B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The “survival of the fittest” means, in many important respects, the survival of the strongest. In a state of nature weakly animals yield to their stronger rivals; the stoutest lion, the swiftest tiger, has a superior chance of obtaining prey; the stouter bulls of the herd defy the attack of the wolves who overcome the resistance of the weaker individuals; the fleetest deer has the best chance to escape the pursuit of the hunter.
A state of civilization does only apparently equalize such differences. The invention of gunpowder has armed the weak with the power of a giant; but the issue of international wars will always be biased by the comparative strength of sinew and steadiness of nerve of the men that handle those improved weapons. In the last Franco-Prussian war the French were favored by an undoubted superiority of arms, but they were utterly beaten by a nation whose sons had devoted their youth to gymnastics. The arms of the Gothic giants were of the rudest description: hunting-spears and clumsy battle-axes; but those axes broke the ranks of the Roman legionaries, with their polished swords and elaborate tactics. For the last two thousand years the wars [[36]]that decided the international rivalries of Asia, Europe, and North America nearly always ended with the victory of a northern nation over its southern neighbors. The men of the north could not always boast a superiority in science or arms, nor in number, nor in the advantage of a popular cause; but the rigor of their climate exacts a valiant effort in the struggle for existence, and steels the nerves even of an otherwise inferior race. “Fortis Fortuna adjuvat,” said a Roman proverb, which means literally that Fortune favors the strong, and which has been well rendered in the paraphrase of a modern translator: “Force begets fortitude and conquers fortune.” Nor is that bias of fate confined to the battles of war. In the contests of peace, too, other things being equal, the strong arm will prevail against the weak, the stout heart against the faint. Bodily strength begets self-reliance. “Blest are the strong, for they shall possess the kingdom of the earth,” would be an improved variation of the gospel text. The Germanic nations (including the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon) who have most faithfully preserved the once universal love of manly sports, have prevailed against their rivals in the arena of industry and science, as well as of war.
An American manufacturer, who established a branch of his business at Havre, France, hired American and British workmen at double wages, maintaining that he found it the cheapest plan, since one of his expensive laborers could do the work of three natives. In the seaport towns, even of South America and Southern Europe, a British sailor [[37]]is always at a premium. American industry is steadily forcing its way further south, and may yet come to limit the fields of its enterprise only by the boundaries of the American continent. From the smallest beginnings, a nation of iron-fisted rustics has repeatedly risen to supremacy in arms and arts. Two hundred years before the era of Norman conquests in France, Italy, and Great Britain, the natives of Norway were but a race of hardy hunters and fishermen. A century after the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, the half-savage followers of Musa and Tarik had founded high schools of science and industry. And, as the fairest flower springs from the hardy thorn, the brightest flowers of art and poetry have immortalized the lands of heroic freemen, rather than of languid dreamers. The same nation that carried the banners of freedom through the battle-storm of Marathon and Salamis, adorned its temples with the sculptures of Phidias and its literature with the masterpieces of Sophocles and Simonides.
Physical vigor is also the best guarantee of longevity. Nature exempts the children of the south from many cares; yet in the stern climes of the higher latitudes Health seems to make her favorite home; in spite of snowstorms and bitter frosts the robust Scandinavian outlives the languid Italian. In spite of a rigorous climate, I say, for that his length of life is the reward of hardy habits is proved by the not less remarkable longevity of the hardy Arab and the manful Circassian, in climes that differ from that of Norway as Mexico and Virginia differ from Labrador. Men of steeled sinews overcome disease [[38]]as they brave the perils of wars and the hardships of the wilderness; hospital-surgeons know how readily the semi-savages of a primitive borderland recover from injuries that would send the effeminate city-dweller to the land of the shades. Toil-hardened laborers, too, share such immunities. On the 25th of March, 1887, Thomas McGuire, the foreman of a number of laborers employed at the night-shift of the Croton Aqueduct, fell to the bottom of the pit, a distance of ninety-five feet, and was drawn up in a comatose condition, literally drenched in his own blood. At the Bellevue Hospital (city of New York) the examining surgeon found him still alive, but gave him up for lost when he ascertained the extent of his injuries. Both his arms were broken near the shoulder, both thighs were fractured, his skull was horribly shattered about the left temple and frontal region, six of his ribs were broken and their splinters driven into the lungs. There seemed no hope whatever for him, and, after the administration of an anesthetic, he was put in a cot and left alone to die. To the utter surprise of the attending surgeon, the next morning found the mass of broken bones still breathing. His fever subsided; he survived a series of desperate operations, survived an apparently fatal hemorrhage, and continued to improve from day to day, till about the middle of June he recovered his complete consciousness, and was able to sit up and answer the questions of the medical men who, in ever increasing numbers, had visited his bedside for the last three weeks. As a newspaper correspondent sums up his case: “His strong constitution had [[39]]repulsed the assaults of death, till finally the grim monster went away to seek a less obstinate victim.” And, moreover, the exercise of athletic sports lessens the danger of such accidents: a trained gymnast will preserve his equilibrium where a weakling would break his neck.
According to the mythus of the Nature-worshiping Greeks, the darling of Venus was a hunter (not a tailor or a hair-dresser), and the gift of beauty is, indeed, bestowed on the lovers of health-giving sports, far oftener than on the votaries of fashion. Supreme beauty is country-bred; the daughters of peasants, of village squires, of fox-hunting barons, have again and again eclipsed the galaxies of court belles. Country boys have won hearts that seemed proof against the charm of city gallants. “I have seen many a handsome man in my time,” says old Mrs. Montague in Barry Cornwall’s “Table Talk,” “but never such a pair of eyes as young Robbie Burns kept flashing from under his beautiful brow.” “Women will condone many a moral blemish in a suitor,” says Arthur Schopenhauer; “they will pardon rudeness, egotism, and intellectual poverty; they will forgive even homeliness sooner than effeminacy. Instinct seems to tell them that in the result of marriage a mother’s influence can neutralize any defect but that.”