B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The English word king, like Danish kong and German König, are derived from können (practical knowledge), and the first ruler was the most skilful, as likely as the strongest, man of his tribe. Skill, whether in the sense of bodily agility or of mechanical cleverness, established the superiority of man over his fellow-creatures, and is still in many respects a test of precedence between man and man. Supreme physical dexterity is always at a premium, in peace as in war, in the sports of princes, in the pastimes of pleasure-seekers, in the adventures of travelers, in moments of danger, in camps, in the wilderness and on the sea, as well as in smithies and workshops. Conscious skill and agility form the basis of a kind of self-reliance which wealth can only counterfeit. In a cosmopolitan sea-port town of western Europe I once overheard a controversy on the comparative value of protective weapons. Revolvers, stilettos, air guns, slung-shots, and bowie knives found clever advocates, but all arguments yielded to the remark of an old sea-captain, who had faced danger in four different continents. “There’s a use for all that, no [[76]]doubt,” said he, “but, I tell you, mynheers, in a close row the best thing to rely upon is a pair of quick fists.” For the efficacy, even of the best weapons, depends to a large degree on the expertness of the handler, the panoply of a weakling being as unprofitable as the library of an idiot. “Presence of mind” is often only the outcome of such expertness, and in sudden emergencies theories are shamed by the prompt expedients of a practical man. In war the issue of a doubtful campaign has more than once been decided by the superior constructiveness of an army that could bridge a river while their opponents waited for the subsiding of a flood. The conquest of Canada was achieved by the skill of a British soldier who devised a plan for hauling cannon to the top of a steep plateau. The fate of the Byzantine empire was decided by the mechanical expedient of a Turkish engineer who contrived a tramway of rollers and greased planks, as an overland road for a fleet of war ships. By the invention of the chain grappling-hook Duilius transferred the empire of the Mediterranean from Carthage to Rome.
Even for the sake of its hygienic influence the development of mechanical skill deserves more general encouragement. Crank-work gymnastics are apt to pall, but in pursuit of a favorite handicraft even an invalid can beguile himself into a good deal of health-giving exercise, and, besides, the versatile development of the muscular system reacts on the functions of the vital organs, and thus explains the robust health of active mechanics often laboring under the disadvantage of indoor confinement. The poet [[77]]Goethe, whose intuitions of practical philosophy rival those of Bacon and Franklin, records the opinion that every brain-worker should have some mechanical by-trade in order to obviate one-sidedness, and mental as well as physical debility. Every handicraft reveals by-laws of Nature which no cyclopedia can teach an inquirer; manual labor is a school of practical wisdom, and sound “common sense,” as the English language happily expresses the sum of that wisdom, is a prerogative of farmers and mechanics far, far oftener than of speculative philosophers.
Nor are such benefits limited to emergencies from which wealth could dispense its possessor. An amateur handicraft is the best safeguard against the chief bane of wealth: ennui, with its temptations to folly and vice. Nabobs can do worse than imitate the example of Carlo Boromeo, who spent every leisure hour of his philanthropic life in practical landscape gardening, and turned a large and once barren lake-island into the loveliest paradise of southern Europe. “Heroum filii noxae,” “the sons of the great are apt to be nuisances,” would be less true if Goethe’s advice were heeded by our fashionable educators, and the benefits of his plan would extend to emergencies for which fashionable accomplishments afford only a dubious safeguard. “A mechanical trade,” says Jean Jacques Rousseau, “is the best basis of safety against the caprices of fortune. Classical scholarship may go begging, where technical skill finds its immediate reward. A distressed savant may recover his loss in the course of years; a skilful mechanic need only enter the next workshop and show [[78]]a sample of his handiwork. ‘Well, let’s see you try,’ the reply will be; ‘step this way and pitch in.’ ”
Thus, too, gymnastic agility is the best safeguard against numberless perils. A mother who hopes to protect her boy by keeping him at home and guarding him from the rough sports of his playmates, forgets that her apron-strings cannot guide him through the perils of after years; and a better plan was that of Cato, the statesman, warrior, and philosopher, who, in the midst of his manifold duties, found time to instruct his young sons in leaping ditches, and swimming rapid rivers, in order to “teach them to overcome danger that could not be permanently avoided.”