which transmuted that breath into +the leaves and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages in +that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last, light and +carbonic acid as it was at first. For though you must not breathe +your breath again, you may at least eat your breath, if you will +allow the sun to transmute it for you into vegetables; or you may +enjoy its fragrance and its colour in the shape of a lily or a +rose. When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you speak, +every breath you breathe, is feeding the plants and flowers +around. The delicate surface of the green leaves absorbs the +carbonic acid, and parts it into its elements, retaining the +carbon to make woody fibre, and courteously returning you the +oxygen to mingle with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs +once more. Thus do you feed the plants; just as the plants feed +you: while the great life-giving sun feeds both; and the geranium +standing in the sick child's window does not merely rejoice his +eye and mind by its beauty and freshness, but repays honestly the +trouble spent on it; absorbing the breath which the child needs +not, and giving to him the breath which he needs. + +So are the services of all things constituted according to a +Divine and wonderful order, and knit together in mutual dependence +and mutual helpfulness--a fact to be remembered with hope and +comfort: but also with awe and fear. For as in that which is +above nature, so in nature itself; he that breaks one physical law +is guilty of all. The whole universe, as it were, takes up arms +against him; and all nature, with her numberless and unseen +powers, is ready to avenge herself on him, and on his children +after him, he knows not when nor where. He, on the other hand, +who obeys the laws of nature with his whole heart and mind, will +find all things working together to him for good. He is at peace +with the physical universe. He is helped and befriended alike by +the sun above his head and the dust beneath his feet; because he +is obeying the will and mind of Him who made sun, and dust, and +all things; and who has given them a law which cannot be broken. + + + +THRIFT {5} + + + +Ladies,--I have chosen for the title of this lecture a practical +and prosaic word, because I intend the lecture itself to be as +practical and prosaic as I can make it, without becoming +altogether dull. + +The question of the better or worse education of women is one far +too important for vague sentiment, wild aspirations, or Utopian +dreams. + +It is a practical question, on which depends not merely money or +comfort, but too often health and life, as the consequences of a +good education, or disease and death--I know too well of what I +speak--as the consequences of a bad one. + +I beg you, therefore, to put out of your minds at the outset any +fancy that I wish for a social revolution in the position of +women; or that I wish to see them educated by exactly the same +methods, and in exactly the same subjects, as men. British lads, +on an average, are far too ill-taught still, in spite of all +recent improvements, for me to wish that British girls should be +taught in the same way. + +Moreover, whatever defects there may have been--and defects there +must be in all things human--in the past education of British +women, it has been most certainly a splendid moral success. It +has made, by the grace of God, British women the best wives, +mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, that the world, as far as I +can discover, has yet seen. + +Let those who will, sneer at the women of England. We who have to +do the work and to fight the battle of life know the inspiration +which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their +tenderness, and--but too often--from their compassion and their +forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a +man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to +show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British +woman. + +But just because a cultivated British woman is so perfect a +personage; therefore I wish to see all British women cultivated. +Because the womanhood of England is so precious a treasure; I wish +to see none of it wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or +material, out of which the greatest possible profit to the nation +must be made. And that can only be done by Thrift; and that, +again, can only be attained by knowledge. + +Consider that word Thrift. If you will look at "Dr. Johnson's +Dictionary," or if you know your "Shakespeare," you will see that +Thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gotten--in a +word, the marks of a man's thriving. + +How, then, did the word Thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, +the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy--which +first, of course, meant the management of a household--got to mean +also the opposite of waste. + +It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in +fact, men throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their +material, their force. + +Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws +of nature--call them, rather, laws of God--which apply not merely +to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to +physiology, to society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every +person in this room. + +The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much +work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the +least jar and obstruction, least wear and tear. + +And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know +the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it +easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your +money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, +which end in disappointment and exhaustion. + +The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the +more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you; and can +do more work with less effort. + +A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves +capital, enabling a less capital to do the work of a greater. +Knowledge of the electric telegraph saves time; knowledge of +writing saves human speech and locomotion; knowledge of domestic +economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and +life; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear +of brain; and knowledge of the laws of the spirit--what does it +not save? + +A well-educated moral sense, a well-regulated character, saves +from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and +excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper passions, those +nobler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the +woman far more than of the man; and which are potent in her, for +evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and +undisciplined; or are trained and developed into graceful, +harmonious, self-restraining strength, beautiful in themselves, +and a blessing to all who come under their influence. + +What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lecture is thrift: +thrift of themselves and of their own powers: and knowledge as +the parent of thrift. + +And because it is well to begin with the lower applications of +thrift, and to work up to the higher, I am much pleased to hear +that the first course of the proposed lectures to women in this +place will be one on domestic economy. + +I presume that the learned gentleman who will deliver these +lectures will be the last to mean by that term the mere saving of +money; that he will tell you, as--being a German--he will have +good reason to know, that the young lady who learns thrift in +domestic economy is also learning thrift of the very highest +faculties of her immortal spirit. He will tell you, I doubt not-- +for he must know--how you may see in Germany young ladies living +in what we more luxurious British would consider something like +poverty; cooking, waiting at table, and performing many a +household office which would be here considered menial; and yet +finding time for a cultivation of the intellect, which is, +unfortunately, too rare in Great Britain. + +The truth is, that we British are too wealthy. We make money, if +not too rapidly for the good of the nation at large, yet too +rapidly, I fear, for the good of the daughters of those who make +it. Their temptation--I do not, of course, say they all yield to +it--but their temptation is, to waste of the very simplest--I had +almost said, if I may be pardoned the expression, of the most +barbaric--kind; to an oriental waste of money, and waste of time; +to a fondness for mere finery, pardonable enough, but still a +waste; and to the mistaken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to +sit idle and let servants do everything for her. + +But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish to speak to- +day. I only mention the matter in passing, to show that high +intellectual culture is not incompatible with the performance of +homely household duties, and that the moral success of which I +spoke just now need not be injured, any more than it is in +Germany, by intellectual success likewise. I trust that these +words may reassure those parents, if any such there be here, who +may fear that these lectures will withdraw women from their +existing sphere of interest and activity. That they should +entertain such a fear is not surprising, after the extravagant +opinions and schemes which have been lately broached in various +quarters. + +The programme to these lectures expressly disclaims any such +intentions; and I, as a husband and a father, expressly disclaim +any such intention likewise. + +"To fit women for the more enlightened performance of their +special duties;" to help them towards learning how to do better +what we doubt not many of them are already doing well; is, I +honestly believe, the only object of the promoters of this scheme. + +Let us see now how some of these special duties can be better +performed by help of a little enlightenment as to the laws which +regulate them. + +Now, no man will deny--certainly no man who is past forty-five, +and whose digestion is beginning to quail before the lumps of beef +and mutton which are the boast of a British kitchen, and to +prefer, with Justice Shallow, and, I presume, Sir John Falstaff +also, "any pretty little tiny kickshaws"--no man, I say, who has +reached that age, but will feel it a practical comfort to him to +know that the young ladies of his family are at all events good +cooks; and understand, as the French do, thrift in the matter of +food. + +Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his +daughters should cost him as little as possible; and wishes, +naturally enough also, that they should be as well dressed as +possible, deny that it would be a good thing for them to be +practical milliners and mantua-makers; and, by making their own +clothes gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing. + +But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in +wishing for some thrift in the energy which produces it. Labour +misapplied, you will agree, is labour wasted; and as dress, I +presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making +a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain +case of waste. It would be impertinent in me to go into any +details: but it is impossible to walk about the streets now +without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as +to the success of their own toilette. Instead of graceful and +noble simplicity of form, instead of combinations of colour at +once rich and delicate, because in accordance with the chromatic +laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful to +the eye, and startling to common sense, till one would be hardly +more astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if in a year +or two, one should pass someone going about like a Chinese lady, +with pinched feet, or like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden +bung through her lower lip. It is easy to complain of these +monstrosities: but impossible to cure them, it seems to me, +without an education of the taste, an education in those laws of +nature which produce beauty in form and beauty in colour. For +that the cause of these failures lies in want of education is +patent. They are most common in--I had almost said they are +confined to--those classes of well-to-do persons who are the least +educated; who have no standard of taste of their own; and who do +not acquire any from cultivated friends and relations: who, in +consequence, dress themselves blindly according to what they +conceive to be the Paris fashions, conveyed at third-hand through +an equally uneducated dressmaker; in innocent ignorance of the +fact--for fact I believe it to be--that Paris fashions are +invented now not in the least for the sake of beauty, but for the +sake of producing, through variety, increased expenditure, and +thereby increased employment; according to the strange system +which now prevails in France of compelling, if not prosperity, at +least the signs of it; and like schoolboys before a holiday, +nailing up the head of the weather-glass to insure fine weather. + +Let British ladies educate themselves in those laws of beauty +which are as eternal as any other of nature's laws; which may be +seen fulfilled, as Mr. Ruskin tells us, so eloquently in every +flower and every leaf, in every sweeping down and rippling wave; +and they will be able to invent graceful and economical dresses +for themselves, without importing tawdry and expensive ugliness +from France. + +Let me now go a step farther, and ask you to consider this: There +are in England now a vast number, and an increasing number, of +young women who, from various circumstances which we all know, +must in after life be either the mistresses of their own fortunes, +or the earners of their own bread. And, to do that wisely and +well, they must be more or less women of business, and to be women +of business they must know something of the meaning of the words +Capital, Profit, Price, Value, Labour, Wages, and of the relation +between those two last. In a word, they must know a little +political economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of +every household might find, not only thrift of money, but thrift +of brain; freedom from mistakes, anxieties, worries of many kinds, +all of which eat out the health as well as the heart, by a little +sound knowledge of the principles of political economy. + +When we consider that every mistress of a household is continually +buying, if not selling; that she is continually hiring and +employing labour in the form of servants; and very often, into the +bargain, keeping her husband's accounts: I cannot but think that +her hard-worked brain might be clearer, and her hard-tried desire +to do her duty by every subject in her little kingdom, might be +more easily satisfied, had she read something of what Mr. John +Stuart Mill has written, especially on the duties of employer and +employed. A capitalist, a commercialist, an employer of labour, +and an accountant--every mistress of a household is all these, +whether she likes it or not; and it would be surely well for her, +in so very complicated a state of society as this, not to trust +merely to that mother-wit, that intuitive sagacity and innate +power of ruling her fellow-creatures, which carries women so nobly +through their work in simpler and less civilised societies. + +And here I stop to answer those who may say--as I have heard it +said--That a woman's intellect is not fit for business; that when +a woman takes to business, she is apt to do it ill, and +unpleasantly likewise, to be more suspicious, more irritable, more +grasping, more unreasonable, than regular men of business would +be: that--as I have heard it put--"a woman does not fight fair." +The answer is simple. That a woman's intellect is eminently +fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of business +she gets through without any special training for it: but those +faults in a woman of which some men complain are simply the +results of her not having had a special training. She does not +know the laws of business. She does not know the rules of the +game she is playing; and therefore she is playing it in the dark, +in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of questions on personal +grounds, often offending those with whom she has to do, and +oftener still making herself miserable over matters of law or of +business, on which a little sound knowledge would set her head and +her heart at rest. + +When I have seen widows, having the care of children, of a great +household, of a great estate, of a great business, struggling +heroically, and yet often mistakenly; blamed severely for +selfishness and ambition, while they were really sacrificing +themselves with the divine instinct of a mother for their +children's interest: I have stood by with mingled admiration and +pity, and said to myself: "How nobly she is doing the work +without teaching! How much more nobly would she have done it had +she been taught! She is now doing her work at the most enormous +waste of energy and of virtue: had she had knowledge, thrift +would have followed it; she would have done more work with far +less trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes on; +while sound knowledge would have saved her health, saved her +heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved ones for whom +she labours, not always with success." + +A little political economy, therefore, will at least do no harm to +a woman; especially if she have to take care of herself in after +life; neither, I think, will she be much harmed by some sound +knowledge of another subject, which I see promised in these +lectures: "Natural philosophy, in its various branches, such as +the chemistry of common life, light, heat, electricity, etc. etc." + +A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach +many women that by shutting themselves up day after day, week +after week, in darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a +waste of health, destroying their vital energy, and diseasing +their brains, as if they were taking so much poison the whole +time. + +A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach women not to +clothe themselves and their children after foolish and +insufficient fashions, which in this climate sow the seeds of a +dozen different diseases, and have to be atoned for by perpetual +anxieties, and by perpetual doctors' bills; and as for a little +knowledge of the laws of electricity, one thrift I am sure it +would produce--thrift to us men, of having to answer continual +inquiries as to what the weather is going to be, when a slight +knowledge of the barometer, or of the form of the clouds and the +direction of the wind, would enable many a lady to judge for +herself, and not, after inquiry on inquiry, regardless of all +warnings, go out on the first appearance of a strip of blue sky, +and come home wet through, with what she calls "only a chill," but +which really means a nail driven into her coffin--a probable +shortening, though it may be a very small one, of her mortal life; +because the food of the next twenty-four hours, which should have +gone to keep the vital heat at its normal standard, will have to +be wasted in raising it up to that standard, from which it has +fallen by a chill. + +Ladies, these are subjects on which I must beg to speak a little +more at length, premising them by one statement, which may seem +jest, but is solemn earnest--that, if the medical men of this or +any other city were what the world now calls "alive to their own +interests"--that is, to the mere making of money; instead of +being, what medical men are, the most generous, disinterested, and +high-minded class in these realms, then they would oppose by all +means in their power the delivery of lectures on natural +philosophy to women. For if women act upon what they learn in +those lectures--and having women's hearts, they will act upon it-- +there ought to follow a decrease of sickness and an increase of +health, especially among children; a thrift of life, and a thrift +of expense besides, which would very seriously affect the income +of medical men. + +For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but with all +earnestness--Are you aware of certain facts, of which every one of +those excellent medical men is too well aware? Are you aware that +more human beings are killed in England every year by unnecessary +and preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at +Sadowa? Are you aware that the great majority of those victims +are children? Are you aware that the diseases which carry them +off are for the most part such as ought to be specially under the +control of the women who love them, pet them, educate them, and +would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives for them? +Are you aware, again, of the vast amount of disease which, so both +wise mothers and wise doctors assure me, is engendered in the +sleeping-room from simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, +and in the schoolroom likewise, from simple ignorance of the laws +of physiology? from an ignorance of which I shall mention no other +case here save one--that too often from ignorance of signs of +approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called +idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, +in the unwisest way--by an increase of tasks and confinement to +the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, +and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of +exercise, a system already depressed? Are you aware, I ask again, +of all this? I speak earnest upon this point, because I speak +with experience. As a single instance: a medical man, a friend +of mine, passing by his own schoolroom, heard one of his own +little girls screaming and crying, and went in. The governess, an +excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology, +complained that the child had of late become obstinate and would +not learn; and that therefore she must punish her by keeping her +indoors over the unlearnt lessons. The father, who knew that the +child was usually a very good one, looked at her carefully for a +little while; sent her out of the schoolroom; and then said, "That +child must not open a book for a month." "If I had not acted so," +he said to me, "I should have had that child dead of brain-disease +within the year." + +Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it too much to ask of +mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, governesses--all who may be +occupied in the care of children, especially of girls--that they +should study thrift of human health and human life, by studying +somewhat the laws of life and health? There are books--I may say +a whole literature of books--written by scientific doctors on +these matters, which are in my mind far more important to the +schoolroom than half the trashy accomplishments, so-called, which +are expected to be known by governesses. But are they bought? +Are they even to be bought, from most country booksellers? Ah, +for a little knowledge of the laws to the neglect of which is +owing so much fearful disease, which, if it does not produce +immediate death, too often leaves the constitution impaired for +years to come. Ah the waste of health and strength in the young; +the waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend +them. How much of it might be saved by a little rational +education in those laws of nature which are the will of God about +the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much +bound to know and to obey, as we are bound to know and obey the +spiritual laws whereon depends the welfare of our souls. + +Pardon me, ladies, if I have given a moment's pain to anyone here: +but I appeal to every medical man in the room whether I have not +spoken the truth; and having such an opportunity as this, I felt +that I must speak for the sake of children, and of women likewise, +or else for ever hereafter hold my peace. + +Let me pass on from this painful subject--for painful it has been +to me for many years--to a question of intellectual thrift--by +which I mean just now thrift of words; thrift of truth; restraint +of the tongue; accuracy and modesty in statement. + +Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to be--not intentionally +untruthful--but exaggerative, prejudiced, incorrect, in repeating +a conversation or describing an event; and that from this fault +arise, as is to be expected, misunderstandings, quarrels, rumours, +slanders, scandals, and what not. + +Now, for this waste of words there is but one cure: and if I be +told that it is a natural fault of women; that they cannot take +the calm judicial view of matters which men boast, and often boast +most wrongly, that they can take; that under the influence of +hope, fear, delicate antipathy, honest moral indignation, they +will let their eyes and ears be governed by their feelings; and +see and hear only what they wish to see and hear--I answer, that +it is not for me as a man to start such a theory; but that if it +be true, it is an additional argument for some education which +will correct this supposed natural defect. And I say deliberately +that there is but one sort of education which will correct it; one +which will teach young women to observe facts accurately, judge +them calmly, and describe them carefully, without adding or +distorting: and that is, some training in natural science. + +I beg you not to be startled: but if you are, then test the truth +of my theory by playing to-night at the game called "Russian +Scandal;" in which a story, repeated in secret by one player to +the other, comes out at the end of the game, owing to the +inaccurate and--forgive me if I say it--uneducated brains through +which it has passed, utterly unlike its original; not only +ludicrously maimed and distorted, but often with the most +fantastic additions of events, details, names, dates, places, +which each player will aver that he received from the player +before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of +every city, town, and village is little more than a game of +"Russian Scandal;" with this difference that while one is but a +game, the other is but too mischievous earnest. + +But now, if among your party there shall be an average lawyer, +medical man, or man of science, you will find that he, and perhaps +he alone, will be able to retail accurately the story which has +been told him. And why? Simply because his mind has been trained +to deal with facts; to ascertain exactly what he does see or hear, +and to imprint its leading features strongly and clearly on his +memory. + +Now, you certainly cannot make young ladies barristers or +attorneys; nor employ their brains in getting up cases, civil or +criminal; and as for chemistry, they and their parents may have a +reasonable antipathy to smells, blackened fingers, and occasional +explosions and poisonings. But you may make them something of +botanists, zoologists, geologists. + +I could say much on this point: allow me at least to say this: I +verify believe that any young lady who would employ some of her +leisure time in collecting wild flowers, carefully examining them, +verifying them, and arranging them; or who would in her summer +trip to the sea-coast do the same by the common objects of the +shore, instead of wasting her holiday, as one sees hundreds doing, +in lounging on benches on the esplanade, reading worthless novels, +and criticising dresses--that such a young lady, I say, would not +only open her own mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wisdom, +which, if it did not make her a more reverent and pious soul, she +cannot be the woman which I take for granted she is; but would +save herself from the habit--I had almost said the necessity--of +gossip; because she would have things to think of and not merely +persons; facts instead of fancies; while she would acquire +something of accuracy, of patience, of methodical observation and +judgment, which would stand her in good stead in the events of +daily life, and increase her power of bridling her tongue and her +imagination. "God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore +let thy words be few;" is the lesson which those are learning all +day long who study the works of God with reverent accuracy, lest +by misrepresenting them they should be tempted to say that God has +done that which He has not; and in that wholesome discipline I +long that women as well as men should share. + +And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as contrasted with +a waste the most deplorable and ruinous of all; thrift of those +faculties which connect us with the unseen and spiritual world; +with humanity, with Christ, with God; thrift of the immortal +spirit. I am not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You +hear such, I doubt not, in church every Sunday, far better than I +can preach to you. I am going to speak rather of thrift of the +heart, thrift of the emotions. How they are wasted in these days +in reading what are called sensation novels, all know but too +well; how British literature--all that the best hearts and +intellects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us--is +neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is, as a lady +well said, "the worst form of intemperance--dram-drinking and +opium-eating, intellectual and moral." + +I know that the young will delight--they have delighted in all +ages, and will to the end of time--in fictions which deal with +that "oldest tale which is for ever new." Novels will be read: +but that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by +the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to +distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the +immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the +sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled +plot and melodramatic situations. She should learn--and that she +can only learn by cultivation--to discern with joy, and drink in +with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true; and to turn +with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, +the ugly, and the false. + +And if any parent should be inclined to reply: "Why lay so much +stress upon educating a girl in British literature? Is it not far +more important to make our daughters read religious books?" I +answer--Of course it is. I take for granted that that is done in +a Christian land. But I beg you to recollect that there are books +and books; and that in these days of a free press it is +impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls reading books of +very different shades of opinion, and very different religious +worth. It may be, therefore, of the very highest importance to a +girl to have her intellect, her taste, her emotions, her moral +sense, in a word, her whole womanhood, so cultivated and regulated +that she shall herself be able to discern the true from the false, +the orthodox from the unorthodox, the truly devout from the merely +sentimental, the Gospel from its counterfeits. + +I should have thought that there never had been in Britain, since +the Reformation, a crisis at which young Englishwomen required +more careful cultivation on these matters; if at least they are to +be saved from making themselves and their families miserable; and +from ending--as I have known too many end--with broken hearts, +broken brains, broken health, and an early grave. + +Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the +women are uneducated, unoccupied; where their only literature is +French novels or translations of them--in every one of those +countries the women, even to the highest, are the slaves of +superstition, and the puppets of priests. In proportion as, in +certain other countries--notably, I will say, in Scotland--the +women are highly educated, family life and family secrets are +sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor +or director, but to her own husband or to her own family. + +I say plainly, that if any parents wish their daughters to succumb +at least to some quackery or superstition, whether calling itself +scientific, or calling itself religious--and there are too many of +both just now--they cannot more certainly effect their purpose +than by allowing her to grow up ignorant, frivolous, luxurious, +vain; with her emotions excited, but not satisfied, by the reading +of foolish and even immoral novels. + +In such a case the more delicate and graceful the organisation, +the more noble and earnest the nature, which has been neglected, +the more certain it is--I know too well what I am saying--to go +astray. + +The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, all but despair +must come. The immortal spirit, finding no healthy satisfaction +for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to +an unhealthy and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long +self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a +morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-given and +natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake +itself, from the mere craving for action, to self-invented and +unnatural duties out of the world. Ignorant of true science, yet +craving to understand the wonders of nature and of spirit, it is +but too likely to betake itself to non-science--nonsense as it is +usually called--whether of spirit-rapping and mesmerism, or of +miraculous relics and winking pictures. Longing for guidance and +teaching, and never having been taught to guide and teach itself, +it is but too likely to deliver itself up in self-despair to the +guidance and teaching of those who, whether they be quacks or +fanatics, look on uneducated women as their natural prey. + +You will see, I am sure, from what I have said, that it is not my +wish that you should become mere learned women; mere female +pedants, as useless and unpleasing as male pedants are wont to be. +The education which I set before you is not to be got by mere +hearing lectures or reading books: for it is an education of your +whole character; a self-education; which really means a committing +of yourself to God, that He may educate you. Hearing lectures is +good, for it will teach you how much there is to be known, and how +little you know. Reading books is good, for it will give you +habits of regular and diligent study. And therefore I urge on you +strongly private study, especially in case a library should be +formed here of books on those most practical subjects of which I +have been speaking. But, after all, both lectures and books are +good, mainly in as far as they furnish matter for reflection: +while the desire to reflect and the ability to reflect must come, +as I believe, from above. The honest craving after light and +power, after knowledge, wisdom, active usefulness, must come--and +may it come to you--by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. + +One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women to educate +themselves, not for their own sakes merely, but for the sake of +others. For, whether they will or not, they must educate others. +I do not speak merely of those who may be engaged in the work of +direct teaching; that they ought to be well taught themselves, who +can doubt? I speak of those--and in so doing I speak of every +woman, young and old--who exercise as wife, as mother, as aunt, as +sister, or as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and +unconscious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and +characters of those about them, especially of men. How potent and +practical that influence is, those know best who know most of the +world and most of human nature. There are those who consider--and +I agree with them--that the education of boys under the age of +twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women. +Let me ask--of what period of youth and manhood does not the same +hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who +fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women. +I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in +the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age; +that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities +of women pointed; for which they were to be educated to the +highest pitch. I should have thought that it was the glory of +woman that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather +than for herself; and therefore I should say--Let her smallest +rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed: but let her +never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to +teach man--what, I believe, she has been teaching him all along, +even in the savage state--namely, that there is something more +necessary than the claiming of rights, and that is, the performing +of duties; to teach him specially, in these so-called intellectual +days, that there is something more than intellect, and that is-- +purity and virtue. Let her never be persuaded to forget that her +calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, +but the higher and the diviner calling of self-sacrifice; and let +her never desert that higher life, which lives in others and for +others, like her Redeemer and her Lord. + +And if any should answer that this doctrine would keep woman a +dependent and a slave, I rejoin--Not so: it would keep her what +she should be--the mistress of all around her, because mistress of +herself. And more, I should express a fear that those who made +that answer had not yet seen into the mystery of true greatness +and true strength; that they did not yet understand the true +magnanimity, the true royalty of that spirit, by which the Son of +man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give +His life a ransom for many. + +Surely that is woman's calling--to teach man: and to teach him +what? To teach him, after all, that his calling is the same as +hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace. To +temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the +contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him +see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, +ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done +on earth: but by wise self-distrust, by silent labour, by lofty +self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth +all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as +women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as +they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is +educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in +harmonious unity. Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her +happy lot--to quote the words of a great poet, a great +philosopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth--let her +begin, I say - + + +With all things round about her drawn +From May-time and the cheerful dawn; +A dancing shape, an image gay, +To haunt, to startle, and waylay. + + +Let her develop onwards - + + +A spirit, yet a woman too, +With household motions light and free, +And steps of virgin liberty. +A countenance in which shall meet +Sweet records, promises as sweet; +A creature not too bright and good +For human nature's daily food; +For transient sorrows, simple wiles, +Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. + + +But let her highest and her final development be that which not +nature, but self-education alone can bring--that which makes her +once and for ever - + + +A being breathing thoughtful breath; +A traveller betwixt life and death. +With reason firm, with temperate will +Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. +A perfect woman, nobly planned, +To warn, to comfort, and command. +And yet a spirit still and bright +With something of an angel light. + + + +NAUSICAA IN LONDON; OR, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN + + + +Fresh from the Marbles of the British Museum, I went my way +through London streets. My brain was still full of fair and grand +forms; the forms of men and women whose every limb and attitude +betokened perfect health, and grace, and power, and self- +possession and self-restraint so habitual and complete that it had +become unconscious, and undistinguishable from the native freedom +of the savage. For I had been up and down the corridors of those +Greek sculptures, which remain as a perpetual sermon to rich and +poor, amid our artificial, unwholesome, and it may be decaying +pseudo-civilisation, saying with looks more expressive than all +words--Such men and women can be; for such they have been; and +such you may be yet, if you will use that science of which you too +often only boast. Above all, I had been pondering over the awful +and yet tender beauty of the maiden figures from the Parthenon and +its kindred temples. And these, or such as these, I thought to +myself, were the sisters of the men who fought at Marathon and +Salamis; the mothers of many a man among the ten thousand whom +Xenophon led back from Babylon to the Black Sea shore; the +ancestresses of many a man who conquered the East in Alexander's +host, and fought with Porus in the far Punjab. And were these +women mere dolls? These men mere gladiators? Were they not the +parents of philosophy, science, poetry, the plastic arts? We talk +of education now. Are we more educated than were the ancient +Greeks? Do we know anything about education, physical, +intellectual, or aesthetic, and I may say moral likewise-- +religious education, of course, in our sense of the world, they +had none--but do we know anything about education of which they +have not taught us at least the rudiments? Are there not some +branches of education which they perfected, once and for ever; +leaving us northern barbarians to follow, or else not to follow, +their example? To produce health, that is, harmony and sympathy, +proportion and grace, in every faculty of mind and body--that was +their notion of education. To produce that, the text-book of +their childhood was the poetry of Homer, and not of--But I am +treading on dangerous ground. It was for this that the seafaring +Greek lad was taught to find his ideal in Ulysses; while his +sister at home found hers, it may be, in Nausicaa. It was for +this, that when perhaps the most complete and exquisite of all the +Greeks, Sophocles the good, beloved by gods and men, represented +on the Athenian stage his drama of Nausicaa, and, as usual, could +not--for he had no voice--himself take a speaking part, he was +content to do one thing in which he specially excelled; and +dressed and masked as a girl, to play at ball amid the chorus of +Nausicaa's maidens. + +That drama of Nausicaa is lost; and if I dare say so of any play +of Sophocles', I scarce regret it. It is well, perhaps, that we +have no second conception of the scene, to interfere with the +simplicity, so grand, and yet so tender, of Homer's idyllic +episode. + +Nausicaa, it must be remembered, is the daughter of a king. But +not of a king in the exclusive modern European or old Eastern +sense. Her father, Alcinous, is simply primus inter pares among a +community of merchants, who are called "kings" likewise; and Mayor +for life--so to speak--of a new trading city, a nascent Genoa or +Venice, on the shore of the Mediterranean. But the girl Nausicaa, +as she sleeps in her "carved chamber," is "like the immortals in +form and face;" and two handmaidens who sleep on each side of the +polished door "have beauty from the Graces." + +To her there enters, in the shape of some maiden friend, none less +than Pallas Athene herself, intent on saving worthily her +favourite, the shipwrecked Ulysses; and bids her in a dream go +forth--and wash the clothes. {6} + + +Nausicaa, wherefore doth thy mother bear +Child so forgetful? This long time doth rest, +Like lumber in the house, much raiment fair. +Soon must thou wed, and be thyself well-drest, +And find thy bridegroom raiment of the best. +These are the things whence good repute is born, +And praises that make glad a parent's breast. +Come, let us both go washing with the morn; +So shalt thou have clothes becoming to be worn. + +Know that thy maidenhood is not for long, +Whom the Phoeacian chiefs already woo, +Lords of the land whence thou thyself art sprung. +Soon as the shining dawn comes forth anew, +For wain and mules thy noble father sue, +Which to the place of washing shall convey +Girdles and shawls and rugs of splendid hue, +This for thyself were better than essay +Thither to walk: the place is distant a long way. + + +Startled by her dream, Nausicaa awakes, and goes to find her +parents - + + +One by the hearth sat, with the maids around, +And on the skeins of yarn, sea-purpled, spent +Her morning toil. Him to the council bound, +Called by the honoured kings, just going forth she found. + + +And calling him, as she might now, Pappa phile, Dear Papa, asks +for the mule-waggon: but it is her father's and her five +brothers' clothes she fain would wash, - + + +Ashamed to name her marriage to her father dear. + + +But he understood all--and she goes forth in the mule-waggon, with +the clothes, after her mother has put in "a chest of all kinds of +delicate food, and meat, and wine in a goatskin;" and last but not +least, the indispensable cruse of oil for anointing after the +bath, to which both Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so much health +and beauty. And then we read in the simple verse of a poet too +refined, like the rest of his race, to see anything mean or +ridiculous in that which was not ugly and unnatural, how she and +her maids got into the "polished waggon," "with good wheels," and +she "took the whip and the studded reins," and "beat them till +they started;" and how the mules, "rattled" away, and "pulled +against each other," till + + +When they came to the fair flowing river +Which feeds good lavatories all the year, +Fitted to cleanse all sullied robes soever, +They from the wain the mules unharnessed there, +And chased them free, to crop their juicy fare +By the swift river, on the margin green; +Then to the waters dashed the clothes they bare +And in the stream-filled trenches stamped them clean. +Which, having washed and cleansed, they spread before +The sunbeams, on the beach, where most did lie +Thick pebbles, by the sea-wave washed ashore. +So, having left them in the heat to dry, +They to the bath went down, and by-and-by, +Rubbed with rich oil, their midday meal essay, +Couched in green turf, the river rolling nigh. +Then, throwing off their veils, at ball they play, +While the white-armed Nausicaa leads the choral lay. + + +The mere beauty of this scene all will feel, who have the sense of +beauty in them. Yet it is not on that aspect which I wish to +dwell, but on its healthfulness. Exercise is taken, in measured +time, to the sound of song, as a duty almost, as well as an +amusement. For this game of ball, which is here mentioned for the +first time in human literature, nearly three thousand years ago, +was held by the Greeks and by the Romans after them, to be an +almost necessary part of a liberal education; principally, +doubtless, from the development which it produced in the upper +half of the body, not merely to the arms, but to the chest, by +raising and expanding the ribs, and to all the muscles of the +torso, whether perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and grace +which it was believed to give were so much prized, that a room for +ball-play, and a teacher of the art, were integral parts of every +gymnasium; and the Athenians went so far as to bestow on one +famous ball-player, Aristonicus of Carystia, a statue and the +rights of citizenship. The rough and hardy young Spartans, when +passing from boyhood into manhood, received the title of ball- +players, seemingly from the game which it was then their special +duty to learn. In the case of Nausicaa and her maidens, the game +would just bring into their right places all that is liable to be +contracted and weakened in women, so many of whose occupations +must needs be sedentary and stooping; while the song which +accompanied the game at once filled the lungs regularly and +rhythmically, and prevented violent motion, or unseemly attitude. +We, the civilised, need physiologists to remind us of these simple +facts, and even then do not act on them. Those old half-barbarous +Greeks had found them out for themselves, and, moreover, acted on +them. + +But fair Nausicaa must have been--some will say--surely a mere +child of nature, and an uncultivated person? + +So far from it, that her whole demeanour and speech show culture +of the very highest sort, full of "sweetness and light."-- +Intelligent and fearless, quick to perceive the bearings of her +strange and sudden adventure, quick to perceive the character of +Ulysses, quick to answer his lofty and refined pleading by words +as lofty and refined, and pious withal;--for it is she who speaks +to her handmaids the once so famous words: + + +Strangers and poor men all are sent from Zeus; +And alms, though small, are sweet. + + +Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of demeanour, +shrinking from the slightest breath of scandal; while she is not +ashamed, when Ulysses, bathed and dressed, looks himself again, to +whisper to her maidens her wish that the Gods might send her such +a spouse.--This is Nausicaa as Homer draws her; and as many a +scholar and poet since Homer has accepted her for the ideal of +noble maidenhood. I ask my readers to study for themselves her +interview with Ulysses, in Mr. Worsley's translation, or rather in +the grand simplicity of the original Greek, {7} and judge whether +Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet who imagined her-- +or, it may be, drew her from life--must have been a perfect +gentleman; both complete in those "manners" which, says the old +proverb, "make the man:" but which are the woman herself; because +with her--who acts more by emotion than by calculation--manners +are the outward and visible tokens of her inward and spiritual +grace, or disgrace; and flow instinctively, whether good or bad, +from the instincts of her inner nature. + +True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. No more, most +probably, could the author of the Odyssey. No more, for that +matter, could Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they were plainly, +both in mind and manners, most highly-cultivated men. Reading and +writing, of course, have now become necessaries of humanity; and +are to be given to every human being, that he may start fair in +the race of life. But I am not aware that Greek women improved +much, either in manners, morals, or happiness, by acquiring them +in after centuries. A wise man would sooner see his daughter a +Nausicaa than a Sappho, an Aspasia, a Cleopatra, or even an +Hypatia. + +Full of such thoughts, I went through London streets, among the +Nausicaas of the present day; the girls of the period; the +daughters and hereafter mothers of our future rulers, the great +Demos or commercial middle class of the greatest mercantile city +in the world: and noted what I had noted with fear and sorrow, +many a day, for many a year; a type, and an increasing type, of +young women who certainly had not had the "advantages," +"educational" and other, of that Greek Nausicaa of old. + +Of course, in such a city as London, to which the best of +everything, physical and other, gravitates, I could not but pass, +now and then, beautiful persons, who made me proud of those +grandes Anglaises aux joues rouges, whom the Parisiennes ridicule- +-and envy. But I could not help suspecting that their looks +showed them to be either country-bred, or born of country parents; +and this suspicion was strengthened by the fact that, when +compared with their mothers, the mother's physique was, in the +majority of cases, superior to the daughters'. Painful it was, to +one accustomed to the ruddy well-grown peasant girl, stalwart, +even when, as often, squat and plain, to remark the exceedingly +small size of the average young woman; by which I do not mean mere +want of height--that is a little matter--but want of breadth +likewise; a general want of those large frames, which indicate +usually a power of keeping strong and healthy not merely the +muscles, but the brain itself. + +Poor little things. I passed hundreds--I pass hundreds every day- +-trying to hide their littleness by the nasty mass of false hair-- +or what does duty for it; and by the ugly and useless hat which is +stuck upon it, making the head thereby look ridiculously large and +heavy; and by the high heels on which they totter onward, having +forgotten, or never learnt, the simple art of walking; their +bodies tilted forward in that ungraceful attitude which is called- +-why that name of all others?--a "Grecian bend;" seemingly kept on +their feet, and kept together at all, in that strange attitude, by +tight stays which prevented all graceful and healthy motion of the +hips or sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being purposely misshapen +in this direction and in that, to hide--it must be presumed-- +deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been +taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been +that too often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no +doubt that these women were not only full grown, but some of them, +alas! wives and mothers. + +Poor little things.--And this they have gained by so-called +civilisation: the power of aping the "fashions" by which the +worn-out "Parisienne" hides her own personal defects; and of +making themselves, by innate want of that taste which the +"Parisienne" possesses, only the cause of something like a sneer +from many a cultivated man; and of something like a sneer, too, +from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and +swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better +dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town- +girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house- +dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air upon the +open moor. + +But the face which is beneath that chignon and that hat? Well--it +is sometimes pretty: but how seldom handsome, which is a higher +quality by far. It is not, strange to say, a well-fed face. +Plenty of money, and perhaps too much, is spent on those fine +clothes. It had been better, to judge from the complexion, if +some of that money had been spent in solid wholesome food. She +looks as if she lived--as she too often does, I hear--on tea and +bread-and-butter, or rather on bread with the minimum of butter. +For as the want of bone indicates a deficiency of phosphatic food, +so does the want of flesh about the cheeks indicate a deficiency +of hydrocarbon. Poor little Nausicaa:- that is not her fault. +Our boasted civilisation has not even taught her what to eat, as +it certainly has not increased her appetite; and she knows not-- +what every country fellow knows--that without plenty of butter and +other fatty matters, she is not likely to keep even warm. Better +to eat nasty fat bacon now, than to supply the want of it some few +years hence by nastier cod-liver oil. But there is no one yet to +tell her that, and a dozen other equally simple facts, for her own +sake, and for the sake of that coming Demos which she is to bring +into the world; a Demos which, if we can only keep it healthy in +body and brain, has before it so splendid a future: but which, if +body and brain degrade beneath the influence of modern barbarism, +is but too likely to follow the Demos of ancient Byzantium, or of +modern Paris. + +Ay, but her intellect. She is so clever, and she reads so much, +and she is going to be taught to read so much more. + +Ah well--there was once a science called Physiognomy. The Greeks, +from what I can learn, knew more of it than any people since: +though the Italian painters and sculptors must have known much; +far more than we. In a more scientific civilisation there will be +such a science once more: but its laws, though still in the +empiric stage, are not altogether forgotten by some. Little +children have often a fine and clear instinct of them. Many +cultivated and experienced women have a fine and clear instinct of +them likewise. And some such would tell us that there is +intellect in plenty in the modern Nausicaa: but not of the +quality which they desire for their country's future good. Self- +consciousness, eagerness, volubility, petulance in countenance, in +gesture, and in voice--which last is too often most harsh and +artificial, the breath being sent forth through the closed teeth, +and almost entirely at the corners of the mouth--and, with all +this, a weariness often about the wrinkling forehead and the +drooping lids;--all these, which are growing too common, not among +the Demos only, nor only in the towns, are signs, they think, of +the unrest of unhealth, physical, intellectual, spiritual. At +least they are as different as two types of physiognomy in the +same race can be, from the expression both of face and gesture, in +those old Greek sculptures, and in the old Italian painters; and, +it must be said, in the portraits of Reynolds, and Gainsborough, +Copley, and Romney. Not such, one thinks, must have been the +mothers of Britain during the latter half of the last century and +the beginning of the present; when their sons, at times, were +holding half the world at bay. + +And if Nausicaa has become such in town: what is she when she +goes to the seaside, not to wash the clothes in fresh-water, but +herself in salt--the very salt-water, laden with decaying +organisms, from which, though not polluted further by a dozen +sewers, Ulysses had to cleanse himself, anointing, too, with oil, +ere he was fit to appear in the company of Nausicaa of Greece? +She dirties herself with the dirty saltwater; and probably chills +and tires herself by walking thither and back, and staying in too +long; and then flaunts on the pier, bedizened in garments which, +for monstrosity of form and disharmony of colours, would have set +that Greek Nausicaa's teeth on edge, or those of any average +Hindoo woman now. Or, even sadder still, she sits on chairs and +benches all the weary afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, +over some novel from the "Library;" and then returns to tea and +shrimps, and lodgings of which the fragrance is not unsuggestive, +sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa +of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about the +present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to +see your old father--tradesman, or clerk, or what not--who has +done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by +your old mother, who has done good work in her day--among the +rest, that heaviest work of all, the bringing you into the world +and keeping you in it till now--honest, kindly, cheerful folk +enough, and not inefficient in their own calling; though an +average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish Easterling, beside +carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force, could drive +five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not a sad +sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside +benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and +the sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the +novel act of doing nothing. It is not the old for whom wise men +are sad: but for you. Where is your vitality? Where is your +"Lebens-gluckseligkeit," your enjoyment of superfluous life and +power? Why you cannot even dance and sing, till now and then, at +night, perhaps, when you ought to lie safe in bed, but when the +weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment, has roused +itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure. +What there is left of it is all going into that foolish book, +which the womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, +delights in; because it places you in fancy in situations in which +you will never stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of +which, it may be, you had better never feel. Poor Nausicaa--old, +some men think, before you have been ever young. + +And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your +share in "the higher education of women," by making you read more +books, and do more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop over +desks at night after stooping over some other employment all day; +and to teach you Latin, and even Greek! + +Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you learn thereby to read +the history of Nausicaa of old, and what manner of maiden she was, +and what was her education. You will admire her, doubtless. But +do not let your admiration limit itself to drawing a meagre half- +mediaevalised design of her--as she never looked. Copy in your +own person; and even if you do not descend as low--or rise as +high--as washing the household clothes, at least learn to play at +ball; and sing, in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and +concert-rooms by gaslight; and take decent care of your own +health; and dress not like a "Parisienne"--nor, of course, like +Nausicaa of old, for that is to ask too much: --but somewhat more +like an average Highland lassie; and try to look like her, and be +like her, of whom Wordsworth sang: + + +A mien and face +In which full plainly I can trace +Benignity, and home-bred sense, +Ripening in perfect innocence. +Here scattered, like a random seed, +Remote from men, thou dost not need +The embarrassed look of shy distress +And maidenly shamefacedness. +Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear +The freedom of a mountaineer. +A face with gladness overspread, +Soft smiles, by human kindness bred, +And seemliness complete, that sways +Thy courtesies, about thee plays. +With no restraint, save such as springs +From quick and eager visitings +Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach +Of thy few words of English speech. +A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife +That gives thy gestures grace and life. + + +Ah, yet unspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant of the dark +tender-hearted Celtic girl, and the fair deep-hearted Scandinavian +Viking, thank God for thy heather and fresh air, and the kine thou +tendest, and the wool thou spinnest; and come not to seek thy +fortune, child, in wicked London town; nor import, as they tell me +thou art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that London town, clumsy +copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up +the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother +and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath +days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other +women's hair. + +It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls +more and more to that of boys. If that means that girls are +merely to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are +taught, in addition to what their mothers were taught; then it is +to be hoped, at least by physiologists and patriots, that the +scheme will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably +rational country, all imperfect and ill-considered schemes are +sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be a bona-fide one: then +it must be borne in mind that in the Public schools of England, +and in all private schools, I presume, which take their tone from +them, cricket and football are more or less compulsory, being +considered integral parts of an Englishman's education; and that +they are likely to remain so, in spite of all reclamations: +because masters and boys alike know that games do not, in the long +run, interfere with a boy's work; that the same boy will very +often excel in both; that the games keep him in health for his +work; and the spirit with which he takes to his games when in the +lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take +to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing +is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-shop- +haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually +extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that +games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that +in the playing-field boys acquire virtues which no books can give +them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still, temper, +self-restraint, fairness, honour, unenvious approbation of +another's success, and all that "give and take" of life which +stand a man in such good stead when he goes forth into the world, +and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and +partial. + +Now: if the promoters of higher education for women will compel +girls to any training analogous to our public-school games; if, +for instance, they will insist on that most natural and wholesome +of all exercises, dancing, in order to develop the lower half of +the body; on singing, to expand the lungs and regulate the breath; +and on some games--ball or what not--which will ensure that raised +chest, and upright carriage, and general strength of the upper +torso, without which full oxygenation of the blood, and therefore +general health, is impossible; if they will sternly forbid tight +stays, high heels, and all which interferes with free growth and +free motion; if they will consider carefully all which has been +written on the "half-time system" by Mr. Chadwick and others; and +accept the certain physical law that, in order to renovate the +brain day by day, the growing creature must have plenty of fresh +air and play, and that the child who learns for four hours and +plays for four hours, will learn more, and learn it more easily, +than the child who learns for the whole eight hours; if, in short, +they will teach girls not merely to understand the Greek tongue, +but to copy somewhat of the Greek physical training, of that +"music and gymnastic" which helped to make the cleverest race of +the old world the ablest race likewise; then they will earn the +gratitude of the patriot and the physiologists, by doing their +best to stay the downward tendencies of the physique, and +therefore ultimately of the morale, in the coming generation of +English women. + +I am sorry to say that, as yet, I hear of but one movement in this +direction among the promoters of the "higher education of women." +{8} I trust that the subject will be taken up methodically by +those gifted ladies, who have acquainted themselves, and are +labouring to acquaint other women, with the first principles of +health; and that they may avail to prevent the coming generations, +under the unwholesome stimulant of competitive examinations, and +so forth, from "developing" into so many Chinese--dwarfs--or +idiots. + +October, 1873. + + + +THE AIR-MOTHERS--1869--Die Natur ist die Bewegung + + + +Who are these who follow us softly over the moor in the autumn +eve? Their wings brush and rustle in the fir-boughs, and they +whisper before us and behind, as if they called gently to each +other, like birds flocking homeward to their nests. + +The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for +joy as they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and +wheel round and tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak +trees know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. +And in the chattering of the dry leaves there is a meaning, and a +cry of weary things which long for rest. + +"Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers +the sunbeams are grown dull. Our green summer beauty is all +draggled, and our faces are grown wan and wan; and the buds, the +children whom we nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our +seats. Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings to the +quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all things go, and +become air and sunlight once again." + +And the bold young fir-seeds know them, and rattle impatient in +their cones. "Blow stronger, blow fiercer, slow air-mothers, and +shake us from our prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spin +away north-eastward, each on his horny wing. Help us but to touch +the moorland yonder, and we will take good care of ourselves +henceforth; we will dive like arrows through the heather, and +drive our sharp beaks into the soil, and rise again as green trees +toward the sunlight, and spread out lusty boughs." + +They never think, bold fools, of what is coming to bring them low +in the midst of their pride; of the reckless axe which will fell +them, and the saw which will shape them into logs; and the trains +which will roar and rattle over them, as they lie buried in the +gravel of the way, till they are ground and rotted into powder, +and dug up and flung upon the fire, that they too may return home, +like all things, and become air and sunlight once again. + +And the air-mothers hear their prayers, and do their bidding: but +faintly; for they themselves are tired and sad. + +Tired and sad are the air-mothers, and their gardens rent and wan. +Look at them as they stream over the black forest, before the dim +south-western sun; long lines and wreaths of melancholy grey, +stained with dull yellow or dead dun. They have come far across +the seas, and done many a wild deed upon their way; and now that +they have reached the land, like shipwrecked sailors, they will +lie down and weep till they can weep no more. + +Ah, how different were those soft air-mothers when, invisible to +mortal eyes, they started on their long sky-journey, five thousand +miles across the sea! Out of the blazing caldron which lies +between the two New Worlds, they leapt up when the great sun +called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam; and rushed +of their own passion to the northward, while the whirling earth- +ball whirled them east. So north-eastward they rushed aloft, +across the gay West Indian isles, leaving below the glitter of the +flying-fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks; above the +cane-fields and the plantain-gardens, and the cocoa-groves which +fringe the shores; above the rocks which throbbed with +earthquakes, and the peaks of old volcanoes, cinder-strewn; while, +far beneath, the ghosts of their dead sisters hurried home upon +the north-east breeze. + +Wild deeds they did as they rushed onward, and struggled and +fought among themselves, up and down, and round and backward, in +the fury of their blind hot youth. They heeded not the tree as +they snapped it, nor the ship as they whelmed it in the waves; nor +the cry of the sinking sailor, nor the need of his little ones on +shore; hasty and selfish even as children, and, like children, +tamed by their own rage. For they tired themselves by struggling +with each other, and by tearing the heavy water into waves; and +their wings grew clogged with sea-spray, and soaked more and more +with steam. But at last the sea grew cold beneath them, and their +clear steam shrank to mist; and they saw themselves and each other +wrapped in dull rain-laden clouds. Then they drew their white +cloud-garments round them, and veiled themselves for very shame; +and said: "We have been wild and wayward; and, alas! our pure +bright youth is gone. But we will do one good deed yet ere we +die, and so we shall not have lived in vain. We will glide onward +to the land, and weep there; and refresh all things with soft warm +rain; and make the grass grow, the buds burst; quench the thirst +of man and beast, and wash the soiled world clean." + +So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves +into their graves; to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and +weep the soil into the plains; to get the rich earth ready for the +winter, and then creep northward to the ice-world, and there die. + +Weary, and still more weary, slowly and more slowly still, they +will journey on far northward, across fast-chilling seas. For a +doom is laid upon them, never to be still again, till they rest at +the North Pole itself, the still axle of the spinning world; and +sink in death around it, and become white snow-clad ghosts. + +But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers? Yes, they +must live again. For all things move for ever; and not even +ghosts can rest. So the corpses of their sisters, piling on them +from above, press them outward, press them southward toward the +sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping +tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices, +and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the +cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black north-east, +bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to +their father, the great sun. + +But as they fly southwards, warm life thrills them, and they drop +their loads of sleet and snow; and meet their young live sisters +from the south, and greet them with flash and thunder-peal. And, +please God, before many weeks are over, as we run Westward-Ho, we +shall overtake the ghosts of these air-mothers, hurrying back +toward their father, the great sun. Fresh and bright under the +fresh bright heaven, they will race with us toward our home, to +gain new heat, new life, new power, and set forth about their work +once more. Men call them the south-west wind, those air-mothers; +and their ghosts the north-east trade; and value them, and +rightly, because they bear the traders out and home across the +sea. But wise men, and little children, should look on them with +more seeing eyes; and say, "May not these winds be living +creatures? They, too, are thoughts of God, to whom all live." + +For is not our life like their life? Do we not come and go as +they? Out of God's boundless bosom, the fount of life, we came; +through selfish, stormy youth and contrite tears--just not too +late; through manhood not altogether useless; through slow and +chill old age, we return from Whence we came; to the Bosom of God +once more--to go forth again, it may be, with fresh knowledge, and +fresh powers, to nobler work. Amen. + +Such was the prophecy which I learnt, or seemed to learn, from the +south-western wind off the Atlantic, on a certain delectable +evening. And it was fulfilled at night, as far as the gentle air- +mothers could fulfil it, for foolish man. + + +There was a roaring in the woods all night; +The rain came heavily and fell in floods; +But now the sun is rising calm and bright, +The birds are singing in the distant woods; +Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods, +The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, +And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. + + +But was I a gloomy and distempered man, if, upon such a morn as +that, I stood on the little bridge across a certain brook, and +watched the water run, with something of a sigh? Or if, when the +schoolboy beside me lamented that the floods would surely be out, +and his day's fishing spoiled, I said to him--"Ah, my boy, that is +a little matter. Look at what you are seeing now, and understand +what barbarism and waste mean. Look at all that beautiful water +which God has sent us hither off the Atlantic, without trouble or +expense to us. Thousands, and tens of thousands, of gallons will +run under this bridge to-day; and what shall we do with it? +Nothing. And yet: think only of the mills which that water would +have turned. Think how it might have kept up health and +cleanliness in poor creatures packed away in the back streets of +the nearest town, or even in London itself. Think even how +country folks, in many parts of England, in three months' time, +may be crying out for rain, and afraid of short crops, and fever, +and scarlatina, and cattle-plague, for want of the very water +which we are now letting run back, wasted, into the sea from +whence it came. And yet we call ourselves a civilised people." + +It is not wise, I know, to preach to boys. And yet, sometimes, a +man must speak his heart; even, like Midas's slave, to the reeds +by the river side. And I had so often, fishing up and down full +many a stream, whispered my story to those same river-reeds; and +told them that my Lord the Sovereign Demos had, like old Midas, +asses' ears in spite of all his gold, that I thought I might for +once tell it the boy likewise, in hope that he might help his +generation to mend that which my own generation does not seem like +to mend. + +I might have said more to him: but did not. For it is not well +to destroy too early the child's illusion, that people must be +wise because they are grown up, and have votes, and rule--or think +they rule--the world. The child will find out how true that is +soon enough for himself. If the truth be forced on him by the hot +words of those with whom he lives, it is apt to breed in him that +contempt, stormful and therefore barren, which makes revolutions; +and not that pity, calm and therefore helpful, which makes +reforms. + +So I might have said to him, but did not - +And then men pray for rain: + +My boy, did you ever hear the old Eastern legend about the +Gipsies? How they were such good musicians, that some great +Indian Sultan sent for the whole tribe, and planted them near his +palace, and gave them land, and ploughs to break it up, and seed +to sow it, that they might dwell there, and play and sing to him. + +But when the winter arrived, the Gipsies all came to the Sultan, +and cried that they were starving. "But what have you done with +the seed-corn which I gave you?" "O Light of the Age, we ate it +in the summer." "And what have you done with the ploughs which I +gave you?" "O Glory of the Universe, we burnt them to bake the +corn withal." + +Then said that great Sultan--"Like the butterflies you have lived; +and like the butterflies you shall wander." So he drove them out. +And that is how the Gipsies came hither from the East. + +Now suppose that the Sultan of all Sultans, who sends the rain, +should make a like answer to us foolish human beings, when we +prayed for rain: "But what have you done with the rain which I +gave you six months since?" "We have let it run into the sea." +"Then, ere you ask for more rain, make places wherein you can keep +it when you have it." "But that would be, in most cases, too +expensive. We can employ our capital more profitably in other +directions." + +It is not for me to say what answer might be made to such an +excuse. I think a child's still unsophisticated sense of right +and wrong would soon supply one; and probably one--considering the +complexity, and difficulty, and novelty, of the whole question-- +somewhat too harsh; as children's judgments are wont to be. + +But would it not be well if our children, without being taught to +blame anyone for what is past, were taught something about what +ought to be done now, what must be done soon, with the rainfall of +these islands; and about other and kindred health-questions, on +the solution of which depends, and will depend more and more, the +life of millions? One would have thought that those public +schools and colleges which desire to monopolise the education of +the owners of the soil; of the great employers of labour; of the +clergy; and of all, indeed, who ought to be acquainted with the +duties of property, the conditions of public health, and, in a +word, with the general laws of what is now called Social Science-- +one would have thought, I say, that these public schools and +colleges would have taught their scholars somewhat at least about +such matters, that they might go forth into life with at least +some rough notions of the causes which make people healthy or +unhealthy, rich or poor, comfortable or wretched, useful or +dangerous to the State. But as long as our great educational +institutions, safe, or fancying themselves safe, in some enchanted +castle, shut out by ancient magic from the living world, put a +premium on Latin and Greek verses: a wise father will, during the +holidays, talk now and then, I hope, somewhat after this fashion: + +"You must understand, my boy, that all the water in the country +comes out of the sky, and from nowhere else; and that, therefore, +to save and store the water when it falls is a question of life +and death to crops, and man, and beast; for with or without water +is life or death. If I took, for instance, the water from the +moors above and turned it over yonder field, I could double, and +more than double, the crops in that field, henceforth." + +"Then why do I not do it?" + +"Only because the field lies higher than the house; and if--now +here is one thing which you and every civilised man should know-- +if you have water-meadows, or any 'irrigated' land, as it is +called, above a house, or, even on a level with it, it is certain +to breed not merely cold and damp, but fever or ague. Our +forefathers did not understand this; and they built their houses, +as this is built, in the lowest places they could find: sometimes +because they wanted to be near ponds, from whence they could get +fish in Lent; but more often, I think, because they wanted to be +sheltered from the wind. They had no glass, as we have, in their +windows, or, at least, only latticed casements, which let in the +wind and cold; and they shrank from high and exposed, and +therefore really healthy, spots. But now that we have good glass, +and sash windows, and doors that will shut tight, we can build +warm houses where we like. And if you ever have to do with the +building of cottages, remember that it is your duty to the people +who will live in them, and therefore to the State, to see that +they stand high and dry, where no water can drain down into their +foundations, and where fog, and the poisonous gases which are +given out by rotting vegetables, cannot drain down either. You +will learn more about all that when you learn, as every civilised +lad should in these days, something about chemistry, and the laws +of fluids and gases. But you know already that flowers are cut +off by frost in the low grounds sooner than in the high; and that +the fog at night always lies along the brooks; and that the sour +moor-smell which warns us to shut our windows at sunset, comes +down from the hill, and not up from the valley. Now all these +things are caused by one and the same law; that cold air is +heavier than warm; and, therefore, like so much water, must run +down-hill." + +"But what about the rainfall?" + +"Well, I have wandered a little from the rainfall: though not as +far as you fancy; for fever and ague and rheumatism usually mean-- +rain in the wrong place. But if you knew how much illness, and +torturing pain, and death, and sorrow arise, even to this very +day, from ignorance of these simple laws, then you would bear them +carefully in mind, and wish to know more about them. But now for +water being life to the beasts. Do you remember--though you are +hardly old enough--the cattle-plague? How the beasts died, or had +to be killed and buried, by tens of thousands; and how misery and +ruin fell on hundreds of honest men and women over many of the +richest counties of England: but how we in this vale had no +cattle-plague; and how there was none--as far as I recollect--in +the uplands of Devon and Cornwall, nor of Wales, nor of the Scotch +Highlands? Now, do you know why that was? Simply because we +here, like those other up-landers, are in such a country as +Palestine was before the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, +and so destroyed their own rainfall--a 'land of brooks of water, +of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.' +There is hardly a field here that has not, thank God, its running +brook, or its sweet spring, from which our cattle were drinking +their health and life, while in the clay-lands of Cheshire, and in +the Cambridgeshire fens--which were drained utterly dry--the poor +things drank no water, too often, save that of the very same +putrid ponds in which they had been standing all day long, to cool +themselves, and to keep off the flies. I do not say, of course, +that bad water caused the cattle-plague. It came by infection +from the East of Europe. But I say that bad water made the cattle +ready to take it, and made it spread over the country; and when +you are old enough I will give you plenty of proof--some from the +herds of your own kinsmen--that what I say is true." + +"And as for pure water being life to human beings: why have we +never fever here, and scarcely ever diseases like fever--zymotics, +as the doctors call them? Or, if a case comes into our parish +from outside, why does the fever never spread? For the very same +reason that we had no cattle-plague. Because we have more pure +water close to every cottage than we need. And this I tell you: +that the only two outbreaks of deadly disease which we have had +here for thirty years, were both of them, as far as I could see, +to be traced to filthy water having got into the poor folks' +wells. Water, you must remember, just as it is life when pure, is +death when foul. For it can carry, unseen to the eve, and even +when it looks clear and sparkling, and tastes soft and sweet, +poisons which have perhaps killed more human beings than ever were +killed in battle. You have read, perhaps, how the Athenians, when +they were dying of the plague, accused the Lacedaemonians outside +the walls of poisoning their wells; or how, in some of the +pestilences of the Middle Ages, the common people used to accuse +the poor harmless Jews of poisoning the wells, and set upon them +and murdered them horribly. They were right, I do not doubt, in +their notion that the well-water was giving them the pestilence: +but they had not sense to see that they were poisoning the wells +themselves by their dirt and carelessness; or, in the case of poor +besieged Athens, probably by mere overcrowding, which has cost +many a life ere now, and will cost more. And I am sorry to tell +you, my little man, that even now too many people have no more +sense than they had, and die in consequence. If you could see a +battle-field, and men shot down, writhing and dying in hundreds by +shell and bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight? +Then--I do not wish to make you sad too early, but this is a fact +that everyone should know--that more people, and not strong men +only, but women and little children too, are killed and wounded in +Great Britain every year by bad water and want of water together, +than were killed and wounded in any battle which has been fought +since you were born. Medical men know this well. And when you +are older, you may see it for yourself in the Registrar-General's +reports, blue-books, pamphlets, and so on, without end." + +"But why do not people stop such a horrible loss of life?" + +"Well, my dear boy, the true causes of it have only been known for +the last thirty or forty years; and we English are, as good King +Alfred found us to his sorrow a thousand years ago, very slow to +move, even when we see a thing ought to be done. Let us hope that +in this matter--we have been so in most matters as yet--we shall +be like the tortoise in the fable, and not the hare; and by moving +slowly, but surely, win the race at last." + +"But now think for yourself: and see what you would do to save +these people from being poisoned by bad water. Remember that the +plain question is this: The rain-water comes down from heaven as +water, and nothing but water. Rain-water is the only pure water, +after all. How would you save that for the poor people who have +none? There; run away and hunt rabbits on the moor: but look, +meanwhile, how you would save some of this beautiful and precious +water which is roaring away into the sea." + +* * * + +"Well? What would you do? Make ponds, you say, like the old +monks' ponds, now all broken down. Dam all the glens across their +mouths, and turn them into reservoirs." + +"'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings'--Well, that will have +to be done. That is being done more and more, more or less well. +The good people of Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good +people of Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it, +and have saved many a human life thereby already. But it must be +done, some day, all over England and Wales, and great part of +Scotland. For the mountain tops and moors, my boy, by a beautiful +law of nature, compensate for their own poverty by yielding a +wealth which the rich lowlands cannot yield. You do not +understand? Then see. Yon moor above can grow neither corn nor +grass. But one thing it can grow, and does grow, without which we +should have no corn nor grass, and that is--water. Not only does +far more rain fall up there than falls here down below, but even +in drought the high moors condense the moisture into dew, and so +yield some water, even when the lowlands are burnt up with +drought. The reason of that you must learn hereafter. That it is +so, you should know yourself. For on the high chalk downs, you +know, where farmers make a sheep-pond, they never, if they are +wise, make it in a valley or on a hillside, but on the bleakest +top of the very highest down; and there, if they can once get it +filled with snow and rain in winter, the blessed dews of night +will keep some water in it all the summer through, while the ponds +below are utterly dried up. And even so it is, as I know, with +this very moor. Corn and grass it will not grow, because there is +too little 'staple,' that is, soluble minerals, in the sandy soil. +But how much water it might grow, you may judge roughly for +yourself, by remembering how many brooks like this are running off +it now to carry mere dirt into the river, and then into the sea." + +"But why should we not make dams at once; and save the water?" + +"Because we cannot afford it. No one would buy the water when we +had stored it. The rich in town and country will always take +care--and quite right they are--to have water enough for +themselves, and for their servants too, whatever it may cost them. +But the poorer people are--and therefore usually, alas! the more +ignorant--the less water they get; and the less they care to have +water; and the less they are inclined to pay for it; and the more, +I am sorry to say, they waste what little they do get; and I am +still more sorry to say, spoil, and even steal and sell--in London +at least--the stop-cocks and lead-pipes which bring the water into +their houses. So that keeping a water-shop is a very troublesome +and uncertain business; and one which is not likely to pay us or +anyone round here." + +"But why not let some company manage it, as they manage railways, +and gas, and other things?" + +"Ah--you have been overhearing a good deal about companies of +late, I see. But this I will tell you; that when you grow up, and +have a vote and influence, it will be your duty, if you intend to +be a good citizen, not only not to put the water-supply of England +into the hands of fresh companies, but to help to take out of +their hands what water-supply they manage already, especially in +London; and likewise the gas-supply; and the railroads; and +everything else, in a word, which everybody uses, and must use. +For you must understand--at least as soon as you can--that though +the men who make up companies are no worse than other men, and +some of them, as you ought to know, very good men; yet what they +have to look to is their profits; and the less water they supply, +and the worse it is, the more profit they make. For most water, I +am sorry to say, is fouled before the water companies can get to +it, as this water which runs past us will be, and as the Thames +water above London is. Therefore it has to be cleansed, or partly +cleansed, at a very great expense. So water companies have to be +inspected--in plain English, watched--at a very heavy expense to +the nation by Government officers; and compelled to do their best, +and take their utmost care. And so it has come to pass that the +London water is not now nearly as bad as some of it was thirty +years ago, when it was no more fit to drink than that in the +cattle-yard tank. But still we must have more water, and better, +in London; for it is growing year by year. There are more than +three millions of people already in what we call London; and ere +you are an old man there may be between four and five millions. +Now to supply all these people with water is a duty which we must +not leave to any private companies. It must be done by a public +authority, as is fit and proper in a free self-governing country. +In this matter, as in all others, we will try to do what the Royal +Commission told us four years ago we ought to do. I hope that you +will see, though I may not, the day when what we call London, but +which is really nine-tenths of it, only a great nest of separate +villages huddled together, will be divided into three great self- +governing cities, London, Westminster, and Southwark; each with +its own corporation, like that of the venerable and well-governed +city of London; each managing its own water-supply, gas-supply, +and sewage, and other matters besides; and managing them, like +Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and other great northern +towns, far more cheaply and far better than any companies can do +it for them." + +"But where shall we get water enough for all these millions of +people? There are no mountains near London. But we might give +them the water off our moors." + +"No, no, my boy, + + +"He that will not when he may, +When he will, he shall have nay. + + +Some fifteen years ago the Londoners might have had water from us; +and I was one of those who did my best to get it for them: but +the water companies did not choose to take it; and now this part +of England is growing so populous and so valuable that it wants +all its little rainfall for itself. So there is another leaf torn +out of the Sibylline books for the poor old water companies. You +do not understand: you will some day. But you may comfort +yourself about London. For it happens to be, I think, the +luckiest city in the world; and if it had not been, we should have +had pestilence on pestilence in it, as terrible as the great +plague of Charles II.'s time. The old Britons, without knowing in +the least what they were doing, settled old London city in the +very centre of the most wonderful natural reservoir in this +island, or perhaps in all Europe; which reaches from Kent into +Wiltshire, and round again into Suffolk; and that is, the dear old +chalk downs." + +"Why, they are always dry." + +"Yes. But the turf on them never burns up, and the streams which +flow through them never run dry, and seldom or never flood either. +Do you not know, from Winchester, that that is true? Then where +is all the rain and snow gone, which falls on them year by year, +but into the chalk itself, and into the green-sands, too, below +the chalk? There it is, soaked up as by a sponge, in quantity +incalculable; enough, some think, to supply London, let it grow as +huge as it may. I wish I too were sure of that. But the +Commission has shown itself so wise and fair, and brave likewise-- +too brave, I am sorry to say, for some who might have supported +them--that it is not for me to gainsay their opinion." + +"But if there was not water enough in the chalk, are not the +Londoners rich enough to bring it from any distance?" + +"My boy, in this also we will agree with the Commission--that we +ought not to rob Peter to pay Paul, and take water to a distance +which other people close at hand may want. Look at the map of +England and southern Scotland; and see for yourself what is just, +according to geography and nature. There are four mountain- +ranges; four great water-fields. First, the hills of the Border. +Their rainfall ought to be stored for the Lothians and the extreme +north of England. Then the Yorkshire and Derbyshire Hills--the +central chine of England. Their rainfall is being stored already, +to the honour of the shrewd northern men, for the manufacturing +counties east and west of the hills. Then come the Lake +mountains--the finest water-field of all, because more rain by far +falls there than in any place in England. But they will be wanted +to supply Lancashire, and some day Liverpool itself; for Liverpool +is now using rain which belongs more justly to other towns; and +besides, there are plenty of counties and towns, down into +Cheshire, which would be glad of what water Lancashire does not +want. At last come the Snowdon mountains, a noble water-field, +which I know well; for an old dream of mine has been, that ere I +died I should see all the rain of the Carnedds, and the Glyders, +and Siabod, and Snowdon itself, carried across the Conway river to +feed the mining districts of North Wales, where the streams are +now all foul with oil and lead; and then on into the western coal +and iron fields, to Wolverhampton and Birmingham itself: and if I +were the engineer who got that done, I should be happier--prouder +I dare not say--than if I had painted nobler pictures than +Raffaelle, or written nobler plays than Shakespeare. I say that, +boy, in most deliberate earnest. But meanwhile, do you not see +that in districts where coal and iron may be found, and fresh +manufactures may spring up any day in any place, each district has +a right to claim the nearest rainfall for itself? And now, when +we have got the water into its proper place, let us see what we +shall do with it." + +"But why do you say 'we'? Can you and I do all this?" + +"My boy, are not you and I free citizens; part of the people, the +Commons--as the good old word runs--of this country? And are we +not--or ought we not to be in time--beside that, educated men? By +the people, remember, I mean, not only the hand-working man who +has just got a vote; I mean the clergy of all denominations; and +the gentlemen of the press; and last, but not least, the +scientific men. If those four classes together were to tell every +government--'Free water we will have, and as much as we reasonably +choose;' and tell every candidate for the House of Commons: +'Unless you promise to get us as much free water as we reasonably +choose, we will not return you to Parliament:' then, I think, we +four should put such a 'pressure' on Government as no water +companies, or other vested interests, could long resist. And if +any of those four classes should hang back, and waste their time +and influence over matters far less important and less pressing, +the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; +and ask them: 'Why have you education, why have you influence, +why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to +preserve the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, +women, and children--most of those latter your own wives and your +own children?'" + +"But what shall we do with the water?" + +"Well, after all, that is a more practical matter than +speculations grounded on the supposition that all classes will do +their duty. But the first thing we will do will be to give to the +very poorest houses a constant supply, at high pressure; so that +everybody may take as much water as he likes, instead of having to +keep the water in little cisterns, where it gets foul and putrid +only too often." + +"But will they not waste it then?" + +"So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high +pressure, the waste, which is terrible now--some say that in +London one-third of the water is wasted--begins to lessen; and +both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you +will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap +running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She +will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to +draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would +not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house +would have been washed away." + +"But if it saves money, why do not the water companies do it?" + +"Because--and really here there are many excuses for the poor old +water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very +mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a +load which he feels is too heavy for him--because, to keep +everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken +people, there must be officers with lawful authority--water- +policemen we will call them--who can enter people's houses when +they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it +to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who have +set it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country, must +never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to +the officers of a corporation or of the Government." + +"And what shall we do with the rest of the water?" + +"Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at +least do this: In each district of each city, and the centre of +each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor +men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now +they usually never bathe at all, because they will not--and ought +not, if they be hard-worked folk--bathe in cold water during nine +months of the year. And there they shall wash their clothes, and +dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either +under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too +often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul +vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the +children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes +from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you +will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they +shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public +lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well +as merely useful. Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of +each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains-- +though they are great and needful boons--which you see here and +there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great +deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, +and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, +and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the +sweetest of all earthly songs--save the song of a mother over her +child--the song of 'The Laughing Water.'" + +"But will not that be a waste?" + +"Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, +will have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and +corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that +they all--save Her Majesty the Queen--are our servants, and not we +theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash with, +but to play with, if we like. And I believe--for the world, as +you will find, is full not only of just but of generous souls-- +that if the water-supply were set really right, there would be +found, in many a city, many a generous man who, over and above his +compulsory water-rate, would give his poor fellow-townsmen such a +real fountain as those which ennoble the great square at +Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be 'a thing of +beauty and a joy for ever.'" + +"And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and Greek, you +shall translate for me into Latin--I do not expect you to do it +into Greek, though it would turn very well into Greek, for the +Greeks know all about the matter long before the Romans--what +follows here; and you shall verify the facts and the names, etc., +in it from your dictionaries of antiquity and biography, that you +may remember all the better what it says. And by that time, I +think, you will have learnt something more useful to yourself, +and, I hope, to your country hereafter, than if you had learnt to +patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses which have +appeared since the days of Mr. Canning." + +* * * + +I have often amused myself, by fancying one question which an old +Roman emperor would ask, were he to rise from his grave and visit +the sights of London under the guidance of some minister of state. +The august shade would, doubtless, admire our railroads and +bridges, our cathedrals and our public parks, and much more of +which we need not be ashamed. But after awhile, I think, he would +look round, whether in London or in most of our great cities, +inquiringly and in vain, for one class of buildings, which in his +empire were wont to be almost as conspicuous and as splendid, +because, in public opinion, almost as necessary, as the basilicas +and temples: "And where," he would ask, "are your public baths?" +And if the minister of state who was his guide should answer: "Oh +great Caesar, I really do not know. I believe there are some +somewhere at the back of that ugly building which we call the +National Gallery; and I think there have been some meetings lately +in the East End, and an amateur concert at the Albert Hall, for +restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in +Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or +three more about the metropolis; for parish vestries have powers +by Act of Parliament to establish such places, if they think fit, +and choose to pay for them out of the rates." Then, I think, the +august shade might well make answer: "We used to call you, in old +Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all +your barbarian habits. Are you aware that, in every city in the +Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths +open, not only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually +for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often +gratuitously? Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire +after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from Menenius Agrippa +and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet +more baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise, +lecture-rooms, libraries, and porticoes, wherein the people might +have shade, and shelter, and rest? I remark, by-the-bye, that I +have not seen in all your London a single covered place in which +the people may take shelter during a shower. Are you aware that +these baths were of the most magnificent architecture, decorated +with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains, what not? And yet +I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here +on the study of the learned languages; and, indeed, taught little +but Greek and Latin at your public schools?" + +Then, if the minister should make reply: "Oh yes, we know all +this. Even since the revival of letters in the end of the +fifteenth century a whole literature has been written--a great +deal of it, I fear, by pedants who seldom washed even their hands +and faces--about your Greek and Roman baths. We visit their +colossal ruins in Italy and elsewhere with awe and admiration; and +the discovery of a new Roman bath in any old city of our isles +sets all our antiquaries buzzing with interest." + +"Then why," the shade might ask, "do you not copy an example which +you so much admire? Surely England must be much in want, either +of water, or of fuel to heat it with?" + +"On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so +damp that we have had to invent a whole art of subsoil drainage +unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coal-mines make us the +great fuel-exporting people of the world." + +What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Constantine as he +replied: "Not in vain, as I said, did we call you, some fifteen +hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good +barbarian, whom I know to be both brave and wise--for the fame of +your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below, +and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us +Romans than any which has appeared on earth for many centuries-- +how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the +people clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us? When +your ancestors entered our armies, and rose, some of them, to be +great generals, and even emperors, like those two Teuton peasants, +Justin and Justinian, who, long after my days, reigned in my own +Constantinople: then, at least, you saw baths, and used them; and +felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men, and not +'sordidi ac foetentes,' as we used to call you when fresh out of +your bullock-waggons and cattle-pens. How is it that you have +forgotten that lesson?" + +The minister, I fear, would have to answer that our ancestors were +barbarous enough, not only to destroy the Roman cities, and +temples, and basilicas, and statues, but the Roman baths likewise; +and then retired, each man to his own freehold in the country, to +live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of +the swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a +right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in England, but +throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin +priesthood, who, in some respects, were--to their honour--the +representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its +remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that +they looked on personal dirt--like the old hermits of the Thebaid- +-as a sign of sanctity; and discouraged--as they are said to do +still in some of the Romance countries of Europe--the use of the +bath, as not only luxurious, but also indecent. + +At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip +of the august shade, as he said to himself: "This, at least, I +did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my +empire. But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do not +look on dirt as a sign of sanctity?" + +"On the contrary, sire, the upper classes of our empire boast of +being the cleanliest--perhaps the only perfectly cleanly--people +in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas. +And dirt is so far from being a thing which we admire, that our +scientific men--than whom the world has never seen wiser--have +proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the +fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery, and +recklessness." + +"And, therefore," replies the shade, ere he disappears, "of +discontent and revolution: followed by a tyranny endured, as in +Rome and many another place, by men once free; because tyranny +will at least do for them what they are too lazy, and cowardly, +and greedy, to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you +seem likely to prosper, on the whole. But if you wish me to +consider you a civilised nation: let me hear that you have +brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be they a +thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest mountains, be they +five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirt--and +your own shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a +Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their +sins, built baths, and kept their people clean. But do your +gymnasia--your schools and universities, teach your youth naught +about all this?" + + + +THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE + + + +The more I have contemplated that ancient story of the Fall, the +more it has seemed to me within the range of probability, and even +of experience. It must have happened somewhere for the first +time; for it has happened only too many times since. It has +happened, as far as I can ascertain, in every race, and every age, +and every grade of civilisation. It is happening round us now in +every region of the globe. Always and everywhere, it seems to me, +have poor human beings been tempted to eat of some "tree of +knowledge," that they may be, even for an hour, as gods; wise, but +with a false wisdom; careless, but with a frantic carelessness; +and happy, but with a happiness which, when the excitement is +past, leaves too often--as with that hapless pair in Eden-- +depression, shame, and fear. Everywhere, and in all ages, as far +as I can ascertain, has man been inventing stimulants and +narcotics to supply that want of vitality of which he is so +painfully aware; and has asked nature, and not God, to clear the +dull brain, and comfort the weary spirit. + +This has been, and will be perhaps for many a century to come, +almost the most fearful failing of this poor, exceptional, over- +organised, diseased, and truly fallen being called Man, who is in +doubt daily whether he be a god or an ape; and in trying wildly to +become the former, ends but too often in becoming the latter. + +For man, whether savage or civilised, feels, and has felt in every +age, that there is something wrong with him. He usually confesses +this fact--as is to be expected--of his fellow-men, rather than of +himself; and shows his sense that there is something wrong with +them by complaining of, hating, and killing them. But he cannot +always conceal from himself the fact that he, too, is wrong, as +well as they; and as he will not usually kill himself, he tries +wild ways to make himself at least feel--if not to be--somewhat +"better." Philosophers may bid him be content; and tell him that +he is what he ought to be, and what nature has made him. But he +cares nothing for the philosophers. He knows, usually, that he is +not what he ought to be; that he carries about with him, in most +cases, a body more or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of +doing all the work which he feels that he himself could do, or +expressing all the emotions which he himself longs to express; a +dull brain and dull senses, which cramp the eager infinity within +him; as--so Goethe once said with pity--the horse's single hoof +cramps the fine intelligence and generosity of his nature, and +forbids him even to grasp an object, like the more stupid cat, and +baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within, from which he +longs too often to escape, as from a household ghost; who pulls +out, at unfortunately rude and unwelcome hours, the ledger of +memory. And so when the tempter--be he who he may--says to him, +"Take this, and you will 'feel better.' Take this, and you shall +be as gods, knowing good and evil:" then, if the temptation was, +as the old story says, too much for man while healthy and +unfallen, what must it be for his unhealthy and fallen children? + +In vain we say to man: + + +'Tis life, not death, for which you pant; +'Tis life, whereof your nerves are scant; +More life, and fuller, that you want. + + +And your tree of knowledge is not the tree of life: it is in +every case, the tree of death; of decrepitude, madness, misery. +He prefers the voice of the tempter: "Thou shalt not surely die." +Nay, he will say at last: "Better be as gods awhile, and die: +than be the crawling, insufficient thing I am; and live." + +He--did I say? Alas! I must say she likewise. The sacred story +is only too true to fact, when it represents the woman as falling, +not merely at the same time as the man, but before the man. Only +let us remember that it represents the woman as tempted; tempted, +seemingly, by a rational being, of lower race, and yet of superior +cunning; who must, therefore, have fallen before the woman. Who +or what the being was, who is called the Serpent in our +translation of Genesis, it is not for me to say. We have +absolutely, I think, no facts from which to judge; and Rabbinical +traditions need trouble no man much. But I fancy that a +missionary, preaching on this story to Negroes; telling them +plainly that the "Serpent" meant the first Obeah man; and then +comparing the experiences of that hapless pair in Eden, with their +own after certain orgies not yet extinct in Africa and elsewhere, +would be only too well understood: so well, indeed, that he might +run some risk of eating himself, not of the tree of life, but of +that of death. The sorcerer or sorceress tempting the woman; and +then the woman tempting the man; this seems to be, certainly among +savage peoples, and, alas! too often among civilised peoples also, +the usual course of the world-wide tragedy. + +But--paradoxical as it may seem--the woman's yielding before the +man is not altogether to her dishonour, as those old monks used to +allege who hated, and too often tortured, the sex whom they could +not enjoy. It is not to the woman's dishonour, if she felt, +before her husband, higher aspirations than those after mere +animal pleasure. To be as gods, knowing good and evil, is a vain +and foolish, but not a base and brutal, wish. She proved herself +thereby--though at an awful cost--a woman, and not an animal. And +indeed the woman's more delicate organisation, her more vivid +emotions, her more voluble fancy, as well as her mere physical +weakness and weariness, have been to her, in all ages, a special +source of temptation; which it is to her honour that she has +resisted so much better than the physically stronger, and +therefore more culpable, man. + +As for what the tree of knowledge was, there really is no need for +us to waste our time in guessing. If it was not one plant, then +it was another. It may have been something which has long since +perished off the earth. It may have been--as some learned men +have guessed--the sacred Soma, or Homa, of the early Brahmin race; +and that may have been a still existing narcotic species of +Asclepias. It certainly was not the vine. The language of the +Hebrew Scripture concerning it, and the sacred use to which it is +consecrated in the Gospels, forbid that notion utterly; at least +to those who know enough of antiquity to pass by, with a smile, +the theory that the wines mentioned in Scripture were not +intoxicating. And yet--as a fresh corroboration of what I am +trying to say--how fearfully has that noble gift to man been +abused for the same end as a hundred other vegetable products, +ever since those mythic days when Dionusos brought the vine from +the far East, amid troops of human Maenads and half-human Satyrs; +and the Bacchae tore Pentheus in pieces on Cithaeron, for daring +to intrude upon their sacred rites; and since those historic days, +too, when, less than two hundred years before the Christian era, +the Bacchic rites spread from Southern Italy into Etruria, and +thence to the matrons of Rome; and under the guidance of Poenia +Annia, a Campanian lady, took at last shapes of which no man must +speak, but which had to be put down with terrible but just +severity, by the Consuls and the Senate. + +But it matters little, I say, what this same tree of knowledge +was. Was every vine on earth destroyed to-morrow, and every +vegetable also from which alcohol is now distilled, man would soon +discover something else wherewith to satisfy the insatiate +craving. Has he not done so already? Has not almost every people +had its tree of knowledge, often more deadly than any distilled +liquor, from the absinthe of the cultivated Frenchman, and the +opium of the cultivated Chinese, down to the bush-poisons +wherewith the tropic sorcerer initiates his dupes into the +knowledge of good and evil, and the fungus from which the Samoiede +extracts in autumn a few days of brutal happiness, before the +setting in of the long six months' night? God grant that modern +science may not bring to light fresh substitutes for alcohol, +opium, and the rest; and give the white races, in that state of +effeminate and godless quasi-civilisation which I sometimes fear +is creeping upon them, fresh means of destroying themselves +delicately and pleasantly off the face of the earth. + +It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this +island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it +possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase. +Overwork of body and mind; circumstances which depress health; +temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the +streets; and finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of +uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too often not the +means, of spending it in any save the lowest pleasures. These, it +seems to me, are the true causes of drunkenness, increasing or +not. And if we wish to become a more temperate nation, we must +lessen them, if we cannot eradicate them. + +First, overwork. We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All +things are full of labour, man cannot utter it." In the heavy +struggle for existence which goes on all around us, each man is +tasked more and more--if he be really worth buying and using--to +the utmost of his powers all day long. The weak have to compete +on equal terms with the strong; and crave, in consequence, for +artificial strength. How we shall stop that I know not, while +every man is "making haste to be rich, and piercing himself +through with many sorrows, and falling into foolish and hurtful +lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." How we +shall stop that, I say, I know not. The old prophet may have been +right when he said: "Surely it is not of the Lord that the people +shall labour in the very fire, and weary themselves for very +vanity;" and in some juster, wiser, more sober system of society-- +somewhat more like the Kingdom of The Father come on earth--it may +be that poor human beings will not need to toil so hard, and to +keep themselves up to their work by stimulants, but will have time +to sit down, and look around them, and think of God, and God's +quiet universe, with something of quiet in themselves; something +of rational leisure, and manful sobriety of mind, as well as of +body. + +But it seems to me also, that in such a state of society, when--as +it was once well put--"every one has stopped running about like +rats:"--that those who work hard, whether with muscle or with +brain, would not be surrounded, as now, with every circumstance +which tempts toward drink; by every circumstance which depresses +the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence +itself; by bad light, bad air, bad food, bad water, bad smells, +bad occupations, which weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, +disorder the digestion. Let any rational man, fresh from the +country--in which I presume God, having made it, meant all men, +more or less, to live--go through the back streets of any city, or +through whole districts of the "black countries" of England; and +then ask himself: Is it the will of God that His human children +should live and toil in such dens, such deserts, such dark places +of the earth? Lot him ask himself: Can they live and toil there +without contracting a probably diseased habit of body; without +contracting a certainly dull, weary, sordid habit of mind, which +craves for any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own +stupidity and emptiness? When I run through, by rail, certain +parts of the iron-producing country--streets of furnaces, +collieries, slag heaps, mud, slop, brick house-rows, smoke, dirt-- +and that is all; and when I am told, whether truly or falsely, +that the main thing which the well-paid and well-fed men of those +abominable wastes care for is--good fighting-dogs: I can only +answer, that I am not surprised. + +I say--as I have said elsewhere, and shall do my best to say it +again--that the craving for drink and narcotics, especially that +engendered in our great cities, is not a disease, but a symptom of +disease; of a far deeper disease than any which drunkenness can +produce; namely, of the growing degeneracy of a population +striving in vain by stimulants and narcotics to fight against +those slow poisons with which our greedy barbarism, miscalled +civilisation, has surrounded them from the cradle to the grave. I +may be answered that the old German, Angle, Dane, drank heavily. +I know it: but why did they drink, save for the same reason that +the fenman drank, and his wife took opium, at least till the fens +were drained? why but to keep off the depressing effects of the +malaria of swamps and new clearings, which told on them--who +always settled in the lowest grounds--in the shape of fever and +ague? Here it may be answered again that stimulants have been, +during the memory of man, the destruction of the Red Indian race +in America. I reply boldly that I do not believe it. There is +evidence enough in Jacques Cartier's "Voyages to the Rivers of +Canada;" and evidence more than enough in Strachey's "Travaile in +Virginia"--to quote only two authorities out of many--to prove +that the Red Indians, when the white man first met with them, +were, in North and South alike, a diseased, decaying, and, as all +their traditions confess, decreasing race. Such a race would +naturally crave for "the water of life," the "usquebagh," or +whisky, as we have contracted the old name now. But I should have +thought that the white man, by introducing among these poor +creatures iron, fire-arms, blankets, and above all, horses +wherewith to follow the buffalo-herds, which they could never +follow on foot, must have done ten times more towards keeping them +alive, than he has done towards destroying them by giving them the +chance of a week's drunkenness twice a year, when they came in to +his forts to sell the skins which, without his gifts, they would +never have got. + +Such a race would, of course, if wanting vitality, crave for +stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not the original want of +vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only +of the gallows--and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what +I know, from eye-witnesses--have been the cause of the Red +Indians' extinction, then how is it, let me ask, that the Irishman +and the Scotsman have, often to their great harm, been drinking as +much whisky--and usually very bad whisky--not merely twice a year, +but as often as they could get it, during the whole Iron Age, and, +for aught anyone can tell, during the Bronze Age, and the Stone +Age before that, and yet are still the most healthy, able, +valiant, and prolific races in Europe? Had they drunk less whisky +they would, doubtless, have been more healthy, able, valiant, and +perhaps even MORE prolific, than they are now. They show no sign, +however, as yet, of going the way of the Red Indian. + +But if the craving for stimulants and narcotics is a token of +deficient vitality, then the deadliest foe of that craving, and +all its miserable results, is surely the Sanatory Reformer; the +man who preaches, and--as far as ignorance and vested interests +will allow him, procures--for the masses, pure air, pure sunlight, +pure water, pure dwelling-houses, pure food. Not merely every +fresh drinking-fountain, but every fresh public bath and wash- +house, every fresh open space, every fresh growing tree, every +fresh open window, every fresh flower in that window--each of +these is so much, as the old Persians would have said, conquered +for Ormuzd, the god of light and life, out of the dominion of +Ahriman, the king of darkness and of death; so much taken from the +causes of drunkenness and disease, and added to the causes of +sobriety and health. + +Meanwhile one thing is clear: that if this present barbarism and +anarchy of covetousness, miscalled modern civilisation, were tamed +and drilled into something more like a Kingdom of God on earth, +then we should not see the reckless and needless multiplication of +liquor shops, which disgraces this country now. + +As a single instance: in one country parish of nine hundred +inhabitants, in which the population has increased only one-ninth +in the last fifty years, there are now practically eight public- +houses, where fifty years ago there were but two. One, that is, +for every hundred and ten--or rather, omitting children, farmers, +shop-keepers, gentlemen, and their households, one for every fifty +of the inhabitants. In the face of the allurements, often of the +basest kind, which these dens offer, the clergyman and the +schoolmaster struggle in vain to keep up night schools and young +men's clubs, and to inculcate habits of providence. + +The young labourers over a great part of the south and east, at +least of England--though never so well off, for several +generations, as they are now--are growing up thriftless, +shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in +everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their +grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth +clothes, instead of their grandfathers' smock-frocks. + +And if it be so in the country, how must it be in towns? There +must come a thorough change in the present licensing system, in +spite of all the "pressure" which certain powerful vested +interests may bring to bear on governments. And it is the duty of +every good citizen, who cares for his countrymen, and for their +children after them, to help in bringing about that change as +speedily as possible. + +Again: I said just now that a probable cause of increasing +drunkenness was the increasing material prosperity of thousands +who knew no recreation beyond low animal pleasure. If I am right- +-and I believe that I am right--I must urge on those who wish +drunkenness to decrease, the necessity of providing more, and more +refined, recreation for the people. + +Men drink, and women too, remember, not merely to supply +exhaustion, not merely to drive away care; but often simply to +drive away dulness. They have nothing to do save to think over +what they have done in the day, or what they expect to do to- +morrow; and they escape from that dreary round of business thought +in liquor or narcotics. There are still those, by no means of the +hand-working class, but absorbed all day by business, who drink +heavily at night in their own comfortable homes, simply to +recreate their over-burdened minds. Such cases, doubtless, are +far less common than they were fifty years ago: but why? Is not +the decrease of drinking among the richer classes certainly due to +the increased refinement and variety of their tastes and +occupations? In cultivating the aesthetic side of man's nature; +in engaging him with the beautiful, the pure, the wonderful, the +truly natural; with painting, poetry, music, horticulture, +physical science--in all this lies recreation, in the true and +literal sense of that word, namely, the re-creating and mending of +the exhausted mind and feelings, such as no rational man will now +neglect, either for himself, his children, or his workpeople. + +But how little of all this is open to the masses, all should know +but too well. How little opportunity the average hand-worker, or +his wife, has of eating of any tree of knowledge, save of the very +basest kind, is but too palpable. We are mending, thank God, in +this respect. Free libraries and museums have sprung up of late +in other cities beside London. God's blessing rest upon them all. +And the Crystal Palace, and still later, the Bethnal Green Museum, +have been, I believe, of far more use than many average sermons +and lectures from many average orators. + +But are we not still far behind the old Greeks, and the Romans of +the Empire likewise, in the amount of amusement and instruction, +and even of shelter, which we provide for the people? Recollect +the--to me--disgraceful fact, that there is not, as far as I am +aware, throughout the whole of London, a single portico or other +covered place, in which the people can take refuge during a +shower: and this in the climate of England! Where they do take +refuge on a wet day the publican knows but too well; as he knows +also where thousands of the lower classes, simply for want of any +other place to be in, save their own sordid dwellings, spend as +much as they are permitted of the Sabbath day. Let us put down +"Sunday drinking" by all means, if we can. But let us remember +that by closing the public-houses on Sunday, we prevent no man or +woman from carrying home as much poison as they choose on Saturday +night, to brutalise themselves therewith, perhaps for eight-and- +forty hours. And let us see--in the name of Him who said that He +had made the Sabbath for man, and not man for the Sabbath--let us +see, I say, if we cannot do something to prevent the townsman's +Sabbath being, not a day of rest, but a day of mere idleness; the +day of most temptation, because of most dulness, of the whole +seven. + +And here, perhaps some sweet soul may look up reprovingly and say: +"He talks of rest. Does he forget, and would he have the working +man forget, that all these outward palliatives will never touch +the seat of the disease, the unrest of the soul within? Does he +forget, and would he have the working man forget, who it was who +said--who only has the right to say: "Come unto Me, all ye who +are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? Ah no, +sweet soul. I know your words are true. I know that what we all +want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm, strong, +self-contained, self-denying character; which needs no stimulants, +for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it +has no fits of excitement; which needs no ascetic restraints, for +it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the +character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink or +food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions; freed from +the wild lusts and ambitions to which that old Adam yielded, and, +seeking for light and life by means forbidden, found thereby +disease and death. Yes, I know that; and know, too, that that +rest is found only where you have already found it. + +And yet, in such a world as this, governed by a Being who has made +sunshine, and flowers, and green grass, and the song of birds, and +happy human smiles, and who would educate by them--if we would let +Him--His human children from the cradle to the grave; in such a +world as this, will you grudge any particle of that education, +even any harmless substitute for it, to those spirits in prison +whose surroundings too often tempt them, from the cradle to the +grave, to fancy that the world is composed of bricks and iron, and +governed by inspectors and policemen? Preach to those spirits in +prison, as you know far better than we parsons how to preach; but +let them have besides some glimpses of the splendid fact, that +outside their prison-house is a world which God, not man, has +made; wherein grows everywhere that tree of knowledge, which is +likewise the tree of life; and that they have a right to some +small share of its beauty, and its wonder, and its rest, for their +own health of soul and body, and for the health of their children +after them. + + + +GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL {9} + + + +The pleasure, gentlemen and ladies, of addressing you here is +mixed in my mind with very solemn feelings; the honour which you +have done me is tempered by humiliating thoughts. + +For it was in this very city of Bristol, twenty-seven years ago, +that I received my first lesson in what is now called Social +Science; and yet, alas! more than ten years elapsed ere I could +even spell out that lesson, though it had been written for me (as +well as for all England) in letters of flame, from the one end of +heaven to the other. + +I was a school-boy in Clifton up above. I had been hearing of +political disturbances, even of riots, of which I understood +nothing, and for which I cared nothing. But on one memorable +Sunday afternoon I saw an object which was distinctly not +political. Otherwise I should have no right to speak of it here. + +It was an afternoon of sullen autumn rain. The fog hung thick +over the docks and lowlands. Glaring through that fog I saw a +bright mass of flame--almost like a half-risen sun. + +That, I was told, was the gate of the new gaol on fire. That the +prisoners in it had been set free; that-- But why speak of what +too many here recollect but too well? The fog rolled slowly +upward. Dark figures, even at that great distance, were flitting +to and fro across what seemed the mouth of the pit. The flame +increased--multiplied--at one point after another; till by ten +o'clock that night I seemed to be looking down upon Dante's +Inferno, and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of the lost +spirits surging to and fro amid that sea of fire. + +Right behind Brandon Hill--how can I ever forget it?--rose the +great central mass of fire; till the little mound seemed converted +into a volcano, from the peak of which the flame streamed up, not +red alone, but, delicately green and blue, pale rose and pearly +white, while crimson sparks leapt and fell again in the midst of +that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair; and dull explosions +down below mingled with the roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss +and crackle of the flame. + +Higher and higher the fog was scorched and shrivelled upward by +the fierce heat below, glowing through and through with red +reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red- +hot iron, fit roof for all the madness down below--and beneath it, +miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie shining red;-- +the symbol of the old faith, looking down in stately wonder and +sorrow upon the fearful birth-throes of a new age. Yes.