"But, alas! Tyndall's vivacity undid me: two days of his company, with two sleepless nights, and I fled him as I would a pestilence."
But Carlyle growled out one thing in Spencer's presence which Spencer often quoted. "If I had my own way," said Carlyle, "I would send the sons of poor men to college, and the sons of rich men I would set to work."
Manual labor in right proportion means mental development. Too much hoe may slant the brow, but hoe in proper proportion develops the cerebellum.
In the past we have had one set of men do all the work, and another set had all the culture: one hoes and another thirsts. There are whole areas of brain-cells which are evolved only through the efforts of hand and eye, for it is the mind at last that directs all our energies. The development of brain and body go together—manual work is brain-work. Too much brain-work is just as bad as too much toil; the misuse of the pen carries just as severe a penalty as the misuse of the hoe. And it is a great satisfaction to realize that the thinking world has reached a point where these propositions do not have to be proven.
There was a time when Spencer regretted that he had not been sent to college, instead of being set to work. But later he came to regard his experience as a practical engineer and surveyor as a very precious and necessary part of his education.
John Tyndall and Alfred Russel Wallace had an experience almost identical. In childhood John attended the village school for six months of the year, and the rest of the time helped his parents, as children of poor people do. When nineteen he went to work carrying a chain in a surveying corps. Steady attention to the business in hand brought its sure reward, and in a few years he had charge of the squad, and was given the duty of making maps and working out complex calculations in engineering.
In mathematics he especially excelled. Five years in the employ of the Irish Ordnance Survey and three years in practical railroad-building, and Tyndall got the Socialistic bee in his bonnet. He resigned a good position to take part in bringing about the millennium.
That he helped the old world along toward the ideal there is no doubt; but Tyndall is dead and Jerusalem is not yet. When the rule of the barons was broken, and the stage of individualism or competition was ushered in, men said, "Lo! The time is at hand and now is." But it was not. Socialism is coming, by slow degrees, imperceptibly almost as the growing of Spring flowers that push their way from the damp, dark earth into the sunlight. And after Socialism, what? Perhaps the millennium will still be a long way off.
In Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven, when Tyndall was twenty-seven years old, Robert Owen, one of the greatest practical men the world has ever seen, cried aloud, "The time is at hand!"
Owen was an enthusiast: all great men are. He had risen from the ranks by the absolute force of his great untiring, restless and loving spirit. From a day laborer in a cotton-mill he had become principal owner of a plant that supported five thousand people.