The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865. Various
generation had long slept in quiet graves,—when the crowd of the thoughtless and indolent, who began life with him, had rusted out in inglorious repose. Yes, Walter Scott wore out, if you call that wearing out.
John Calvin, all his biographers say, wore out. Perhaps so;—but not without a prolonged resistance. Commencing life with the frailest constitution, he was, as early as twenty-five, a model of erudition, and had already written his immortal work. For thirty years he was in the heat and ferment of a great religious revolution. For thirty years he was one of the controlling minds of his age. For thirty years he was the sternest soldier in the Church Militant, bearing down stubborn resistance by a yet more stubborn will. For thirty years neither his brain nor his pen knew rest. And so at fifty-six this man of broken body and many labors laid down the weapons of his warfare; but it was at Geneva, where the public registers tell us that the average of human life in that century was only nine years.
One writes words like these:—"John Kitto died, and his death was the judgment for overwork, and overwork of a single organ,—the brain." And who was John Kitto? A poor boy, the son a drunken father, subject from infancy to agonizing headache. An unfortunate lad, who at thirteen fell from a scaffolding and was taken up for dead, and escaped only with total deafness and a supposed permanent injury to the brain. A hapless apprentice, who suffered at the hands of a cruel taskmaster all that brutality and drunken fury could suggest. A youth, thirsting for knowledge, but able to obtain it only by the hardest ways, peering into booksellers' windows, reading at book-stalls, purchasing cheap books with pennies stained all over with the sweat of his toil. An heroic student, who labored for more than twenty years with almost unparalleled industry, and with an equally unparalleled neglect of the laws of health; of whom it is scarcely too much to say literally, that he knew no change, but from his desk to his bed, and from his bed to his desk again. A voluminous writer, who, if he produced no work of positive genius, has done more than any other man to illustrate the Scriptures, and to make familiar and vivid the scenery, the life, the geography, and the natural history of the Holy Land. And he died in the harness,—but not so very early,—at fifty. And we say that he would have lived much longer, had he given his constitution a fair chance. But when we remember his passionate fondness for books, how they compensated him for the want of wealth, comforts, and the pleasant voices of wife and children that he could not hear, we grow doubtful. And we hear him exclaim almost in rhapsody,—"If I were blind as well as deaf, in what a wretched situation should I be! If I could not read, how deplorable would be my condition! What earthly pleasure equal to the reading of a good book? O dearest tomes! O princely and august folios! to obtain you, I would work night and day, and forbid myself every sensual joy!" When we behold the forlorn man, shut out by his misfortune from so many resources, and finding more than recompense for this privation within the four walls of his library, we are tempted to say, No, he would not have lived as long; had he studied less, he would have remembered his griefs more.
Of course it is easy to take exception to all evidence drawn from the life and experience of individual men,—natural to say that one must needs be somewhat old before he can acquire a great name at all, and that our estimate considers those alone to whom mere prolongation of day has given reputation, and forgets "the village Hampdens, the mute, inglorious Miltons," the unrecorded Newtons, the voiceless orators, sages, or saints who have died and made no sign. To this the simple reply is, that individual cases, however numerous and striking, are not relied upon to prove any position, but only to illustrate and confirm one which general data have already demonstrated. Grant the full force of every criticism, and then it remains true that the widest record of literary life exhibits no tendency of mental culture to shorten human life or to create habits which would shorten it. Indeed, we do not know where to look for any broad range of facts which would indicate that education here or anywhere else has decreased or is likely to decrease health. And were it not for the respect which we cherish towards those who hold it, we should say that such a position was as nearly pure theory or prejudice or opinion founded on fragmentary data as any view well could be.
But do you mean to assert that there is no such thing as intellectual excess? that intellectual activity never injures? that unremitting attention to mental pursuits, with an entire abstinence from proper exercise and recreation, is positively invigorating? that robbing the body of sleep, and bending it sixteen or eighteen hours over the desk, is the best way to build it up in grace and strength? Of course no one would say any such absurd things. There is a right and wrong use of everything. Any part of the system will wear out with excessive use. Overwork kills, but certainly not any quicker when it is overwork of the mind than when it is overwork of the body. Overwork in the study is just as healthful as overwork on the farm or at the ledger or in the smoky shop, toiling and moiling, with no rest and no quickening thoughts. Especially is it true that education does not peculiarly tempt a man to excess.
But are you ready to maintain that there is no element of excess infused into our common-school system? Certainly. Most emphatically there is not. What, then, is there to put over against these terrible statements of excessive labor of six or seven hours a day, under which young brains are reeling and young spines are bending until there are no rosy-checked urchins and blooming maids left among us? The inexorable logic of facts. The public schools of Massachusetts were taught in the years 1863-4 on an average just thirty-two weeks, just five days in a week, and, making proper allowance for recesses and opening exercises, just five and a quarter hours in a day. Granting now that all the boys and girls studied during these hours faithfully, you have an average for the three hundred and thirteen working days of the year of two hours and forty-one minutes a day,—an amount of study that never injured any healthy child. But, going back a little to youthful recollections, and considering the amazing proclivity of the young mind to idleness, whispering, and fun and frolic in general, it seems doubtful whether our children ever yet attained to so high an average of actual study as two hours a day. As a modification of this statement, it may be granted that in the cities and larger towns the school term reaches forty weeks in a year. If you add one hour as the average amount of study at home, given by pupils of over twelve years, (and the allowance is certainly ample,) you have four hours as the utmost period ever given by any considerable class of children. That there is excess we freely admit. That there are easy committee-men who permit too high a pressure, and infatuated teachers who insist upon it, that there are ambitious children whom nobody can stop, and silly parents who fondly wish to see their children monstrosities of brightness, lisping Latin and Greek in their cradles, respiring mathematics as they would the atmosphere, and bristling all over with facts of natural science like porcupines, till every bit of childhood is worked out of them,—that such things are, we are not inclined to deny. But they are rare exceptions,—no more a part of the system than white crows are proper representatives of the dusky and cawing brotherhood.
Or yet again, do we mean to assert that no attention need be given to the formation of right physical habits? or that bodily exercise ought not to be joined to mental toils? or that the walk in the woods, the row upon the quiet river, the stroll with rod in hand by the babbling brook, or with gun on shoulder over the green prairies, or the skating in the crisp December air on the glistening lake, ought to be discouraged? Do we speak disrespectfully of dumb-bells and clubs and parallel bars, and all the paraphernalia of the gymnasium? Are we aggrieved at the mention of boxing-gloves or single-stick or foils? Would it shock our nervous sensibilities, if our next-door neighbor the philosopher, or some near-by grave and reverend doctor of divinity, or even the learned judge himself, should give unmistakable evidence that he had in his body the two hundred and odd bones and the five hundred and more muscles, with all their fit accompaniments of joints and sinews, of which the anatomists tell us? Not at all. Far from it. We exercise, no doubt, too little. We know of God's fair world too much by description, too little by the sight of our own eyes. Welcome anything which leads us out into this goodly and glorious universe! Welcome all that tends to give the human frame higher grace and symmetry! Welcome the gymnastics, too, heavy or light either, if they will guide us to a more harmonious physical development.
We ourselves own a set of heavy Indian-clubs, of middling Indian-clubs, and of light Indian-clubs. We have iron dumb-bells and wooden dumb-bells. We recollect with considerable satisfaction a veritable bean-bag which did good service in the household until it unfortunately sprung a-leak. In an amateur way we have tried both systems, and felt the better for them. We have a dim remembrance of rowing sundry leagues, and even of dabbling