--Why did +I say just now despair? I was wrong. Birth-throes, and not death +pangs, those horrors were. Else they would have no place in my +discourse; no place, indeed, in my mind. Why talk over the signs +of disease, decay, death? Let the dead bury their dead, and let +us follow Him who dieth not; by whose command + + +The old order changeth, giving place to the new, +And God fulfils himself in many ways. + + +If we will believe this,--if we will look on each convulsion of +society, however terrible for the time being, as a token, not of +decrepitude, but of youth; not as the expiring convulsions of +sinking humanity, but as upward struggles, upward toward fuller +light, freer air, a juster, simpler, and more active life;--then +we shall be able to look calmly, however sadly, on the most +appalling tragedies of humanity--even on these late Indian ones-- +and take our share, faithful and hopeful, in supplying the new and +deeper wants of a new and nobler time. + +But to return. It was on the Tuesday or Wednesday after, if I +recollect right, that I saw another, and a still more awful sight. +Along the north side of Queen Square, in front of ruins which had +been three days before noble buildings, lay a ghastly row, not of +corpses, but of corpse-fragments. I have no more wish than you to +dilate upon that sight. But there was one charred fragment--with +a scrap of old red petticoat adhering to it, which I never forgot- +-which I trust in God that I never shall forget. It is good for a +man to be brought once at least in his life face to face with +fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be; and have to +confess to himself, shuddering, what things are possible upon +God's earth, when man has forgotten that his only welfare lies in +living after the likeness of God. + +Not that I learnt the lesson then. When the first excitement of +horror and wonder were past, what I had seen made me for years the +veriest aristocrat, full of hatred and contempt of these dangerous +classes, whose existence I had for the first time discovered. It +required many years--years, too, of personal intercourse with the +poor--to explain to me the true meaning of what I saw here in +October twenty-seven years ago, and to learn a part of that lesson +which God taught to others thereby. And one part at least of that +lesson was this: That the social state of a city depends directly +on its moral state, and--I fear dissenting voices, but I must say +what I believe to be truth--that the moral state of a city +depends--how far I know not, but frightfully, to an extent as yet +uncalculated, and perhaps incalculable--on the physical state of +that city; on the food, water, air, and lodging of its +inhabitants. + +But that lesson, and others connected with it, was learnt, and +learnt well, by hundreds. From the sad catastrophe I date the +rise of that interest in Social Science; that desire for some +nobler, more methodic, more permanent benevolence than that which +stops at mere almsgiving and charity-schools. The dangerous +classes began to be recognised as an awful fact which must be +faced; and faced, not by repression, but by improvement. The +"Perils of the Nation" began to occupy the attention not merely of +politicians, but of philosophers, physicians, priests; and the +admirable book which assumed that title did but re-echo the +feeling of thousands of earnest hearts. + +Ever since that time, scheme on scheme of improvement has been not +only proposed but carried out. A general interest of the upper +classes in the lower, a general desire to do good, and to learn +how good can be done, has been awakened throughout England, such +as, I boldly say, never before existed in any country upon earth; +and England, her eyes opened to her neglect of these classes, +without whose strong arms her wealth and genius would be useless, +has put herself into a permanent state of confession of sin, +repentance, and amendment, which I verily trust will be accepted +by Almighty God; and will, in spite of our present shame and +sorrow, {10} in spite of shame and sorrow which may be yet in +store for us, save alive both the soul and the body of this +ancient people. + +Let us then, that we may learn how to bear our part in this great +work of Social Reform, consider awhile great cities, their good +and evil; and let us start from the facts about your own city of +which I have just put you in remembrance. The universal law will +be best understood from the particular instance; and best of all, +from the instance with which you are most intimately acquainted. +And do not, I entreat you, fear that I shall be rude enough to say +anything which may give pain to you, my generous hosts; or +presumptuous enough to impute blame to anyone for events which +happened long ago, and of the exciting causes of which I know +little or nothing. Bristol was then merely in the same state in +which other cities of England were, and in which every city on the +Continent is now; and the local exciting causes of that outbreak, +the personal conduct of A or B in it, is just what we ought most +carefully to forget, if we wish to look at the real root of the +matter. If consumption, latent in the constitution, have broken +out in active mischief, the wise physician will trouble his head +little with the particular accident which woke up the sleeping +disease. The disease was there, and if one thing had not awakened +it some other would. And so, if the population of a great city +have got into a socially diseased state, it matters little what +shock may have caused it to explode. Politics may in one case, +fanaticism in another, national hatred in a third, hunger in a +fourth--perhaps even, as in Byzantium of old, no more important +matter than the jealousy between the blue and the green +charioteers in the theatre, may inflame a whole population to +madness and civil war. Our business is not with the nature of the +igniting spark, but of the powder which is ignited. + +I will not, then, to begin, go as far as some who say that "A +great city is a great evil." We cannot say that Bristol was in +1830 or is now, a great evil. It represents so much realised +wealth; and that, again, so much employment for thousands. It +represents so much commerce; so much knowledge of foreign lands; +so much distribution of their products; so much science, employed +about that distribution. + +And it is undeniable, that as yet we have had no means of rapid +and cheap distribution of goods, whether imports or manufactures, +save by this crowding of human beings into great cities, for the +more easy despatch of business. Whether we shall devise other +means hereafter is a question of which I shall speak presently. +Meanwhile, no man is to be blamed for the existence, hardly even +for the evils, of great cities. The process of their growth has +been very simple. They have gathered themselves round abbeys and +castles, for the sake of protection; round courts, for the sake of +law; round ports, for the sake of commerce; round coal mines, for +the sake of manufacture. Before the existence of railroads, +penny-posts, electric telegraphs, men were compelled to be as +close as possible to each other, in order to work together. + +When the population was small, and commerce feeble, the cities +grew to no very great size, and the bad effects of this crowding +were not felt. The cities of England in the Middle Age were too +small to keep their inhabitants week after week, month after +month, in one deadly vapour-bath of foul gas; and though the +mortality among infants was probably excessive, yet we should have +seen among the adult survivors few or none of those stunted and +etiolated figures so common now in England, as well as on the +Continent. The green fields were close outside the walls, where +lads and lasses went a-maying, and children gathered flowers, and +sober burghers with their wives took the evening walk; there were +the butts, too, close outside, where stalwart prentice-lads ran +and wrestled, and pitched the bar, and played backsword, and +practised with the long-bow; and sometimes, in stormy times, +turned out for a few months as ready-trained soldiers, and, like +Ulysses of old, + + +Drank delight of battle with their peers, + + +and then returned again to the workshop and the loom. The very +mayor and alderman went forth, at five o'clock on the summer's +morning, with hawk and leaping-pole, after a duck and heron; or +hunted the hare in state, probably in the full glory of furred +gown and gold chain; and then returned to breakfast, and doubtless +transacted their day's business all the better for their morning's +gallop on the breezy downs. + +But there was another side to this genial and healthy picture. A +hint that this was a state of society which had its conditions, +its limit; and if those were infringed, woe alike to burgher and +to prentice. Every now and then epidemic disease entered the +jolly city--and then down went strong and weak, rich and poor, +before the invisible and seemingly supernatural arrows of that +angel of death whom they had been pampering unwittingly in every +bedroom. + +They fasted, they prayed; but in vain. They called the pestilence +a judgment of God; and they called it by a true name. But they +know not (and who are we to blame them for not knowing?) what it +was that God was judging thereby--foul air, foul water, unclean +backyards, stifling attics, houses hanging over the narrow street +till light and air were alike shut out--that there lay the sin; +and that to amend that was the repentance which God demanded. + +Yet we cannot blame them. They showed that the crowded city life +can bring out human nobleness as well as human baseness; that to +be crushed into contact with their fellow-men, forced at least the +loftier and tender souls to know their fellow-men, and therefore +to care for them, to love them, to die for them. Yes--from one +temptation the city life is free, to which the country life is +sadly exposed--that isolation which, self-contented and self- +helping, forgets in its surly independence that man is his +brother's keeper. In cities, on the contrary, we find that the +stories of these old pestilences, when the first panic terror has +past, become, however tragical, still beautiful and heroic; and we +read of noble-hearted men and women palliating ruin which they +could not cure, braving dangers which seemed to them miraculous, +from which they were utterly defenceless, spending money, time, +and, after all, life itself upon sufferers from whom they might +without shame have fled. + +They are very cheering, the stories of the old city pestilences; +and the nobleness which they brought out in the heart of many a +townsman who had seemed absorbed in the lust of gain--who perhaps +had been really absorbed in it--till that fearful hour awakened in +him his better self, and taught him, not self-aggrandisement, but +self-sacrifice; begetting in him, out of the very depth of +darkness, new and divine light. That nobleness, doubt it not, +exists as ever in the hearts of citizens. May God grant us to see +the day when it shall awaken to exert itself, not for the +palliation, not even for the cure, but for the prevention, yea, +the utter extermination, of pestilence. + +About the middle of the sixteenth century, as far as I can +ascertain, another and even more painful phenomenon appears in our +great cities--a dangerous class. How it arose is not yet clear. +That the Reformation had something to do with the matter, we can +hardly doubt. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the more +idle, ignorant, and profligate members of the mendicant orders, +unable to live any longer on the alms of the public, sunk, +probably, into vicious penury. The frightful misgovernment of +this country during the minority of Edward the Sixth, especially +the conversion of tilled lands into pasture, had probably the +effect of driving the surplus agricultural population into the +great towns. But the social history of this whole period is as +yet obscure, and I have no right to give an opinion on it. +Another element, and a more potent one, is to be found in the +discharged soldiers who came home from foreign war, and the +sailors who returned from our voyages of discovery, and from our +raids against the Spaniards, too often crippled by scurvy, or by +Tropic fevers, with perhaps a little prize money, which was as +hastily spent as it had been hastily gained. The later years of +Elizabeth, and the whole of James the First's reign, disclose to +us an ugly state of society in the low streets of all our sea-port +towns; and Bristol, as one of the great starting-points of West +Indian adventure, was probably, during the seventeenth century, as +bad as any city in England. According to Ben Jonson, and the +playwriters of his time, the beggars become a regular fourth- +estate, with their own laws, and even their own language--of which +we may remark, that the thieves' Latin of those days is full of +German words, indicating that its inventors had been employed in +the Continental wars of the time. How that class sprung up, we +may see, I suppose, pretty plainly, from Shakespeare's "Henry the +Fifth." Whether Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph, Doll and Mrs. Quickly, +existed in the reign of Henry the Fifth, they certainly existed in +the reign of Elizabeth. They are probably sketches from life of +people whom Shakespeare had seen in Alsatia and the Mint. + +To these merely rascal elements, male and female, we must add, I +fear, those whom mere penury, from sickness, failure, want of +employment drove into dwellings of the lowest order. Such people, +though not criminal themselves, are but too likely to become the +parents of criminals. I am not blaming them, poor souls; God +forbid! I am merely stating a fact. When we examine into the +ultimate cause of a dangerous class; into the one property common +to all its members, whether thieves, beggars, profligates, or the +merely pauperised--we find it to be this loss of self-respect. As +long as that remains, poor souls may struggle on heroically, pure +amid penury, filth, degradation unspeakable. But when self- +respect is lost, they are lost with it. And whatever may be the +fate of virtuous parents, children brought up in dens of physical +and moral filth cannot retrieve self-respect. They sink, they +must sink, into a life on a level with the sights, sounds, aye, +the very smells, which surround them. It is not merely that the +child's mind is contaminated, by seeing and hearing, in +overcrowded houses, what he should not hear and see: but the +whole physical circumstances of his life are destructive of self- +respect. He has no means for washing himself properly: but he +has enough of the innate sense of beauty and fitness to feel that +he ought not to be dirty; he thinks that others despise him for +being dirty, and he half despises himself for being so. In all +raged schools and reformatories, so they tell me, the first step +toward restoring self-respect is to make the poor fellows clean. +From that moment they begin to look on themselves as new men--with +a new start, new hopes, new duties. For not without the deepest +physical as well as moral meaning, was baptism chosen by the old +Easterns, and adopted by our Lord Jesus Christ, as the sign of a +new life; and outward purity made the token and symbol of that +inward purity which is the parent of self-respect, and manliness, +and a clear conscience; of the free forehead, and the eye which +meets boldly and honestly the eye of its fellow-man. + +But would that mere physical dirt were all that the lad has to +contend with. There is the desire of enjoyment. Moral and +intellectual enjoyment he has none, and can have none: but not to +enjoy something is to be dead in life; and to the lowest physical +pleasures he will betake himself, and all the more fiercely +because his opportunities of enjoyment are so limited. It is a +hideous subject; I will pass it by very shortly; only asking of +you, as I have to ask daily of myself--this solemn question: We, +who have so many comforts, so many pleasures of body, soul, and +spirit, from the lowest appetite to the highest aspiration, that +we can gratify each in turn with due and wholesome moderation, +innocently and innocuously--who are we that we should judge the +poor untaught and overtempted inhabitant of Temple Street and +Lewin's Mead, if, having but one or two pleasures possible to him, +he snatches greedily, even foully, at the little which he has? + +And this brings me to another, and a most fearful evil of great +cities, namely, drunkenness. I am one of those who cannot, on +scientific grounds, consider drunkenness as a cause of evil, but +as an effect. Of course it is a cause--a cause of endless crime +and misery; but I am convinced that to cure, you must inquire, not +what it causes, but what causes it? And for that we shall not +have to seek far. + +The main exciting cause of drunkenness is, I believe, firmly, bad +air and bad lodging. + +A man shall spend his days between a foul alley where he breathes +sulphuretted hydrogen, a close workshop where he breathes carbonic +acid, and a close and foul bedroom where he breathes both. In +neither of the three places, meanwhile, has he his fair share of +that mysterious chemical agent without which health is impossible, +the want of which betrays itself at once in the dull eye, the +sallow cheek--namely, light. Believe me, it is no mere poetic +metaphor which connects in Scripture, Light with Life. It is the +expression of a deep law, one which holds as true in the physical +as in the spiritual world; a case in which (as perhaps in all +cases) the laws of the visible world are the counterparts of those +of the invisible world, and Earth is the symbol of Heaven. + +Deprive, then, the man of his fair share of fresh air and pure +light, and what follows? His blood is not properly oxygenated: +his nervous energy is depressed, his digestion impaired, +especially if his occupation be sedentary, or requires much +stooping, and the cavity of the chest thereby becomes contracted; +and for that miserable feeling of languor and craving he knows but +one remedy--the passing stimulus of alcohol;--a passing stimulus; +leaving fresh depression behind it, and requiring fresh doses of +stimulant, till it becomes a habit, a slavery, a madness. Again, +there is an intellectual side to the question. The depressed +nervous energy, the impaired digestion, depress the spirits. The +man feels low in mind as well as in body. Whence shall he seek +exhilaration? Not in that stifling home which has caused the +depression itself. He knows none other than the tavern, and the +company which the tavern brings; God help him! + +Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is easy to say, God help him; but it +is not difficult for man to help him also. Drunkenness is a very +curable malady. The last fifty years has seen it all but die out +among the upper classes of this country. And what has caused the +improvement? + +Certainly, in the first place, the spread of education. Every man +has now a hundred means of rational occupation and amusement which +were closed to his grandfather; and among the deadliest enemies of +drunkenness, we may class the printing-press, the railroad, and +the importation of foreign art and foreign science, which we owe +to the late forty years' peace. We can find plenty of amusement +now, beside the old one of sitting round the table and talking +over wine. Why should not the poor man share in our gain? But +over and above, there are causes simply physical. Our houses are +better ventilated. The stifling old four-post bed has given place +to the airy curtainless one; and what is more than all--we wash. +That morning cold bath which foreigners consider as Young +England's strangest superstition, has done as much, believe me, to +abolish drunkenness, as any other cause whatsoever. With a clean +skin in healthy action, and nerves and muscles braced by a sudden +shock, men do not crave for artificial stimulants. I have found +that, coeteris paribus, a man's sobriety is in direct proportion +to his cleanliness. I believe it would be so in all classes had +they the means. + +And they ought to have the means. Whatever other rights a man +has, or ought to have, this at least he has, if society demands of +him that he should earn his own livelihood, and not be a torment +and a burden to his neighbours. He has a right to water, to air, +to light. In demanding that, he demands no more than nature has +given to the wild beast of the forest. He is better than they. +Treat him, then, as well as God has treated them. If we require +of him to be a man, we must at least put him on a level with the +brutes. + +We have then, first of all, to face the existence of a dangerous +class of this kind, into which the weaker as well as the worst +members of society have a continual tendency to sink. A class +which, not respecting itself, does not respect others; which has +nothing to lose and all to gain by anarchy; in which the lowest +passions, seldom gratified, are ready to burst out and avenge +themselves by frightful methods. + +For the reformation of that class, thousands of good men are now +working; hundreds of benevolent plans are being set on foot. +Honour to them all; whether they succeed or fail, each of them +does some good; each of them rescues at least a few fellow-men, +dear to God as you and I are, out of the nether pit. Honour to +them all, I say; but I should not be honest with you this night, +if I did not assert most solemnly my conviction, that +reformatories, ragged schools, even hospitals and asylums, treat +only the symptoms, not the actual causes, of the disease; and that +the causes are only to be touched by improving the simple physical +conditions of the class; by abolishing foul air, foul water, foul +lodging, overcrowded dwellings, in which morality is difficult and +common decency impossible. You may breed a pig in a sty, ladies +and gentlemen, and make a learned pig of him after all; but you +cannot breed a man in a sty, and make a learned man of him; or +indeed, in the true sense of that great word, a man at all. + +And remember, that these physical influences of great cities, +physically depressing and morally degrading, influence, though to +a less extent, the classes above the lowest stratum. + +The honest and skilled workman feels their effects. Compelled too +often to live where he can, in order to be near his work, he finds +himself perpetually in contact with a class utterly inferior to +himself, and his children exposed to contaminating influences from +which he would gladly remove them; but how can he? Next door to +him, even in the same house with him, may be enacted scenes of +brutality or villainy which I will not speak of here. He may shut +his own eyes and ears to them; but he cannot shut his children's. +He may vex his righteous soul daily, like Lot of old, with the +foul conversation of the wicked; but, like Lot of old, he cannot +keep his children from mixing with the inhabitants of the wicked +city, learning their works, and at last being involved in their +doom. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, if there be one class for whom +above all others I will plead, in season and out of season; if +there be one social evil which I will din into the ears of my +countrymen whenever God gives me a chance, it is this: The honest +and the virtuous workman, and his unnatural contact with the +dishonest and the foul. I know well the nobleness which exists in +the average of that class, in men and in wives--their stern +uncomplaining, valorous self-denial; and nothing more stirs my +pity than to see them struggling to bring up a family in a moral +and physical atmosphere where right education is impossible. We +lavish sympathy enough upon the criminal; for God's sake let us +keep a little of it for the honest man. We spend thousands in +carrying out the separation of classes in prison; for God's sake +let us try to separate them a little before they go to prison. We +are afraid of the dangerous classes; for God's sake let us bestir +ourselves to stop that reckless confusion and neglect which reign +in the alleys and courts of our great towns, and which recruit +those very dangerous classes from the class which ought to be, and +is still, in spite of our folly, England's strength and England's +glory. Let us no longer stand by idle, and see moral purity, in +street after street, pent in the same noisome den with moral +corruption, to be involved in one common doom, as the Latin tyrant +of old used to bind together the dead corpse and the living +victim. But let the man who would deserve well of his city, well +of his country, set his heart and brain to the great purpose of +giving the workmen dwellings fit for a virtuous and a civilised +being, and like the priest of old, stand between the living and +the dead, that the plague may be stayed. + +Hardly less is the present physical state of our great cities felt +by that numerous class which is, next to the employer, the most +important in a city. I mean the shopmen, clerks, and all the men, +principally young ones, who are employed exclusively in the work +of distribution. I have a great respect, I may say affection, for +this class. In Bristol I know nothing of them; save that, from +what I hear, the clerks ought in general to have a better status +here than in most cities. I am told that it is the practice here +for merchants to take into their houses very young boys, and train +them to their business; that this connection between employer and +employed is hereditary, and that clerkships pass from father to +son in the same family. I rejoice to hear it. It is pleasant to +find anywhere a relic of the old patriarchal bond, the permanent +nexus between master and man, which formed so important and so +healthful an element of the ancient mercantile system. One would +gladly overlook a little favouritism and nepotism, a little +sticking square men into round holes, and of round men into square +holes, for the sake of having a class of young clerks and employes +who felt that their master's business was their business, his +honour theirs, his prosperity theirs. + +But over and above this, whenever I have come in contact with this +clerk and shopman class, they have impressed me with considerable +respect, not merely as to what they may be hereafter, but what +they are now. + +They are the class from which the ranks of our commercial men, our +emigrants, are continually recruited; therefore their right +education is a matter of national importance. + +The lad who stands behind a Bristol counter may be, five-and- +twenty years hence, a large employer--an owner of houses and land +in far countries across the seas--a member of some colonial +parliament--the founder of a wealthy family. How necessary for +the honour of Britain, for the welfare of generations yet unborn, +that that young man should have, in body, soul, and spirit, the +loftiest, and yet the most practical of educations. + +His education, too, such as it is, is one which makes me respect +him as one of a class. Of course, he is sometimes one of those +"gents" whom Punch so ruthlessly holds up to just ridicule. He is +sometimes a vulgar fop, sometimes fond of low profligacy--of +betting-houses and casinos. Well--I know no class in any age or +country among which a fool may not be found here and there. But +that the "gent" is the average type of this class, I should +utterly deny from such experience as I have had. The peculiar +note and mark of the average clerk and shopman, is, I think, in +these days, intellectual activity, a keen desire for self- +improvement and for independence, honourable, because self- +acquired. But as he is distinctly a creature of the city; as all +city influences bear at once on him more than on any other class, +so we see in him, I think, more than in any class, the best and +the worst effects of modern city life. The worst, of course, is +low profligacy; but of that I do not speak here. I mean that in +the same man the good and evil of a city life meet. And in this +way. + +In a countryman like me, coming up out of wild and silent +moorlands into a great city, the first effect of the change is +increased intellectual activity. The perpetual stream of human +faces, the innumerable objects of interest in every shop-window, +are enough to excite the mind to action, which is increased by the +simple fact of speaking to fifty different human beings in the day +instead of five. Now in the city-bred youth this excited state of +mind is chronic, permanent. It is denoted plainly enough by the +difference between the countryman's face and that of the townsman. +The former in its best type (and it is often very noble) composed, +silent, self-contained, often stately, often listless; the latter +mobile, eager, observant, often brilliant, often self-conscious. + +Now if you keep this rapid and tense mind in a powerful and +healthy body, it would do right good work. Right good work it +does, indeed, as it is; but still it might do better. + +For what are the faults of this class? What do the obscurantists +(now, thank God, fewer every day) allege as the objection to +allowing young men to educate themselves out of working hours? + +They become, it is said, discontented, conceited, dogmatical. +They take up hasty notions, they condemn fiercely what they have +no means of understanding; they are too fond of fine words, of the +excitement of spouting themselves, and hearing others spout. + +Well. I suppose there must be a little truth in the accusation, +or it would not have been invented. There is no smoke without +fire; and these certainly are the faults of which the cleverest +middle-class young men whom I know are most in danger. + +But--one fair look at these men's faces ought to tell common sense +that the cause is rather physical than moral. Confined to +sedentary occupations, stooping over desks and counters in close +rooms, unable to obtain that fair share of bodily exercise which +nature demands, and in continual mental effort, their nerves and +brain have been excited at the expense of their lungs, their +digestion, and their whole nutritive system. Their complexions +show a general ill-health. Their mouths, too often, hint at +latent disease. What wonder if there be an irritability of brain +and nerve? I blame them no more for it than I blame a man for +being somewhat touchy while he is writhing in the gout. Indeed +less; for gout is very often a man's own fault; but these men's +ill-health is not. And, therefore, everything which can restore +to them health of body, will preserve in them health of mind. +Everything which ministers to the CORPUS SANUM, will minister also +to the MENTEM SANAM; and a walk on Durham Downs, a game of +cricket, a steamer excursion to Chepstow, shall send them home +again happier and wiser men than poring over many wise volumes or +hearing many wise lectures. How often is a worthy fellow spending +his leisure honourably in hard reading, when he had much better +have been scrambling over hedge and ditch, without a thought in +his head save what was put there by the grass and the butterflies, +and the green trees and the blue sky? And therefore I do press +earnestly, both on employers and employed, the incalculable value +of athletic sports and country walks for those whose business +compels them to pass the day in the heart of the city; I press on +you, with my whole soul, the excellency of the early-closing +movement; not so much because it enables young men to attend +mechanics' institutes, as because it enables them, if they choose, +to get a good game of leap-frog. You may smile; but try the +experiment, and see how, as the chest expands, the muscles harden, +and the cheek grows ruddy and the lips firm, and sound sleep +refreshes the lad for his next day's work, the temper will become +more patient, the spirits more genial; there will be less tendency +to brood angrily over the inequalities of fortune, and to accuse +society for evils which as yet she knows not how to cure. + +There is a class, again, above all these, which is doubtless the +most important of all; and yet of which I can say little here--the +capitalist, small and great, from the shopkeeper to the merchant +prince. + +Heaven forbid that I should speak of them with aught but respect. +There are few figures, indeed, in the world on which I look with +higher satisfaction than on the British merchant; the man whose +ships are on a hundred seas; who sends comfort and prosperity to +tribes whom he never saw, and honourably enriches himself by +enriching others. There is something to me chivalrous, even +kingly, in the merchant life; and there were men in Bristol of +old--as I doubt not there are now--who nobly fulfilled that ideal. +I cannot forget that Bristol was the nurse of America; that more +than two hundred years ago, the daring and genius of Bristol +converted yonder narrow stream into a mighty artery, down which +flowed the young life-blood of that great Transatlantic nation +destined to be hereafter, I believe, the greatest which the world +ever saw. Yes--were I asked to sum up in one sentence the good of +great cities, I would point first to Bristol, and then to the +United States, and say, That is what great cities can do. By +concentrating in one place, and upon one object, men, genius, +information, and wealth, they can conquer new-found lands by arts +instead of arms; they can beget new nations; and replenish and +subdue the earth from pole to pole. + +Meanwhile, there is one fact about employers, in all cities which +I know, which may seem commonplace to you, but which to me is very +significant. Whatsoever business they may do in the city, they +take good care, if possible, not to live in it. As soon as a man +gets wealthy nowadays, his first act is to take to himself a villa +in the country. Do I blame him? Certainly not. It is an act of +common sense. He finds that the harder he works, the more he +needs of fresh air, free country life, innocent recreation; and he +takes it, and does his city business all the better for it, lives +all the longer for it, is the cheerfuller, more genial man for it. +One great social blessing, I think, which railroads have brought, +is the throwing open country life to men of business. I say +blessing; both to the men themselves and to the country where they +settle. The citizen takes an honest pride in rivalling the old +country gentleman, in beating him in his own sphere, as gardener, +agriculturist, sportsman, head of the village; and by his superior +business habits and his command of ready money, he very often does +so. For fifty miles round London, wherever I see progress-- +improved farms, model cottages, new churches, new schools--I find, +in three cases out of four, that the author is some citizen who +fifty years ago would have known nothing but the narrow city life, +and have had probably no higher pleasures than those of the table; +whose dreams would have been, not as now, of model farms and +schools, but of turtle and port-wine. + +My only regret when I see so pleasant a sight is: Oh that the +good man could have taken his workmen with him! + +Taken his workmen with him? + +I assure you that, after years of thought, I see no other remedy +for the worst evils of city life. "If," says the old proverb, +"the mountain will not come to Muhammed, then Muhammed must go to +the mountain." And if you cannot bring the country into the city, +the city must go into the country. + +Do not fancy me a dreamer dealing with impossible ideals. I know +well what cannot be done; fair and grand as it would be, if it +were done, a model city is impossible in England. We have here no +Eastern despotism (and it is well we have not) to destroy an old +Babylon, as that mighty genius Nabuchonosor did, and build a few +miles off a new Babylon, one-half the area of which was park and +garden, fountain and water-course--a diviner work of art, to my +mind, than the finest picture or statue which the world ever saw. +We have not either (and it is well for us that we have not) a +model republic occupying a new uncleared land. We cannot, as they +do in America, plan out a vast city on some delicious and healthy +site amid the virgin forest, with streets one hundred feet in +breadth, squares and boulevards already planted by God's hand with +majestic trees; and then leave the great design to be hewn out of +the wilderness, street after street, square after square, by +generations yet unborn. That too is a magnificent ideal; but it +cannot be ours. And it is well for us, I believe, that it cannot. +The great value of land, the enormous amount of vested interests, +the necessity of keeping to ancient sites around which labour, as +in Manchester, or commerce, as in Bristol, has clustered itself on +account of natural advantages, all these things make any attempts +to rebuild in cities impossible. But they will cause us at last, +I believe, to build better things than cities. They will issue in +a complete interpenetration of city and of country, a complete +fusion of their different modes of life, and a combination of the +advantages of both, such as no country in the world has ever seen. +We shall have, I believe and trust, ere another generation has +past, model lodging-houses springing up, not in the heart of the +town, but on the hills around it; and those will be--economy, as +well as science and good government, will compel them to be--not +ill-built rows of undrained cottages, each rented for awhile, and +then left to run into squalidity and disrepair, but huge blocks of +building, each with its common eating-house, bar, baths, +washhouses, reading-room, common conveniences of every kind, +where, in free and pure country air, the workman will enjoy +comforts which our own grandfathers could not command, and at a +lower price than that which he now pays for such accommodation as +I should be ashamed to give to my own horses; while from these +great blocks of building, branch lines will convey the men to or +from their work by railroad, without loss of time, labour, or +health. + +Then the city will become what it ought to be; the workshop, and +not the dwelling-house, of a mighty and healthy people. The old +foul alleys, as they become gradually depopulated, will be +replaced by fresh warehouses, fresh public buildings; and the +city, in spite of all its smoke and dirt, will become a place on +which the workman will look down with pride and joy, because it +will be to him no longer a prison and a poison-trap, but merely a +place for honest labour. + +This, gentlemen and ladies, is my ideal; and I cannot but hope and +believe that I shall live to see it realised here and there, +gradually and cautiously (as is our good and safe English habit), +but still earnestly and well. Did I see but the movement +commenced in earnest, I should be inclined to cry a "Nunc Domine +dimittis"--I have lived long enough to see a noble work begun, +which cannot but go on and prosper, so beneficial would it be +found. I tell you, that but this afternoon, as the Bath train +dashed through the last cutting, and your noble vale and noble +city opened before me, I looked round upon the overhanging crags, +the wooded glens, and said to myself: There, upon the rock in the +free air and sunlight, and not here, beneath yon pall of smoke by +the lazy pools and festering tidal muds, ought the Bristol workman +to live. Oh that I may see the time when on the blessed Sabbath +eve these hills shall swarm as thick with living men as bean- +fields with the summer bees; when the glens shall ring with the +laughter of ten thousand children, with limbs as