Non vi, sed sæpe legendo.”
The meaning is this—
A man’s made learned by reading oft,
And not by rush and shock;
Just as the water, falling down,
Drip-dripping, wears the rock.
Assuming for the sake of brevity that the reader agrees to this, which is a matter about which men of sense are generally agreed, what has to be told is that Charlie Darwin, our Charlie, illustrating evolution without studying it, unconsciously suggested that the approved method of steady and gentle exertion was merely a continuation of Nature’s way upwards, the identical way that Nature took to bring the apes above the other beasts, and then improve the apes. Their hands provided a ready means of action for many purposes, and their habits of diet, which made them ever ready to eat, provided a perpetual supply of motive power. The great progressive movement, so begun, has never stopped. The restlessness and the ennui which cause so many crimes and follies are Nature’s impulse, misused or neglected. [264] ]It comes from habits older than the hills. It is the vital force of each. With it, we may do evil, if we will; but we can do nothing at all without it. The cats can gorge themselves and sleep in happiness and health; but Nature has made that impossible for gibbons and for men.
Of course the only novelty here is the suggestion that continual employment was Nature’s way of stimulating the growth of the brain. The doctrine that beings, with such brains as men and apes have now, can find content and peace in healthy occupation, and in no other way, is a very old discovery; but, as there are many to whom philosophy is folly written large, it may make the truth more credible to them to mention that Charlie’s habits proved this beyond a doubt, and so corroborated the profoundest conclusion of Aristotle (Ethics).
She also ratified the rhetoric of John Ruskin. His declamations against the excessive division of labour were the derision of practical people in the nineteenth century. “Polishing the pins with men’s souls! Bah!” With shrugs and sneers they intimated that he was a lunatic. If he had not been rich, he might have been jailed as an incendiary. Rich or poor, he would have been in danger anywhere but in free and happy England. [265] ]And now England’s patience is rewarded by the discovery that Ruskin was essentially right. If our brains have been developed by our innate readiness to “turn our hands to anything,” then, assuredly, to restrict activity to one or two mechanical movements is to reverse the natural process, and so torture the mind worse than the constraining bandages torture the feet of Chinese ladies. The damage done to vital organs in that way cannot be compensated by any wages.
Thus were the conclusions of Aristotle and the rhetoric of Ruskin reinforced by the example of Charlie Darwin.