steady, and +cheeks as ruddy, as those of my own lads and lasses at home; and +the artisan shall find his Sabbath a day of rest indeed, in which +not only soul but body may gather health and nerve for the week's +work, under the soothing and purifying influences of those common +natural sights and sounds which God has given as a heritage even +to the gipsy on the moor; and of which no man can be deprived +without making his life a burden to himself, perhaps a burden to +those around him. + +But it will be asked: Will such improvements pay? I respect that +question. I do not sneer at it, and regard it, as some are too +apt to do, as a sign of the mercenary and money-loving spirit of +the present age. I look on it as a healthy sign of the English +mind; a sign that we believe, as the old Jews did, that political +and social righteousness is inseparably connected with wealth and +prosperity. The old Psalms and prophets have taught us that +lesson; and God forbid that we should forget it. The world is +right well made; and the laws of trade and of social economy, just +as much as the laws of nature, are divine facts, and only by +obeying them can we thrive. And I had far sooner hear a people +asking of every scheme of good, Will it pay? than throwing +themselves headlong into that merely sentimental charity to which +superstitious nations have always been prone--charity which +effects no permanent good, which, whether in Hindostan or in +Italy, debases, instead of raising, the suffering classes, because +it breaks the laws of social economy. + +No, let us still believe that if a thing is right, it will sooner +or later pay; and in social questions, make the profitableness of +any scheme a test of its rightness. It is a rough test; not an +infallible one at all, but it is a fair one enough to work by. + +And as for the improvements at which I have hinted, I will boldly +answer that they will pay. + +They will pay directly and at once, in the saving of poor-rates. +They will pay by exterminating epidemics, and numberless chronic +forms of disease which now render thousands burdens on the public +purse; consumers, instead of producers of wealth. They will pay +by gradually absorbing the dangerous classes; and removing from +temptation and degradation a generation yet unborn. They will pay +in the increased content, cheerfulness, which comes with health in +increased goodwill of employed towards employers. They will pay +by putting the masses into a state fit for education. They will +pay, too, in such fearful times as these, by the increased +physical strength and hardihood of the town populations. For it +is from the city, rather than from the country, that our armies +must mainly be recruited. Not only is the townsman more ready to +enlist than the countryman, because in the town the labour market +is most likely to be overstocked; but the townsman actually makes +a better soldier than the countryman. He is a shrewder, more +active, more self-helping man; give him but the chances of +maintaining the same physical strength and health as the +countryman, and he will support the honour of the British arms as +gallantly as the Highlander or the Connaughtman, and restore the +days when the invincible prentice-boys of London carried terror +into the heart of foreign lands. In all ages, in all times, +whether for war or for peace, it will pay. The true wealth of a +nation is the health of her masses. + +It may seem to some here that I have dealt too much throughout +this lecture with merely material questions; that I ought to have +spoken more of intellectual progress; perhaps, as a clergyman, +more also of spiritual and moral regeneration. + +I can only answer, that if this be a fault on my part, it is a +deliberate one. I have spoken, whether rightly or wrongly, +concerning what I know--concerning matters which are to me +articles of faith altogether indubitable, irreversible, Divine. + +Be it that these are merely questions of physical improvement. I +see no reason in that why they should be left to laymen, or urged +only on worldly grounds and self-interest. I do not find that +when urged on those grounds, the advice is listened to. I believe +that it will not be listened to until the consciences of men, as +well as their brains, are engaged in these questions; until they +are put on moral grounds, shown to have connection with moral +laws; and so made questions not merely of interest, but of duty, +honour, chivalry. + +I cannot but see, moreover, how many phenomena, which are supposed +to be spiritual, are simply physical; how many cases which are +referred to my profession, are properly the object of the medical +man. I cannot but see, that unless there be healthy bodies, it is +impossible in the long run to have a generation of healthy souls; +I cannot but see that mankind are as prone now as ever to deny the +sacredness and perfection of God's physical universe, as an excuse +for their own ignorance and neglect thereof; to search the highest +heaven for causes which lie patent at their feet, and like the +heathen of old time, to impute to some capricious anger of the +gods calamities which spring from their own greed, haste, and +ignorance. + +And, therefore, because I am a priest, and glory in the name of a +priest, I have tried to fulfil somewhat of that which seems to me +the true office of a priest--namely, to proclaim to man the Divine +element which exists in all, even the smallest thing, because each +thing is a thought of God himself; to make men understand that God +is indeed about their path and about their bed, spying out all +their ways; that they are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, +and that God's hand lies for ever on them, in the form of physical +laws, sacred, irreversible, universal, reaching from one end of +the universe to the other; that whosoever persists in breaking +those laws, reaps his sure punishment of weakness and sickness, +sadness and self-reproach; that whosoever causes them to be broken +by others, reaps his sure punishment in finding that he has +transformed his fellow-men into burdens and curses, instead of +helpmates and blessings. To say this, is a priest's duty; and +then to preach the good news that the remedy is patent, easy, +close at hand; that many of the worst evils which afflict humanity +may be exterminated by simple common sense, and the justice and +mercy which does to others as it would be done by; to awaken men +to the importance of the visible world, that they may judge from +thence the higher importance of that invisible world whereof this +is but the garment and the type; and in all times and places, +instead of keeping the key of knowledge to pamper one's own power +or pride, to lay that key frankly and trustfully in the hand of +every human being who hungers after truth, and to say: Child of +God, this key is thine as well as mine. Enter boldly into thy +Father's house, and behold the wonder, the wisdom, the beauty of +its laws and its organisms, from the mightiest planet over thy +head, to the tiniest insect beneath thy feet. Look at it, +trustfully, joyfully, earnestly; for it is thy heritage. Behold +its perfect fitness for thy life here; and judge from thence its +fitness for thy nobler life hereafter. + + + +HEROISM + + + +It is an open question whether the policeman is not demoralising +us; and that in proportion as he does his duty well; whether the +perfection of justice and safety, the complete "preservation of +body and goods," may not reduce the educated and comfortable +classes into that lap-dog condition in which not conscience, but +comfort, doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers had, on the +whole, to take care of themselves; we find it more convenient to +hire people to take care of us. So much the better for us, in +some respects; but, it may be, so much the worse in others. So +much the better; because, as usually results from the division of +labour, these people, having little or nothing to do save to take +care of us, do so far better than we could; and so prevent a vast +amount of violence and wrong, and therefore of misery, especially +to the weak; for which last reason we will acquiesce in the +existence of policemen and lawyers, as we do in the results of +arbitration, as the lesser of two evils. The odds in war are in +favour of the bigger bully, in arbitration in favour of the bigger +rogue; and it is a question whether the lion or the fox be the +safer guardian of human interests. But arbitration prevents war; +and that, in three cases out of four, is full reason for employing +it. + +On the other hand, the lap-dog condition, whether in dogs or in +men, is certainly unfavourable to the growth of the higher +virtues. Safety and comfort are good, indeed, for the good; for +the brave, the self-originating, the earnest. They give to such a +clear stage and no favour, wherein to work unhindered for their +fellow-men. But for the majority, who are neither brave, self- +originating, nor earnest, but the mere puppets of circumstance, +safety and comfort may, and actually do, merely make their lives +mean and petty, effeminate and dull. Therefore their hearts must +be awakened, as often as possible, to take exercise enough for +health; and they must be reminded, perpetually and importunately, +of what a certain great philosopher called, "whatsoever things are +true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report;" "if +there be any manhood, and any just praise, to think of such +things." + +This pettiness and dulness of our modern life is just what keeps +alive our stage, to which people go to see something a little less +petty, a little less dull, than what they see at home. It is, +too, the cause of--I had almost said the excuse for--the modern +rage for sensational novels. Those who read them so greedily are +conscious, poor souls, of capacities in themselves of passion and +action for good and evil, for which their frivolous humdrum daily +life gives no room, no vent. They know too well that human nature +can be more fertile, whether in weeds and poisons, or in flowers +and fruits, than it is usually in the streets and houses of a +well-ordered and tolerably sober city. And because the study of +human nature is, after all, that which is nearest to everyone and +most interesting to everyone, therefore they go to fiction, since +they cannot go to fact, to see what they themselves might be had +they the chance; to see what fantastic tricks before high heaven +men and women like themselves can play, and how they play them. + +Well, it is not for me to judge, for me to blame. I will only say +that there are those who cannot read sensational novels, or, +indeed, any novels at all, just because they see so many +sensational novels being enacted round them in painful facts of +sinful flesh and blood. There are those, too, who have looked in +the mirror too often to wish to see their own disfigured visage in +it any more; who are too tired of themselves and ashamed of +themselves to want to hear of people like themselves; who want to +hear of people utterly unlike themselves, more noble, and able, +and just, and sweet, and pure; who long to hear of heroism and to +converse with heroes; and who, if by chance they meet with an +heroic act, bathe their spirits in that, as in May-dew, and feel +themselves thereby, if but for an hour, more fair. + +If any such shall chance to see these words, let me ask them to +consider with me that one word Hero, and what it means. + +Hero; Heroic; Heroism. These words point to a phase of human +nature, the capacity for which we all have in ourselves, which is +as startling and as interesting in its manifestations as any, and +which is always beautiful, always ennobling, and therefore always +attractive to those whose hearts are not yet seared by the world +or brutalised by self-indulgence. + +But let us first be sure what the words mean. There is no use +talking about a word till we have got at its meaning. We may use +it as a cant phrase, as a party cry on platforms; we may even hate +and persecute our fellow-men for the sake of it: but till we have +clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do for +fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates of old used to +tell the young Athenians that the ground of all sound knowledge +was--to understand the true meaning of the words which were in +their mouths all day long; and Socrates was a wiser man than we +shall ever see. So, instead of beginning an oration in praise of +heroism, I shall ask my readers to think with me what heroism is. + +Now, we shall always get most surely at the meaning of a word by +getting at its etymology--that is, at what it meant at first. And +if heroism means behaving like a hero, we must find out, it seems +to me, not merely what a hero may happen to mean just now, but +what it meant in the earliest human speech in which we find it. + +A hero or a heroine, then, among the old Homeric Greeks, meant a +man or woman who was like the gods; and who, from that likeness, +stood superior to his or her fellow-creatures. Gods, heroes, and +men, is a threefold division of rational beings, with which we +meet more than once or twice. Those grand old Greeks felt deeply +the truth of the poet's saying - + + +Unless above himself he can +Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man. + + +But more: the Greeks supposed these heroes to be, in some way or +other, partakers of a divine nature; akin to the gods; usually, +either they, or some ancestor of theirs, descended from a god or +goddess. Those who have read Mr. Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi" +will remember the section (cap. ix. 6) on the modes of the +approximation between the divine and the human natures; and +whether or not they agree with the author altogether, all will +agree, I think, that the first idea of a hero or a heroine was a +godlike man or godlike woman. + +A godlike man. What varied, what infinite forms of nobleness that +word might include, ever increasing, as men's notions of the gods +became purer and loftier, or, alas! decreasing, as their notions +became degraded. The old Greeks, with that intense admiration of +beauty which made them, in after ages, the master-sculptors and +draughtsmen of their own, and, indeed, of any age, would, of +course, require in their hero, their god-like man, beauty and +strength, manners too, and eloquence, and all outward perfections +of humanity, and neglect his moral qualities. Neglect, I say, but +not ignore. The hero, by virtue of his kindred with the gods, was +always expected to be a better man than common men, as virtue was +then understood. And how better? Let us see. + +The hero was at least expected to be more reverent than other men +to those divine beings of whose nature he partook, whose society +he might enjoy even here on earth. He might be unfaithful to his +own high lineage; he might misuse his gifts by selfishness and +self-will; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy and +wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful madness and suicide. +He might rebel against the very gods, and all laws of right and +wrong, till he perished his [Greek text] - + + +Smitten down, blind in his pride, for a sign and a terror to +mortals. + + +But he ought to have, he must have, to be true to his name of +Hero, justice, self-restraint, and [Greek text]--that highest form +of modesty, for which we have, alas! no name in the English +tongue; that perfect respect for the feelings of others which +springs out of perfect self-respect. And he must have too--if he +were to be a hero of the highest type--the instinct of +helpfulness; the instinct that, if he were a kinsman of the gods, +he must fight on their side, through toil and danger, against all +that was unlike them, and therefore hateful to them. Who loves +not the old legends, unsurpassed for beauty in the literature of +any race, in which the hero stands out as the deliverer, the +destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and +delivering it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be +devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon, and rescuing +Andromeda from the sea-beast; Heracles with his twelve famous +labours against giants and monsters; and all the rest - + + +Who dared, in the god-given might of their manhood, +Greatly to do and to suffer, and far in the fens and the forests +Smite the devourers of men, heaven-hated brood of the giants; +Transformed, strange, without like, who obey not the golden-haired +rulers. + + +These are figures whose divine moral beauty has sunk into the +hearts, not merely of poets or of artists, but of men and women +who suffered and who feared; the memory of them, fables though +they may have been, ennobled the old Greek heart; they ennobled +the heart of Europe in the fifteenth century, at the re-discovery +of Greek literature. So far from contradicting the Christian +ideal, they harmonised with--I had almost said they supplemented-- +that more tender and saintly ideal of heroism which had sprung up +during the earlier Middle Ages. They justified, and actually gave +a new life to, the old noblenesses of chivalry, which had grown up +in the later Middle Ages as a necessary supplement of active and +manly virtue to the passive and feminine virtue of the cloister. +They inspired, mingling with these two other elements, a +literature both in England, France, and Italy, in which the three +elements, the saintly, the chivalrous, and the Greek heroic, have +become one and undistinguishable, because all three are human, and +all three divine; a literature which developed itself in Ariosto, +in Tasso, in the Hypnerotomachia, the Arcadia, the Euphues, and +other forms, sometimes fantastic, sometimes questionable, but +which reached its perfection in our own Spenser's "Fairy Queen"-- +perhaps the most admirable poem which has ever been penned by +mortal man. + +And why? What has made these old Greek myths live, myths though +they be, and fables, and fair dreams? What--though they have no +body, and, perhaps, never had--has given them an immortal soul, +which can speak to the immortal souls of all generations to come? + +What but this, that in them--dim it may be and undeveloped, but +still there--lies the divine idea of self-sacrifice as the +perfection of heroism, of self-sacrifice, as the highest duty and +the highest joy of him who claims a kindred with the gods? + +Let us say, then, that true heroism must involve self-sacrifice. +Those stories certainly involve it, whether ancient or modern, +which the hearts, not of philosophers merely, or poets, but of the +poorest and the most ignorant, have accepted instinctively as the +highest form of moral beauty--the highest form, and yet one +possible to all. + +Grace Darling rowing out into the storm towards the wreck. The +"drunken private of the Buffs," who, prisoner among the Chinese, +and commanded to prostrate himself and kotoo, refused in the name +of his country's honour: "He would not bow to any China-man on +earth:" and so was knocked on the head, and died surely a hero's +death. Those soldiers of the Birkenhead, keeping their ranks to +let the women and children escape, while they watched the sharks +who in a few minutes would be tearing them limb from limb. Or, to +go across the Atlantic--for there are heroes in the Far West--Mr. +Bret Harte's "Flynn of Virginia," on the Central Pacific Railway-- +the place is shown to travellers--who sacrificed his life for his +married comrade: + + +There, in the drift, +Back to the wall, +He held the timbers +Ready to fall. +Then in the darkness +I heard him call: +"Run for your life, Jake! +Run for your wife's sake! +Don't wait for me." + +And that was all +Heard in the din - +Heard of Tom Flynn - +Flynn of Virginia. + + +Or the engineer, again, on the Mississippi, who, when the steamer +caught fire, held, as he had sworn he would, her bow against the +bank, till every soul save he got safe on shore: + + +Through the hot black breath of the burning boat +Jim Bludso's voice was heard; +And they all had trust in his cussedness, +And knew he would keep his word. +And sure's you're born, they all got off +Afore the smokestacks fell; +And Bludso's ghost went up alone +In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. + +He weren't no saint--but at the judgment +I'd run my chance with Jim +'Longside of some pious gentlemen +That wouldn't shake hands with him. +He'd seen his duty--a dead sure thing - +And went for it there and then; +And Christ is not going to be too hard +On a man that died for men. + + +To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay's--and he has written +many gallant and beautiful poems--I have but one demurrer: Jim +Bludso did not merely do his duty but more than his duty. He did +a voluntary deed, to which he was bound by no code or contract, +civil or moral; just as he who introduced me to that poem won his +Victoria Cross--as many a cross, Victoria and other, has been won- +-by volunteering for a deed to which he, too, was bound by no code +or contract, military or moral. And it is of the essence of self- +sacrifice, and therefore of heroism, that it should be voluntary; +a work of supererogation, at least towards society and man; an act +to which the hero or heroine is not bound by duty, but which is +above though not against duty. + +Nay, on the strength of that same element of self-sacrifice, I +will not grudge the epithet "heroic," which my revered friend Mr. +Darwin justly applies to the poor little monkey, who once in his +life did that which was above his duty; who lived in continual +terror of the great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung +upon his friend the keeper, and was tearing out his throat, +conquered his fear by love, and, at the risk of instant death, +sprang in turn upon his dreaded enemy, and bit and shrieked till +help arrived. + +Some would nowadays use that story merely to prove that the +monkey's nature and the man's nature are, after all, one and the +same. Well: I, at least, have never denied that there is a +monkey-nature in man, as there is a peacock-nature, and a swine- +nature, and a wolf-nature--of all which four I see every day too +much. The sharp and stern distinction between men and animals, as +far as their natures are concerned, is of a more modern origin +than people fancy. Of old the Assyrian took the eagle, the ox, +and the lion--and not unwisely--as the three highest types of +human capacity. The horses of Homer might be immortal, and weep +for their master's death. The animals and monsters of Greek myth- +-like the Ananzi spider of Negro fable--glide insensibly into +speech and reason. Birds--the most wonderful of all animals in +the eyes of a man of science or a poet--are sometimes looked on as +wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The Norseman--the +noblest and ablest human being, save the Greek, of whom history +can tell us--was not ashamed to say of the bear of his native +forests that he had "ten men's strength and eleven men's wisdom." +How could Reinecke Fuchs have gained immortality, in the Middle +Ages and since, save by the truth of its too solid and humiliating +theorem--that the actions of the world of men were, on the whole, +guided by passions but too exactly like those of the lower +animals? I have said, and say again, with good old Vaughan: + + +Unless above himself he can +Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man. + + +But I cannot forget that many an old Greek poet or sage, and many +a sixteenth and seventeenth century one, would have interpreted +the monkey's heroism from quite a different point of view; and +would have said that the poor little creature had been visited +suddenly by some "divine afflatus"--an expression quite as +philosophical and quite as intelligible as most philosophic +formulas which I read nowadays--and had been thus raised for the +moment above his abject selfish monkey-nature, just as man +requires to be raised above his. But that theory belongs to a +philosophy which is out of date and out of fashion, and which will +have to wait a century or two before it comes into fashion again. + +And now, if self-sacrifice and heroism be, as I believe, +identical, I must protest against the use of the word "sacrifice" +which is growing too common in newspaper-columns, in which we are +told of an "enormous sacrifice of life;" an expression which means +merely that a great many poor wretches have been killed, quite +against their own will, and for no purpose whatsoever; no +sacrifice at all, unless it be one to the demons of ignorance, +cupidity, or mismanagement. + +The stout Whig undergraduate understood better the meaning of such +words, who, when asked, "In what sense might Charles the First be +said to be a martyr?" answered, "In the same sense that a man +might be said to be a martyr to the gout." + +And I must protest, in like wise, against a misuse of the words +"hero." "heroism," "heroic," which is becoming too common, namely, +applying them to mere courage. We have borrowed the misuse, I +believe, as we have more than one beside, from the French press. +I trust that we shall neither accept it, nor the temper which +inspires it. It may be convenient for those who flatter their +nation, and especially the military part of it, into a ruinous +self-conceit, to frame some such syllogism as this: "Courage is +heroism: every Frenchman is naturally courageous: therefore +every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have been trained at once +in a sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for facts, +and for language as the expression of facts, shall be careful, I +hope, not to trifle thus with that potent and awful engine--human +speech. We shall eschew likewise, I hope, a like abuse of the +word "moral," which has crept from the French press now and then, +not only into our own press, but into the writings of some of our +military men, who, as Englishmen, should have known better. We +were told again and again, during the late war, that the moral +effect of such a success had been great; that the MORALE of the +troops was excellent; or again, that the MORALE of the troops had +suffered, or even that they were somewhat demoralised. But when +one came to test what was really meant by these fine words, one +discovered that morals had nothing to do with the facts which they +expressed; that the troops were in the one case actuated simply by +the animal passion of hope, in the other simply by the animal +passion of fear. This abuse of the word "moral" has crossed, I am +sorry to say, the Atlantic; and a witty American, whom we must +excuse, though we must not imitate, when some one had been blazing +away at him with a revolver, he being unarmed, is said to have +described his very natural emotions on the occasion, by saying +that he felt dreadfully demoralised. We, I hope, shall confine +the word "demoralisation," as our generals of the last century +would have done, when applied to soldiers, to crime, including, of +course, the neglect of duty or of discipline; and we shall mean by +the word "heroism," in like manner, whether applied to a soldier +or to any human being, not mere courage, not the mere doing of +duty, but the doing of something beyond duty; something which is +not in the bond; some spontaneous and unexpected act of self- +devotion. + +I am glad, but not surprised, to see that Miss Yonge has held to +this sound distinction in her golden little book of "Golden +Deeds," and said, "Obedience, at all costs and risks, is the very +essence of a soldier's life. It has the solid material, but it +has hardly the exceptional brightness, of a golden deed." + +I know that it is very difficult to draw the line between mere +obedience to duty and express heroism. I know also that it would +be both invidious and impertinent in an utterly unheroic personage +like me, to try to draw that line; and to sit at home at ease, +analysing and criticising deeds which I could not do myself; but-- +to give an instance or two of what I mean: + +To defend a post as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is +simple duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even +to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an +advantage is to be gained thereby for one's own side. Then, +indeed, it rises towards, if not into, the heroism of self- +sacrifice. + +Who, for example, will not endorse the verdict of all ages on the +conduct of those Spartans at Thermopylae, when they sat "combing +their yellow hair for death" on the sea-shore? They devoted +themselves to hopeless destruction; but why? They felt--I must +believe that, for they behaved as if they felt--that on them the +destinies of the Western World might hang; that they were in the +forefront of the battle between civilisation and barbarism, +between freedom and despotism; and that they must teach that vast +mob of Persian slaves, whom the officers of the Great King were +driving with whips up to their lance-points, that the spirit of +the old heroes was not dead; and that the Greek, even in defeat +and death, was a mightier and a nobler man than they. And they +did their work. They produced, if you will, a "moral" effect, +which has lasted even to this very day. They struck terror into +the heart, not only of the Persian host, but of the whole Persian +empire. They made the event of that war certain, and the +victories of Salamis and Plataea comparatively easy. They made +Alexander's conquest of the East, one hundred and fifty years +afterwards, not only possible at all, but permanent when it came; +and thus helped to determine the future civilisation of the whole +world. + +They did not, of course, foresee all this. No great or inspired +man can foresee all the consequences of his deeds; but these men +were, as I hold inspired to see somewhat at least of the mighty +stake for which they played; and to count their lives worthless, +if Sparta had sent them thither to help in that great game. + +Or shall we refuse the name of heroic to those three German +cavalry regiments who, in the battle of Mars-la-Tour, were bidden +to hurl themselves upon the chassepots and mitrailleuses of the +unbroken French infantry, and went to almost certain death, over +the corpses of their comrades, on and in and through, reeling man +over horse, horse over man, and clung like bull-dogs to their +work, and would hardly leave, even at the bugle-call, till in one +regiment thirteen officers out of nineteen were killed or wounded? +And why? + +Because the French army must be stopped, if it were but for a +quarter of an hour. A respite must be gained for the exhausted +Third Corps. And how much might be done, even in a quarter of an +hour, by men who knew when, and where, and why to die! Who will +refuse the name of heroes to these men? And yet they, probably, +would have utterly declined the honour. They had but done that +which was in the bond. They were but obeying orders after all. +As Miss Yonge well says of all heroic persons: "'I have but done +that which it was my duty to do,' is the natural answer of those +capable of such actions. They have been constrained to them by +duty or pity; have never deemed it possible to act otherwise; and +did not once think of themselves in the matter at all." + +These last true words bring us to another element in heroism: its +simplicity. Whatsoever is not simple; whatsoever is affected, +boastful, wilful, covetous, tarnishes, even destroys, the heroic +character of a deed; because all these faults spring out of self. +On the other hand, wherever you find a perfectly simple, frank, +unconscious character, there you have the possibility, at least, +of heroic action. For it is nobler far to do the most commonplace +duty in the household, or behind the counter, with a single eye to +duty, simply because it must be done--nobler far, I say, than to +go out of your way to attempt a brilliant deed, with a double +mind, and saying to yourself not only--"This will be a brilliant +deed," but also--"and it will pay me, or raise me, or set me off, +into the bargain." Heroism knows no "into the bargain." And +therefore, again, I must protest against applying the word +"heroic" to any deeds, however charitable, however toilsome, +however dangerous, performed for the sake of what certain French +ladies, I am told, call "faire son salut"--saving one's soul in +the world to come. I do not mean to judge. Other and quite +unselfish motives may be, and doubtless often are, mixed up with +that selfish one: womanly pity and tenderness; love for, and +desire to imitate, a certain Incarnate ideal of self-sacrifice, +who is at once human and divine. But that motive of saving the +soul, which is too often openly proposed and proffered, is utterly +unheroic. The desire to escape pains and penalties hereafter by +pains and penalties here; the balance of present loss against +future gain--what is this but selfishness extended out of this +world into eternity? "Not worldliness," indeed, as a satirist +once said with bitter truth, "but other-worldliness." + +Moreover--and the young and the enthusiastic should also bear this +in mind--though heroism means the going beyond the limits of +strict duty, it never means the going out of the path of strict +duty. If it is your duty to go to London, go thither: you may go +as much farther as you choose after that. But you must go to +London first. Do your duty first; it will be time after that to +talk of being heroic. + +And therefore one must seriously warn the young, lest they mistake +for heroism and self-sacrifice what is merely pride and self-will, +discontent with the relations by which God has bound them, and the +circumstances which God has appointed for them. I have known +girls think they were doing a fine thing by leaving uncongenial +parents or disagreeable sisters, and cutting out for themselves, +as they fancied, a more useful and elevated line of life than that +of mere home duties; while, after all, poor things, they were only +saying, with the Pharisees of old, "Corban, it is a gift, by +whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;" and in the name of +God, neglecting the command of God to honour their father and +mother. + +There are men, too, who will neglect their households and leave +their children unprovided for, and even uneducated, while they are +spending their money on philanthropic or religious hobbies of +their own. It is ill to take the children's bread and cast it to +the dogs; or even to the angels. It is ill, I say, trying to make +presents to God, before we have tried to pay our debts to God. +The first duty of every man is to the wife whom he has married, +and to the children whom she has brought into the world; and to +neglect them is not heroism, but self-conceit; the conceit that a +man is so necessary to Almighty God, that God will actually allow +him to do wrong, if He can only thereby secure the man's +invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes not +from the single eye, every motive which springs from self, is by +its very essence unheroic, let it look as gaudy or as beneficent +as it may. + +But I cannot go so far as to say the same of the love of +approbation--the desire for the love and respect of our fellow- +men. That must not be excluded from the list of heroic motives. +I know that it is, or may be proved to be, by victorious analysis, +an emotion common to us and the lower animals. And yet no man +excludes it less than that true hero, St. Paul. + +If those brave Spartans, if those brave Germans, of whom I spoke +just now, knew that their memories would be wept over and +worshipped by brave men and fair women, and that their names would +become watchwords to children in their fatherland, what is that to +us, save that it should make us rejoice, if we be truly human, +that they had that thought with them in their last moments to make +self-devotion more easy, and death more sweet? + +And yet--and yet--is not the highest heroism that which is free +even from the approbation of our fellowmen, even from the +approbation of the best and wisest? The heroism which is known +only to our Father who seeth in secret? The Godlike deeds alone +in the lonely chamber? The Godlike lives lived in obscurity?--a +heroism rare among us men, who live perforce in the glare and +noise of the outer world: more common among women; women of whom +the world never hears; who, if the world discovered them, would +only draw the veil more closely over their faces and their hearts, +and entreat to be left alone with God. True, they cannot always +hide. They must not always hide; or their fellow-creatures would +lose the golden lesson. But, nevertheless, it is of the essence +of the perfect and womanly heroism, in which, as in all spiritual +forces the woman transcends the man, that it would hide if it +could. + +And it was a pleasant thought to me, when I glanced lately at the +golden deeds of women in Miss Yonge's book--it was a pleasant +thought to me, that I could say to myself--Ah! yes. These +heroines are known, and their fame flies through the mouths of +men. But if so, how many thousands of heroines there must have +been, how many thousands there may be now, of whom we shall never +know. But still they are there. They sow in secret the seed of +which we pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we +pass the sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble, ill- +dressed woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. She +who nurses a bedridden mother, instead of sending her to the +workhouse. She who spends her heart and her money on a drunken +father, a reckless brother, on the orphans of a kinsman or a +friend. She who--But why go on with the long list of great little +heroisms, with which a clergyman at least comes in contact daily-- +and it is one of the most ennobling privileges of a clergyman's +high calling that he does come in contact with them--why go on, I +say, save to commemorate one more form of great little heroism-- +the commonest, and yet the least remembered of all--namely, the +heroism of an average mother? Ah, when I think of that last broad +fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity; and this dark world +looks bright, this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more- +-because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least +full of mothers. + +While the satirist only sneers, as at a stock butt for his +ridicule, at the managing mother trying to get her daughters +married off her hands by chicaneries and meannesses, which every +novelist knows too well how to draw--would to heaven he, or +rather, alas! she would find some more chivalrous employment for +his or her pen--for were they not, too, born of woman?--I only say +to myself--having had always a secret fondness for poor Rebecca, +though I love Esau more than Jacob--Let the poor thing alone. +With pain she brought these girls into the world. With pain she +educated them according to her light. With pain she is trying to +obtain for them the highest earthly blessing of which she can +conceive, namely, to be well married; and if in doing that last, +she manoeuvres a little, commits a few basenesses, even tells a +few untruths, what does all that come to, save this--that in the +confused intensity of her motherly self-sacrifice, she will +sacrifice for her daughters even her own conscience and her own +credit? We may sneer, if we will, at such a poor hard-driven soul +when we meet her in society; our duty, both as Christians and +ladies and gentlemen, seems to me to be--to do for her something +very different indeed. + +But to return. Looking at the amount of great little heroisms, +which are being, as I assert, enacted around us every day, no one +has a right to say, what we are all tempted to say at times: "How +can I be heroic? This is no heroic age, setting me heroic +examples. We are growing more and more comfortable, frivolous, +pleasure-seeking, money-making; more and more utilitarian; more +and more mercenary in our politics, in our morals, in our +religion; thinking less and less of honour and duty, and more and +more of loss and gain. I am born into an unheroic time. You must +not ask me to become heroic in it." + +I do not deny that it is more difficult to be heroic, while +circumstances are unheroic round us. We are all too apt to be the +puppets of circumstances; all too apt to follow the fashion; all +too apt, like so many minnows, to take our colour from the ground +on which we lie, in hopes, like them, of comfortable concealment, +lest the new tyrant deity, called Public Opinion, should spy us +out, and, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, cast us into a burning fiery +furnace--which public opinion can make very hot--for daring to +worship any god or man save the will of the temporary majority. + +Yes, it is difficult to be anything but poor, mean, insufficient, +imperfect people, as like each other as so many sheep; and, like +so many sheep, having no will or character of our own, but rushing +altogether blindly over the same gap, in foolish fear of the same +dog, who, after all, dare not bite us; and so it always was and +always will be. + +For the third time I say, + + +Unless above himself he can +Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man. + + +But, nevertheless, any man or woman who WILL, in any age and under +any circumstances, can live the heroic life and exercise heroic +influences. + +If any ask proof of this, I shall ask them, in return, to read two +novels; novels, indeed, but, in their method and their moral, +partaking of that heroic and ideal element, which will make them +live, I trust, long after thousands of mere novels have returned +to their native dust. I mean Miss Muloch's "John Halifax, +Gentleman," and Mr. Thackeray's "Esmond," two books which no man +or woman ought to read without being the nobler for them. + +"John Halifax, Gentleman," is simply the history of a poor young +clerk, who rises to be a wealthy mill-owner in the manufacturing +districts, in the early part of this century. But he contrives to +be an heroic and ideal clerk, and an heroic and ideal mill-owner; +and that without doing anything which the world would call heroic +or ideal, or in anywise stepping out of his sphere, minding simply +his own business, and doing the duty which lies nearest him. And +how? By getting into his head from youth the strangest notion, +that in whatever station or business he may be, he can always be +what he considers a gentleman; and that if he only behaves like a +gentleman, all must go right at last. A beautiful book. As I +said before, somewhat of an heroic and ideal book. A book which +did me good when first I read it; which ought to do any young man +good who will read it, and then try to be, like John Halifax, a +gentleman, whether in the shop, the counting-house, the bank, or +the manufactory. + +The other--an even more striking instance of the possibility, at +least, of heroism anywhere and everywhere--is Mr. Thackeray's +"Esmond." On the meaning of that book I can speak with authority. +For my dear and regretted friend told me himself that my +interpretation of it was the true one; that this was the lesson +which he meant men to learn therefrom. + +Esmond is a man of the first half of the eighteenth century; +living in a coarse, drunken, ignorant, profligate, and altogether +unheroic age. He is--and here the high art and the high morality +of Mr. Thackeray's genius is shown--altogether a man of his own +age. He is not a sixteenth-century or a nineteenth-century man +born out of time. His information, his politics, his religion, +are no higher than of those round him. His manners, his views of +human life, his very prejudices and faults, are those of his age. +The temptations which he conquers are just those under which the +men around him fall. But how does he conquer them? By holding +fast throughout to honour, duty, virtue. Thus, and thus alone, he +becomes an ideal eighteenth-century gentleman, an eighteenth- +century hero. This was what Mr. Thackeray meant-- for he told me +so himself, I say--that it was possible, even in England's lowest +and foulest times, to be a gentleman and a hero, if a man would +but be true to the light within him. + +But I will go farther. I will go from ideal fiction to actual, +and yet ideal, fact; and say that, as I read history, the most +unheroic age which the civilised world ever saw was also the most +heroic; that the spirit of man triumphed most utterly over his +circumstances at the very moment when those circumstances were +most against him. + +How and why he did so is a question for philosophy in the highest +sense of that word. The fact of his having done so is matter of +history. Shall I solve my own riddle? + +Then, have we not heard of the early Christian martyrs? Is there +a doubt that they, unlettered men, slaves, weak women, even +children, did exhibit, under an infinite sense of duty, issuing in +infinite self-sacrifice, a heroism such as the world had never +seen before; did raise the ideal of human nobleness a whole stage- +-rather say, a whole heaven--higher than before; and that wherever +the tale of their great deeds spread, men accepted, even if they +did not copy, those martyrs as ideal specimens of the human race, +till they were actually worshipped by succeeding generations, +wrongly, it may be, but pardonably, as a choir of lesser deities? + +But is there, on the other hand, a doubt that the age in which +they were heroic was the most unheroic of all ages; that they were +bred, lived, and died, under the most debasing of materialist +tyrannies, with art, literature, philosophy, family and national +life dying, or dead around them, and in cities the corruption of +which cannot be told for very shame--cities, compared with which +Paris is the abode of Arcadian simplicity and innocence? When I +read Petronius and Juvenal, and recollect that they were the +contemporaries of the Apostles; when--to give an instance which +scholars, and perhaps, happily, only scholars, can appreciate--I +glance once more at Trimalchio's feast, and remember that within a +mile of that feast St. Paul may have been preaching to a Christian +congregation, some of whom--for St. Paul makes no secret of that +strange fact--may have been, ere their conversion, partakers in +just such vulgar and bestial orgies as those which were going on +in the rich freedman's halls; after that, I say, I can put no +limit to the possibility of man's becoming heroic, even though he +be surrounded by a hell on earth; no limit to the capacities of +any human being to form for himself or herself a high and pure +ideal of human character; and, without "playing fantastic tricks +before high heaven," to carry out that ideal in every-day life; +and in the most commonplace circumstances, and the most menial +occupations, to live worthy of--as I conceive--our heavenly +birthright, and to imitate the heroes, who were the kinsmen of the +gods. + + + +THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS {11} + + + +Let me begin by asking the ladies who are interesting themselves +in this good work, whether they have really considered what they +are about to do in carrying out their own plans? Are they aware +that if their Society really succeeds, they will produce a very +serious, some would think a very dangerous, change in the state of +this nation? Are they aware that they would probably save the +lives of some thirty or forty per cent. of the children who are +born in England, and that therefore they would cause the subjects +of Queen Victoria to increase at a very far more rapid rate than +they do now? And are they aware that some very wise men inform us +that England is already over-peopled, and that it is an +exceedingly puzzling question where we shall soon be able to find +work or food for our masses, so rapidly do they increase already, +in spite of the thirty or forty per cent. which kind Nature +carries off yearly before they are five years old? Have they +considered what they are to do with all those children whom they +are going to save alive? That has to be thought of; and if they +really do believe, with some political economists, that over- +population is a possibility to a country which has the greatest +colonial empire that the world has ever seen; then I think they +had better stop in their course, and let the children die, as they +have been in the habit of dying. + +But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does +to me, that the most precious thing in the world is a human being; +that the lowest, and poorest, and the most degraded of human +beings is better than all the dumb animals in the world; that +there is an infinite, priceless capability in that creature, +fallen as it may be; a capability of virtue, and of social and +industrial use, which, if it is taken in time, may be developed up +to a pitch, of which at first sight the child gives no hint +whatsoever; if they believe again, that of all races upon earth +now, the English race is probably the finest, and that it gives +not the slightest sign whatever of exhaustion; that it seems to be +on the whole a young race, and to have very great capabilities in +it which have not yet been developed, and above all, the most +marvellous capability of adapting itself to every sort of climate +and every form of life, which any race, except the old Roman, ever +has had in the world; if they consider with me that it is worth +the while of political economists and social philosophers to look +at the map, and see that about four-fifths of the globe cannot be +said as yet to be in anywise inhabited or cultivated, or in the +state into which men could put it by a fair supply of population, +and industry, and human intellect: then, perhaps, they may think +with me that it is a duty, one of the noblest of duties, to help +the increase of the English race as much as possible, and to see +that every child that is born into this great nation of England be +developed to the highest pitch to which we can develop him in +physical strength and in beauty, as well as in intellect and in +virtue. And then, in that light, it does seem to me, that this +Institution--small now, but I do hope some day to become great and +to become the mother institution of many and valuable children--is +one of the noblest, most right-minded, straightforward, and +practical conceptions that I have come across for some years. + +We all know the difficulties of sanitary legislation. One looks +at them at times almost with despair. I have my own reasons, with +which I will not trouble this meeting, for looking on them with +more despair than ever: not on account of the government of the +time, or any possible government that could come to England, but +on account of the peculiar class of persons in whom the ownership +of the small houses has become more and more vested, and who are +becoming more and more, I had almost said, the arbiters of the +popular opinion, and of every election of parliament. However, +that is no business of ours here; that must be settled somewhere +else; and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, it will be before +it is settled. But, in the meantime, what legislation cannot do, +I believe private help, and, above all, woman's help, can do even +better. It can do this; it can improve the condition of the +working man: and not only of him; I must speak also of the middle +classes, of the men who own the house in which the working man +lives. I must speak, too, of the wealthy tradesman; I must speak- +-it is a sad thing to have to say it--of our own class as well as +of others. Sanitary reform, as it is called, or, in plain +English, the art of health, is so very recent a discovery, as all +true physical science is, that we ourselves and our own class know +very little about it, and practise it very little. And this +society, I do hope, will bear in mind that it is not simply to +seek the working man, not only to go into the foul alley: but it +is to go to the door of the farmer, to the door of the shopkeeper, +aye, to the door of ladies and gentlemen of the same rank as +ourselves. Women can do in that work what men cannot do. The +private correspondence, private conversation, private example, of +ladies, above all of married women, of mothers of families, may do +what no legislation can do. I am struck more and more with the +amount of disease and death I see around me in all classes, which +no sanitary legislation whatsoever could touch, unless you had a +complete house-to-house visitation by some government officer, +with powers to enter every dwelling, to drain it, and ventilate +it; and not only that, but to regulate the clothes and the diet of +every inhabitant, and that among all ranks. I can conceive of +nothing short of that, which would be absurd and impossible, and +would also be most harmful morally, which would stop the present +amount of disease and death which I see around me, without some +such private exertion on the part of women, above all of mothers, +as I do hope will spring from this institution more and more. + +I see this, that three persons out of every four are utterly +unaware of the general causes of their own ill-health, and of the +ill-health of their children. They talk of their "afflictions," +and their "misfortunes;" and, if they be pious people, they talk +of "the will of God," and of "the visitation of God." I do not +like to trench upon those matters here; but when I read in my book +and in your book, "that it is not the will of our Father in Heaven +that one of these little ones should perish," it has come to my +mind sometimes with very great strength that that may have a +physical application as well as a spiritual one; and that the +Father in Heaven who does not wish the child's soul to die, may +possibly have created that child's body for the purpose of its not +dying except in a good old age. For not only in the lower class, +but in the middle and upper classes, when one sees an unhealthy +family, then in three cases out of four, if one will take time, +trouble, and care enough, one can, with the help of the doctor, +who has been attending them, run the evil home to a very different +cause than the will of God; and that is, to stupid neglect, stupid +ignorance, or what is just as bad, stupid indulgence. + +Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publishing, +which I have read and of which I cannot speak too highly, are +spread over the length and breadth of the land, and if women-- +clergymen's wives, the wives of manufacturers and of great +employers, district visitors and schoolmistresses, have these +books put into their hands, and are persuaded to spread them, and +to enforce them, by their own example and by their own counsel-- +that then, in the course of a few years, this system being +thoroughly carried out, you would see a sensible and large +increase in the rate of population. When you have saved your +children alive, then you must settle what to do with them. But a +living dog is better than a dead lion; I would rather have the +living child, and let it take its chance, than let it return to +God--wasted. O! it is a distressing thing to see children die. +God gives the most beautiful and precious thing that earth can +have, and we just take it and cast it away; we toss our pearls +upon the dunghill and leave them. A dying child is to me one of +the most dreadful sights in the world. A dying man, a man dying +on the field of battle--that is a small sight; he has taken his +chance; he is doing his duty; he has had his excitement; he has +had his glory, if that will be any consolation to him; if he is a +wise man, he has the feeling that he is dying for his country and +his queen: and that is, and ought to be, enough for him. I am +not horrified or shocked at the sight of the man who dies on the +field of battle; let him die so. It does not horrify or shock me, +again, to see a man dying in a good old age, even though the last +struggle be painful, as it too often is. But it does shock me, it +does make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a +child die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to +have lived for a week, or a day: but oh, what has God given to +this thankless earth, and what has the earth thrown away; and in +nine cases out of ten, from its own neglect and carelessness! +What that boy might have been, what he might have done as an +Englishman, if he could have lived and grown up healthy and +strong! And I entreat you to bear this in mind, that it is not as +if our lower or our middle classes were not worth saving: bear in +mind that the physical beauty, strength, intellectual power of the +middle classes--the shopkeeping class, the farming class, down to +the lowest working class--whenever you give them a fair chance, +whenever you give them fair food and air, and physical education +of any kind, prove them to be the finest race in Europe. Not +merely the aristocracy, splendid race as they are, but down and +down and down to the lowest labouring man, to the navigator--why, +there is not such a body of men in Europe as our navigators; and +no body of men perhaps have had a worse chance of growing to be +what they are; and yet see what they have done! See the +magnificent men they become, in spite of all that is against them, +dragging them down, tending to give them rickets and consumption, +and all the miserable diseases which children contract; see what +men they are, and then conceive what they might be! It has been +said, again and again, that there are no more beautiful race of +women in Europe than the wives and daughters of our London +shopkeepers; and yet there are few races of people who lead a life +more in opposition to all rules of hygiene. But, in spite of all +that, so wonderful is the vitality of the English race, they are +what they are; and therefore we have the finest material to work +upon that people ever had. And, therefore, again, we have the +less excuse if we do allow English people to grow up puny, +stunted, and diseased. + +Let me refer again to that word that I used; death--the amount of +death. I really believe there are hundreds of good and kind +people who would take up this subject with their whole heart and +soul if they were aware of the magnitude of the evil. Lord +Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one hundred thousand +preventable deaths in England every year. So it is. We talk of +the loss of human life in war. We are the fools of smoke and +noise; because there are cannon-balls, forsooth, and swords and +red coats; and because it costs a great deal of money, and makes a +great deal of talk in the papers, we think: What so terrible as +war? I will tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, +more terrible than war, and that is outraged Nature. War, we are +discovering now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all games; +we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of cruelty and +folly, the most costly one that you can commit is to contrive to +shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and thank God that so it +is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of +cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no warning +note of preparation; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic +advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. +Silently, I say, and insidiously she goes forth; no! she does not +even go forth; she does not step out of her path; but quietly, by +the very same means by which she makes alive, she puts to death; +and so avenges herself of those who have rebelled against her. By +the very same laws by which every blade of grass grows, and every +insect springs to life in the sunbeam, she kills, and kills, and +kills, and is never tired of killing; till she has taught man the +terrible lesson he is so slow to learn, that, Nature is only +conquered by obeying her. + +And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of war, +and his chivalries of war; he does not strike the unarmed man; he +spares the woman and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she +is offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is obeyed. She +spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity; for some awful, +but most good reason, she is not allowed to have any pity. +Silently she strikes the sleeping babe, with as little remorse as +she would strike the strong man, with the spade or the musket in +his hand. Ah! would to God that some man had the pictorial +eloquence to put before the mothers of England the mass of +preventable suffering, the mass of preventable agony of mind and +body, which exists in England year after year; and would that some +man had the logical eloquence to make them understand that it is +in their power, in the power of the mothers and wives of the +higher class, I will not say to stop it all--God only knows that-- +but to stop, as I believe, three-fourths of it. + +It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save +three or four lives--human lives--during the next six months. It +is in your power, ladies; and it is so easy. You might save +several lives apiece, if you choose, without, I believe, +interfering with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure; +or, if you choose, with your daily frivolities, in any way +whatsoever. Let me ask, then, those who are here, and who have +not yet laid these things to heart: Will you let this meeting to- +day be a mere passing matter of two or three hours' interest, +which you may go away and forget for the next book or the next +amusement? Or will you be in earnest? Will you learn--I say it +openly--from the noble chairman, how easy it is to be in earnest +in life; how every one of you, amid all the artificial +complications of English society in the nineteenth century, can +find a work to do, a noble work to do, a chivalrous work to do-- +just as chivalrous as if you lived in any old magic land, such as +Spenser talked of in his "Faerie Queene;" how you can be as true a +knight-errant or lady-errant in the present century, as if you had +lived far away in the dark ages of violence and rapine? Will you, +I ask, learn this? Will you learn to be in earnest; and to use +the position, and the station, and the talent that God has given +you to save alive those who should live? And will you remember +that it is not the will of your Father that is in Heaven that one +little one that plays in the kennel outside should perish, either +in body or in soul? + + + +"A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." {12} + + + +The cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared in England +again; and England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient +steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, +the plague should spread next summer, we may count with tolerable +certainty upon a loss of some ten thousand lives. + +That ten thousand, or one thousand, innocent people should die, of +whom most, if not all, might be saved alive, would seem at first +sight a matter serious enough for the attention of +"philanthropists." Those who abhor the practice of hanging one +man would, one fancies, abhor equally that of poisoning many; and +would protest as earnestly against the painful capital punishment +of diarrhoea as against the painless one of hempen rope. Those +who demand mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the Coolie women +of Delhi, unsexed by their own brutal and shameless cruelty, +would, one fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, and +immunity for his wife and family. One is therefore somewhat +startled at finding that the British nation reserves to itself, +though it forbids to its armies, the right of putting to death +unarmed and unoffending men, women, and children. + +After further consideration, however, one finds that there are, as +usual, two sides to the question. One is bound, indeed, to +believe, even before proof, that there are two sides. It cannot +be without good and sufficient reason that the British public +remains all but indifferent to sanitary reform; that though the +science of epidemics, as a science, has been before the world for +more than twenty years, nobody believes in it enough to act upon +it, save some few dozen of fanatics, some of whom have (it cannot +be denied) a direct pecuniary interest in disturbing what they +choose to term the poison-manufactories of free and independent +Britons. + +Yes; we should surely respect the expressed will and conviction of +the most practical of nations, arrived at after the experience of +three choleras, stretching over a whole generation. Public +opinion has declared against the necessity of sanitary reform: +and is not public opinion known to be, in these last days, the +Ithuriel's spear which is to unmask and destroy all the follies, +superstitions, and cruelties of the universe? The immense +majority of the British nation will neither cleanse themselves nor +let others cleanse them: and are we not governed by majorities? +Are not majorities, confessedly, always in the right, even when +smallest, and a show of hands a surer test of truth than any +amount of wisdom, learning, or virtue? How much more, then, when +a whole free people is arrayed, in the calm magnificence of self- +confident conservatism, against a few innovating and perhaps +sceptical philosophasters? Then surely, if ever, vox populi is +vox coeli. + +And, in fact, when we come to examine the first and commonest +objection against sanitary reformers, we find it perfectly +correct. They are said to be theorists, dreamers of the study, +who are ignorant of human nature; and who in their materialist +optimism, have forgotten the existence of moral evil till they +almost fancy at times that they can set the world right simply by +righting its lowest material arrangements. The complaint is +perfectly true. They have been ignorant of human nature; they +have forgotten the existence of moral evil; and if any religious +periodical should complain of their denying original sin, they can +only answer that they did in past years fall into that folly, but +that subsequent experience has utterly convinced them of the truth +of the doctrine. + +For, misled by this ignorance of human nature, they expected help, +from time to time, from various classes of the community, from +whom no help (as they ought to have known at first) is to be +gotten. Some, as a fact, expected the assistance of the clergy, +and especially of the preachers of those denominations who believe +that every human being, by the mere fact of his birth into this +world, is destined to endless torture after death, unless the +preacher can find an opportunity to deliver him therefrom before +he dies. They supposed that to such preachers the mortal lives of +men would be inexpressibly precious; that any science which held +out a prospect of retarding death in the case of "lost millions" +would be hailed as a heavenly boon, and would be carried out with +the fervour of men who felt that for the soul's sake no exertion +was too great in behalf of the body. + +A little more reflection would have quashed their vain hope. They +would have recollected that each of these preachers was already +connected with a congregation; that he had already a hold on them, +and they on him; that he was bound to provide for their spiritual +wants before going forth to seek for fresh objects of his +ministry. They would have recollected that on the old principle +(and a very sound one) of a bird in the hand being worth two in +the bush, the minister of a congregation would feel it his duty, +as well as his interest, not to defraud his flock of his labours +by spending valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary +reform, in the hope of possibly preserving a few human beings, +whose souls he might hereafter (and that again would be merely a +possibility) benefit. + +They would have recollected, again, that these congregations are +almost exclusively composed of those classes who have little or +nothing to fear from epidemics, and (what is even more important) +who would have to bear the expenses of sanitary improvements. But +so sanguine, so reckless of human conditions had their theories +made them, that they actually expected that parish rectors, +already burdened with over-work and vestry quarrels--nay, even +that preachers who got their bread by pew-rents, and whose life- +long struggle was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those +renters in good humour--should astound the respectable house- +owners and ratepayers who sat beneath them by the appalling words: +"You, and not the 'Visitation of God,' are the cause of epidemics; +and of you, now that you are once fairly warned of your +responsibility, will your brothers' blood be required." Conceive +Sanitary Reformers expecting this of "ministers," let their +denomination be what it might--many of the poor men, too, with a +wife and seven children! Truly has it been said, that nothing is +so cruel as the unreasonableness of a fanatic. + +They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, must be at +first sight "suspect" in the eyes of the priests of all +denominations, at least till they shall have arrived at a much +higher degree of culture than they now possess. + +Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e machina theory of +human affairs which has been in all ages the stronghold of +priestcraft. That the Deity is normally absent, and not present; +that he works on the world by interference, and not by continuous +laws; that it is the privilege of the priesthood to assign causes +for these "judgments" and "visitations" of the Almighty, and to +tell mankind why He is angry with them, and has broken the laws of +nature to punish them--this, in every age, has seemed to the +majority of priests a doctrine to be defended at all hazards; for +without it, so they hold, their occupation were gone at once. {13} +No wonder, then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen +attributing these "judgments" to purely chemical laws, and to +misdoings and ignorance which have as yet no place in the +ecclesiastical catalogue of sins. True, it may be that the +Sanitary Reformers are right; but they had rather not think so. +And it is very easy not to think so. They only have to ignore, to +avoid examining, the facts. Their canon of utility is a peculiar +one; and with facts which do not come under that canon they have +no concern. It may be true, for instance, that the eighteenth +century, which to the clergy is a period of scepticism, darkness, +and spiritual death, is the very century which saw more done for +science, for civilisation, for agriculture, for manufacture, for +the prolongation and support of human life than any preceding one +for a thousand years and more. What matter? That is a "secular" +question, of which they need know nothing. And sanitary reform +(if true) is just such another; a matter (as slavery has been seen +to be by the preachers of the United States) for the legislator, +and not for those whose kingdom is "not of this world." + +Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the assistance of the +political economist. The fact is undeniable, but at the same time +inexplicable. What they could have found in the doctrines of most +modern political economists which should lead them to suppose that +human life would be precious in their eyes, is unknown to the +writer of these pages. Those whose bugbear has been over- +population, whose motto has been an euphuistic version of + + +The more the merrier; but the fewer the better fare - + + +cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the population +by saving the lives of two-thirds of the children who now die +prematurely in our great cities; and so still further overcrowding +this unhappy land with those helpless and expensive sources of +national poverty--rational human beings, in strength and health. + +Moreover--and this point is worthy of serious attention--that +school of political economy, which has now reached its full +development, has taken all along a view of man's relation to +Nature diametrically opposite to that taken by the Sanitary +Reformer, or indeed by any other men of science. The Sanitary +Reformer holds, in common with the chemist or the engineer, that +Nature is to be obeyed only in order to conquer her; that man is +to discover the laws of her existing phenomena, in order that he +may employ them to create new phenomena himself; to turn the laws +which he discovers to his own use; if need be, to counteract one +by another. In this power, it has seemed to them, lay his dignity +as a rational being. It was this, the power of invention, which +made him a progressive animal, not bound as the bird and the bee +are, to build exactly as his forefathers built five thousand years +ago. + +By political economy alone has this faculty been denied to man. +In it alone he is not to conquer nature, but simply to obey her. +Let her starve him, make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he +must submit, as the savage does to the hail and the lightning. +"Laissez-faire," says the "Science du neant," the "Science de la +misere," as it has truly and bitterly been called; "Laissez- +faire." Analyse economic questions if you will: but beyond +analysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise political +economy to its synthetic stage is to break the laws of nature, to +fight against facts--as if facts were not made to be fought +against and conquered, and put out of the way, whensoever they +interfere in the least with the welfare of any human being. The +drowning man is not to strike out for his life lest by keeping his +head above water he interfere with the laws of gravitation. Not +that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own +fallacy. He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method +though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the only +deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly +enough, the most unnatural "eidolon specus" which ever entered the +head of a dehumanised pedant--namely, that once famous "Preventive +Check," which, if a nation did ever apply it--as it never will-- +could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the +questionable habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnatural +crime. + +The only explanation of such conduct (though one which the men +themselves will hardly accept) is this--that they secretly share +somewhat in the doubt which many educated men have of the +correctness of their inductions; that these same laws of political +economy (where they leave the plain and safe subject-matter of +trade) have been arrived at somewhat too hastily; that they are, +in plain English, not quite sound enough yet to build upon; and +that we must wait for a few more facts before we begin any +theories. Be it so. At least, these men, in their present temper +of mind, are not likely to be very useful to the Sanitary +Reformer. + +Would that these men, or the clergy, had been the only bruised +reed in which the Sanitary Reformers put their trust. They found +another reed, however, and that was Public Opinion; but they +forgot that (whatever the stump-orators may say about this being +the age of electric thought, when truth flashes triumphant from +pole to pole, etc.) we have no proof whatsoever that the +proportion of fools is less in this generation than in those +before it, or that truth, when unpalatable (as it almost always +is), travels any faster than it did five hundred years ago. They +forgot that every social improvement, and most mechanical ones, +have had to make their way against laziness, ignorance, envy, +vested wrongs, vested superstitions, and the whole vis inertiae of +the world, the flesh, and the devil. They were guilty indeed, in +this case, not merely of ignorance of human nature, but of +forgetfulness of fact. Did they not know that the excellent New +Poor-law was greeted with the curses of those very farmers and +squires who now not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to +the very letter, but are often too ready to resist any improvement +or relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very Poor-law +Board from which it emanated? Did they not know that Agricultural +Science, though of sixty years' steady growth, has not yet +penetrated into a third of the farms of England; and that hundreds +of farmers still dawdle on after the fashion of their forefathers, +when by looking over the next hedge into their neighbour's field +they might double their produce and their profits? Did they not +know that the adaptation of steam to machinery would have +progressed just as slowly, had it not been a fact patent to babies +that an engine is stronger than a horse; and that if cotton, like +wheat and beef, had taken twelve months to manufacture, instead of +five minutes, Manchester foresight would probably have been as +short and as purblind as that of the British farmer? What right +had they to expect a better reception for the facts of Sanitary +Science?--facts which ought to, and ultimately will, disturb the +vested interests of thousands, will put them to inconvenience, +possibly at first to great expense; and yet facts which you can +neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay hundreds of +thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector +who gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull! To expect that you +would accept such a gospel cheerfully was indeed to expect too +much! + +But yet, though the public opinion of the mass could not be +depended on, there was a body left, distinct from the mass, and +priding itself so much on that distinctness that it was ready to +say at times--of course in more courteous--at least in what it +considered more Scriptural language: "This people which knoweth +not the law is accursed." To it therefore--to the religious +world--some over-sanguine Sanitary Reformers turned their eyes. +They saw in it ready organised (so it professed) for all good +works, a body such as the world had never seen before. Where the +religions public of Byzantium, Alexandria, or Rome numbered +hundreds, that of England numbered its thousands. It was divided, +indeed, on minor points, but it was surely united by the one aim +of saving every man his own soul, and of professing the deepest +reverence for that Divine Book which tells men that the way to +attain that aim is, to be good and to do good; and which contains +among other commandments this one--"Thou shaft not kill." Its +wealth was enormous. It possessed so much political power, that +it would have been able to command elections, to compel ministers, +to encourage the weak hearts of willing but fearful clergymen by +fair hopes of deaneries and bishoprics. Its members were no +clique of unpractical fanatics--no men less. Though it might +number among them a few martinet ex-post-captains, and noblemen of +questionable sanity, capable of no more practical study than that +of unfulfilled prophecy, the vast majority of them were +landowners, merchants, bankers, commercial men of all ranks, full +of worldly experience, and of the science of organisation, skilled +all their lives in finding and in employing men and money. What +might not be hoped from such a body, to whom that commercial +imperium in imperio of the French Protestants which the edict of +Nantes destroyed was poor and weak? Add to this that these men's +charities were boundless; that they were spending yearly, and on +the whole spending wisely and well, ten times as much as ever was +spent before in the world, on educational schemes, missionary +schemes, church building, reformatories, ragged schools, +needlewomen's charities--what not? No object of distress, it +seemed, could be discovered, no fresh means of doing good devised, +but these men's money poured bountifully and at once into that +fresh channel, and an organisation sprang up for the employment of +that money, as thrifty and as handy as was to be expected from the +money-holding classes of this great commercial nation. + +What could not these men do? What were they not bound by their +own principles to do? No wonder that some weak men's hearts beat +high at the thought. What if the religious world should take up +the cause of Sanitary Reform? What if they should hail with joy a +cause in which all, whatever their theological differences, might +join in one sacred crusade against dirt, degradation, disease, and +death? What if they should rise at the hustings to inquire of +every candidate: "Will you or will you not, pledge yourself to +carry out Sanitary Reform in the place for which you are elected, +and let the health and the lives of the local poor be that 'local +interest' which you are bound by your election to defend? Do you +confess your ignorance of the subject? Then know, sir, that you +are unfit, at this point of the nineteenth century, to be a member +of the British Senate. You go thither to make laws 'for the +preservation of life and property.' You confess yourself ignorant +of those physical laws, stronger and wider than any which you can +make, upon which all human life depends, by infringing which the +whole property of a district is depreciated." Again, what might +not the "religious world," and the public opinion of "professing +Christians," have done in the last twenty--ay, in the last three +years? + +What it has done, is too patent to need comment here. + +The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be approached with +caution. It is a serious thing to impute motives to a vast body +of men, of whom the majority are really respectable, kind-hearted, +and useful; and if in giving one's deliberate opinion one seems to +blame them, let it be recollected that the blame lies not so much +on them as on their teachers: on those who, for some reasons best +known to themselves, have truckled to, and even justified, the +self-satisfied ignorance of a comfortable moneyed class. + +But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men's conduct in +the matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to show that they +value virtue, not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the +great majority of these men (with some heroic exceptions, whose +names may be written in no subscription list, but are surely +written in the book of life) the great truth has never been +revealed, that good is the one thing to be done, at all risks, for +its own sake; that good is absolutely and infinitely better than +evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one of them: +"Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong and go to +heaven?"--they will look at you puzzled, half angry, suspecting +you of some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the +new and startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of +an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of their virtue is +not mercenary, for they are mostly worthy men; the religious part +thereof, that which they keep for Sundays and for charitable +institutions, is too often mercenary, though they know it not. +Their religion is too often one of "Loss and Gain," as much as +Father Newman's own; and their actions, whether they shall call +them "good works" or "fruits of faith," are so much spiritual +capital, to be repaid with interest at the last day. + +Therefore, like all religionists, they are most anxious for those +schemes of good which seem most profitable to themselves and to +the denomination to which they belong; and the best of all such +works is, of course, as with all religionists, the making of +proselytes. They really care for the bodies, but still they care +more for the souls, of those whom they assist--and not wrongly +either, were it not that to care for a man's soul usually means, +in the religious world, to make him think with you; at least to +lay him under such obligations as to give you spiritual power over +him. Therefore it is that all religious charities in England are +more and more conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and +Oratorians, with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is +that the religious world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new +method of doing good; though it has been indebted for educational +movements, prison visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and +so forth, to Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to men whom +they call infidels, have gladly adopted each and every one of +them, as fresh means of enlarging the influence or the numbers of +their own denominations, and of baiting for the body in order to +catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their labour may be +seen anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest stories, +with the prettiest binding and pictures, on the most secular-- +even, sometimes, scientific--of subjects, end by a few words of +pious exhortation, inserted by a different hand from that which +indites the "carnal" mass of the book. They did not invent the +science, or the art of story-telling, or the woodcutting, or the +plan of getting books up prettily--or, indeed, the notion of +instructing the masses at all; but finding these things in the +hands of "the world," they have "spoiled the Egyptians," and fancy +themselves beating Satan with his own weapons. + +If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, all +woodcutting, all story-telling, all human arts and sciences, as +gifts from God Himself; and said, as the book which they quote so +often says: "The Spirit of God gives man understanding, these, +too, are His gifts, sacred, miraculous, to be accounted for to +Him," then they would be consistent; and then, too, they would +have learnt, perhaps, to claim Sanitary Science for a gift divine +as any other: but nothing, alas! is as yet further from their +creed. And therefore it is that Sanitary Reform finds so little +favour in their eyes. You have so little in it to show for your +work. You may think you have saved the lives of hundreds; but you +cannot put your finger on one of them: and they know you not; +know not even their own danger, much less your beneficence. +Therefore, you have no lien on them, not even that of gratitude; +you cannot say to a man: "I have prevented you having typhus, +therefore you must attend my chapel." No! Sanitary Reform makes +no proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine. It is +too simply human, too little a respecter of persons, too like to +the works of Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and the +good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is +good to the unthankful and to the evil, to find much favour in the +eyes of a generation which will compass sea and land to make one +proselyte. + +Yes. Too like the works of our Father in heaven, as indeed all +truly natural and human science needs must be. True, to those who +believe that there is a Father in heaven, this would, one +supposes, be the highest recommendation. But how many of this +generation believe that? Is not their doctrine, the doctrine to +testify for which the religious world exists, the doctrine which +if you deny, you are met with one universal frown and snarl--that +man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes a member of +the religious world, by processes varying with each denomination, +he may--strange paradox--create a Father for himself? + +But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even +the elder Greeks and Romans had, of a "Zeus, Father of gods and +men." Even that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple +human needs of man, no sacredness in their eyes; therefore is +Nature to them no longer "the will of God exprest in facts," and +to break a law of nature no longer to sin against Him who "looked +on all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." And yet +they read their Bibles, and believe that they believe in Him who +stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow +fell to the ground without their Father's knowledge--and that they +were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to +some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so +to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the "British Public" +to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and +has received practical answers which will furnish many a bitter +jest for the Voltaire of the next so-called "age of unbelief," or +fill a sad, but an instructive chapter in some future enlarged +edition of Adelung's "History of Human Folly." + +All but despairing, Sanitary Reformers have turned again and again +to her Majesty's Government. Alas for them! The Government was +ready and willing enough to help. The wicked world said: "Of +course. It will create a new department. It will give them more +places to bestow." But the real reason of the willingness of +Government seems to be that those who compose it are thoroughly +awake to the importance of the subject. + +But what can a poor Government do, whose strength consists (as +that of all English Governments must) in not seeming too strong; +which is allowed to do anything, only on condition of doing the +minimum? Of course, a Government is morally bound to keep itself +in existence; for is it not bound to believe that it can govern +the country better than any other knot of men? But its only +chance of self-preservation is to know, with Hesiod's wise man, +"how much better the half is than the whole," and to throw over +many a measure which it would like to carry, for the sake of +saving the few which it can carry. + +An English Government, nowadays, is simply at the mercy of the +forty or fifty members of the House of Commons who are crotchety +enough or dishonest enough to put it unexpectedly in a minority; +and they, with the vast majority of the House, are becoming more +and more the delegates of that very class which is most opposed to +Sanitary Reform. The honourable member goes to Parliament not to +express his opinions, (for he has stated most distinctly at the +last election that he has no opinions whatsoever), but to protect +the local interests of his constituents. And the great majority +of those constituents are small houseowners--the poorer portion of +the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like +a sweeping measure of Sanitary Reform, woe to his seat at the next +election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the +Government to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good +care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall not do too much, +and that it shall not compel his constituents to do anything at +all. + +No wonder, that while the attitude of the House of Commons is such +toward a matter which involves the lives of thousands yearly, some +educated men should be crying that Representative institutions are +on their trial, and should sigh for a strong despotism. + +There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimentalists, and one +hopes that people will see the answer for themselves, and that the +infection of Imperialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, +will be stopped by common sense and honest observation of facts. + +A despotism doubtless could carry out Sanitary Reform: but +doubtless, also, it would not. + +A despot in the nineteenth century knows well how insecure his +tenure is. His motto must be, "Let us eat and drink, for to- +morrow we die;" and, therefore, the first objects of his rule will +be, private luxury and a standing army; while if he engage in +public works, for the sake of keeping the populace quiet, they +will be certain not to be such as will embroil him with the middle +classes, while they will win him no additional favour with the +masses, utterly unaware of their necessity. Would the masses of +Paris have thanked Louis Napoleon the more if, instead of +completing the Tuileries, he had sewered the St. Antoine? All +arguments to the contrary are utterly fallacious, which are drawn +from ancient despotisms, Roman, Eastern, Peruvian, or other; and +for this simple reason, that they had no middle class. If they +did work well (which is a question) it was just because they had +no middle class--that class, which in a free State is the very +life of a nation, and yet which, in a despotism, is sure to be the +root of its rottenness. For a despot who finds, as Louis Napoleon +has done, a strong middle class already existing, must treat it as +he does; he must truckle to it, pander to its basest propensities, +seem to make himself its tool, in order that he may make it his. +For the sake of his own life, he must do it; and were a despot to +govern England tomorrow, we should see that the man who was shrewd +enough to have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd +enough to know that he could scarcely commit a more suicidal act +than, by some despotic measure of Sanitary Reform, to excite the +ill-will of all the most covetous, the most stupid, and the most +stubborn men in every town of England. + +There is another answer, too, to "Imperialists" who talk of +Representative institutions being on their trial, and let it be +made boldly just now. + +It will be time to talk of Representative institutions being good +or bad, when the people of England are properly represented. + +In the first place, it does seem only fair that the class who +suffer most from epidemics should have some little share in the +appointment of the men on whose votes extermination of epidemics +now mainly depends. But that is too large a question to argue +here. Let the Government see to it in the coming session. + +Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the suffrage be +extended in the direction of the working man, let it be extended, +at least in some equal degree, in the direction of the educated +man. Few bodies in England now express the opinions of educated +men less than does the present House of Commons. It is not chosen +by educated men, any more than it is by proletaires. It is not, +on an average, composed of educated men; and the many educated men +who are in it have, for the most part, to keep their knowledge +very much to themselves, for fear of hurting the feelings of "ten- +pound Jack," or of the local attorney who looks after Jack's vote. +And therefore the House of Commons does not represent public +opinion. + +For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but much-forgotten +truth, To have an opinion, you must have an opinion. + +Strange: but true, and pregnant too. For, from it may be deduced +this corollary, that nine-tenths of what is called Public Opinion +is no opinion at all; for, on the matters which come under the +cognizance of the House of Commons (save where superstition, as in +the case of the Sabbath, or the Jew Bill, sets folks thinking-- +generally on the wrong side), nine people out of ten have no +opinion at all; know nothing about the matter, and care less; +wherefore, having no opinions to be represented, it is not +important whether that nothing be represented or not. + +The true public opinion of England is composed of the opinions of +the shrewd, honest, practical men in her, whether educated or not; +and of such, thank God, there are millions: but it consists also +of the opinions of the educated men in her; men who have had +leisure and opportunity for study; who have some chance of knowing +the future, because they have examined the past; who can compare +England with other nations; English creeds, laws, customs, with +those of the rest of mankind; who know somewhat of humanity, human +progress, human existence; who have been practised in the +processes of thought; and who, from study, have formed definite +opinions, differing doubtless in infinite variety, but still all +founded upon facts, by something like fair and scientific +induction. + +Till we have this class of men fairly represented in the House of +Commons, there is little hope for Sanitary Reform: when it is so +represented, we shall have no reason to talk of Representative +institutions being on their trial. + +And it is one of the few hopeful features of the present time, +that an attempt is at last being made to secure for educated men +of all professions a fair territorial representation. A memorial +to the Government has been presented, appended to which, in very +great numbers, are the names of men of note, of all ranks, all +shades in politics and religion, all professions--legal, clerical, +military, medical, and literary. A list of names representing so +much intellect, so much learning, so much acknowledged moderation, +so much good work already done and acknowledged by the country, +has never, perhaps, been collected for any political purpose; and +if their scheme (the details of which are not yet made public) +should in anywise succeed, it will do more for the prospects of +Sanitary Reform than any forward movement of the quarter of a +century. + +For if Sanitary Reform, or perhaps any really progressive measure, +is to be carried out henceforth, we must go back to something like +the old principle of the English constitution, by which intellect, +as such, had its proper share in the public councils. During +those middle ages when all the intellect and learning was +practically possessed by the clergy, they constituted a separate +estate of the realm. This was the old plan--the best which could +be then devised. After learning became common to the laity, the +educated classes were represented more and more only by such +clever young men as could be thrust into Parliament by the private +patronage of the aristocracy. Since the last Reform Bill, even +that supply of talent has been cut off; and the consequence has +been, the steady deterioration of our House of Commons toward such +a level of mediocrity as shall satisfy the ignorance of the +practically electing majority, namely, the tail of the middle +class; men who are apt to possess all the failings with few of the +virtues of those above them and below them; who have no more +intellectual training than the simple working man, and far less +than the average shopman, and who yet lose, under the influence of +a small competence, that practical training which gives to the +working man, made strong by wholesome necessity, chivalry, +endurance, courage, and self-restraint; whose business morality is +made up of the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial +world, unbalanced by that public spirit, that political knowledge, +that practical energy, that respect for the good opinion of his +fellows, which elevate the large employer. On the hustings, of +course, this description of the average free and independent +elector would be called a calumny; and yet, where is the member of +Parliament who will not, in his study, assent to its truth, and +confess, that of all men whom he meets, those who least command +his respect are those among his constituents to secure whom he +takes most trouble; unless, indeed, it be the pettifoggers who +manage his election for him? + +Whether this is the class to whose public opinion the health and +lives of the masses are to be entrusted, is a question which +should be settled as soon as possible. + +Meanwhile let every man who would awake to the importance of +Sanitary questions, do his best to teach and preach, in season and +out of season, and to instruct, as far as he can, that public +opinion which is as yet but public ignorance. Let him throw, for +instance, what weight he has into the "National Association for +the Advancement of Social Science." In it he will learn, as well +as teach, not only on Sanitary Reforms, but upon those cognate +questions which must be considered with it, if it is ever to be +carried out. + +Indeed, this new "National Association" seems the most hopeful and +practical move yet made by the sanitarists. It may be laughed at +somewhat at first, as the British Association was; but the world +will find after a while that, like the British Association, it can +do great things towards moulding public opinion, and compel men to +consider certain subjects, simply by accustoming people to hear +them mentioned. The Association will not have existed in vain, if +it only removes that dull fear and suspicion with which Englishmen +are apt to regard a new subject, simply because it is new. But +the Association will do far more than that. It has wisely not +confined itself to any one branch of Social Science, but taken the +subject in all its complexity. To do otherwise would have been to +cripple itself. It would have shut out many subjects--Law Reform, +for instance--which are necessary adjuncts to any Sanitary scheme; +while it would have shut out that very large class of benevolent +people who have as yet been devoting their energies to prisons, +workhouses, and schools. Such will now have an opportunity of +learning that they have been treating the symptoms of social +disease rather than the disease itself. They will see that vice +is rather the effect than the cause of physical misery, and that +the surest mode of attacking it is to improve the physical +conditions of the lower classes; to abolish foul air, fouled +water, foul lodging, and overcrowded dwellings, in which morality +is difficult, and common decency impossible. They will not give +up--Heaven forbid that they should give up!--their special good +works; but they will surely throw the weight of their names, their +talents, their earnestness, into the great central object of +preserving human life, as soon as they shall have recognised that +prevention is better than cure; and that the simple and one method +of prevention is, to give the working man his rights. Water, air, +light. A right to these three at least he has. In demanding +them, he demands no more than God gives freely to the wild beast +of the forest. Till society has given him them, it does him an +injustice in demanding of him that he should be a useful member of +society. If he is expected to be a man, let him at least be put +on a level with the brutes. When the benevolent of the land (and +they may be numbered by tens of thousands) shall once have learnt +this plain and yet awful truth, a vast upward step will have been +gained. Because this new Association will teach it them, during +the next ten or twenty years, may God's blessing be on it, and, on +the noble old man who presides over it. Often already has he +deserved well of his country; but never better than now, when he +has lent his great name and great genius to the object of +preserving human life from wholesale destruction by unnecessary +poison. + +And meanwhile let the Sanitary Reformer work and wait. "Go not +after the world," said a wise man, "for if thou stand still long +enough the world will come round to thee." And to Sanitary Reform +the world will come round at last. Grumbling, scoffing, cursing +its benefactors; boasting at last, as usual, that it discovered +for itself the very truths which it tried to silence, it will +come; and will be glad at last to accept the one sibylline leaf, +at the same price at which it might have had the whole. The +Sanitary Reformer must make up his mind to see no fruit of his +labours, much less thanks or reward. He must die in faith, as St. +Paul says all true men die, "not having received the promises;" +worn out, perhaps, by ill-paid and unappreciated labour, as that +truest-hearted and most unselfish of men, Charles Robert Walsh, +died but two years ago. But his works will follow him--not, as +the preachers tell us, to heaven--for of what use would they be +there, to him or to mankind?--but here, on earth, where he set +them, that they might go on in his path, after his example, and +prosper and triumph long years after he is dead, when his memory +shall be blessed by generations not merely "yet unborn," but who +never would have been born at all, had he not inculcated into +their unwilling fathers the simplest laws of physical health, +decency, life--laws which the wild cat of the wood, burying its +own excrement apart from its lair, has learnt by the light of +nature; but which neither nature nor God Himself can as yet teach +to a selfish, perverse, and hypocritical generation. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} This lecture was one of a series of "Lectures to Ladies," +given in London in 1855, at the Needlewoman's Institution. + +{2} The substance of this Essay was a lecture on Physical +Education, given at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, in 1872. + +{3} 9, Adam Street, Adelphi, London. + +{4} A Lecture delivered at Winchester, May 31, 1869. + +{5} Lecture delivered at Winchester, March 17, 1869. + +{6} I quote from the translation of the late lamented Philip +Stanhope Worsley, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. + +{7} Odyssey, book vi. 127-315; vol. i. pp. 143-150 of Mr. +Worsley's translation. + +{8} Since this essay was written, I have been sincerely delighted +to find that my wishes had been anticipated at Girton College, +near Cambridge, and previously at Hitchin, whence the college was +removed: and that the wise ladies who superintend that +establishment propose also that most excellent institution--a +swimming-bath. A paper, moreover, read before the London +Association of School-mistresses in 1866, on "Physical Exercises +and Recreation for Girls," deserves all attention. May those who +promote such things prosper as they deserve. + +{9} Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857. + +{10} This was spoken during the Indian Mutiny. + +{11} Speech in behalf of Ladies' Sanitary Association. Delivered +at St. James's Hall, London, 1859. + +{12} Fraser's Magazine, No. CCCXXXVII. 1858. + +{13} We find a most honourable exception to this rule in a sermon +by the Rev. C. Richson, of Manchester, on the Sanitary Laws of the +Old Testament, with notes by Dr. Sutherland. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext Sanitary and Social Lectures by Kingsley + |