By attention to these subjects on which suggestions have been offered, you cannot fail to secure the preservation and improvement of the health of the body. It is your duty to employ all practicable means for this purpose. “Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost?” Honour therefore the body as a holy thing; and beware how you put the chains of slavery upon it, or expose it from selfishness to hunger and nakedness. The importance of physical training needs to be rung into the ears of all, as with the peal of a trumpet. “It is reckoned,” says Dr. Robert Lee in a sermon preached before royalty, “that one hundred thousand persons die annually in England of preventible diseases. In the same proportion more than a million and a quarter must die annually from the same causes in Europe. In the fact that the platform, the press, and the pulpit have lifted up their voices on behalf of physical education, we recognise one of the most hopeful signs of the times.”
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.
Although all rational men believe that women ought to be better instructed, there is a class of pedants who are of opinion that the same facilities for the acquisition of knowledge would make them rather the rivals than the companions of men. Hence our famous seats of learning are open to the one sex, and the most tempting prizes are within their reach; but no such privileges are accorded to the other. We are glad that the question regarding the propriety or impropriety of young women availing themselves of an academical education has been raised, in a somewhat unexpected form, at the oldest university in Scotland. A young English lady, Miss Elizabeth Garrett, the daughter of a gentleman of independent fortune, who had educated herself highly in classics and some of the physical sciences, with a view to the study of medicine, visited St. Andrews a few summers ago, and intimated her desire to become a student in several of the classes during the winter. Some of the professors gave her decided encouragement; and others were understood to say that they would offer no opposition. They were all ordinarily gallant, except Professor Ferrier, whose strong conservative tendencies led him to oppose. She applied to the secretary for a matriculation ticket, received the ticket, paid the fee, and signed her name in the book. Next day she presented her ticket to Dr. Heddle, and asked leave to attend his lectures on chemistry. He had no objection, and gave her a letter to Mr. Ireland, authorising him to give her a ticket for the class. In the same way she obtained a ticket for Dr. Day’s class of anatomy and physiology. He gave her a cordial welcome. But alas! the senatus met and passed a resolution to the effect that the issuing of the tickets to Miss Garrett was not sufficiently authorised, that the novel question raised ought to be deliberately considered and decided, that the opinion of other universities and lawyers should be taken, and that in the meantime the lady should not be allowed to attend on the classes of the university. All honour, and all success to those noble men who are labouring to destroy such exclusiveness, and to make these national institutions free to all, whether male or female. Your business, meanwhile, is to make the most and the best of the appliances within your reach.
Different schools of mental philosophy have variously divided and named the intellectual faculties; we are not careful to follow the exact definitions, divisions, or phraseologies of the metaphysician; it will serve our purpose better to take those prominent points which all may comprehend and appreciate. It appears to us that there are four distinct stages of mental development, characterised by four distinct classes of faculties. The first is distinguished by the perceptive; the second by the conceptive; the third by the knowing; and the fourth by the reasoning. These are discriminated from one another by the peculiar activity of the faculties which are distinctive of each; and they are mutually connected by the necessity of a certain amount of simultaneous active development.
The perceptive faculties adapt you to the material world, and furnish you with information concerning the powers, properties, and glories of matter. Their distinctive office is to observe; and they should be cultivated with the utmost care, for they not only lie at the basis of all mental superstructure, by furnishing the other faculties with the stock, or raw materials to work on; but in proportion to the distinctness of the perceptions will be the accuracy of the memory, and probably the precision of the judgment. How then can their power and activity be developed? simply by exercising them—by opening your eyes and keeping them open. The world is full of objects; but multitudes pass through life of whom it may be said, “having eyes they see not.”
The peculiar function of the conceptive faculties is to store the mind with ideas formed out of previous knowledge. When you completely enter into a scene portrayed in history or in poetry, and approach the situation of the actual observer, you are said to conceive what is meant, and also to imagine it. There is a notion pretty prevalent, that the culture of those powers which relate to the ornamental rather than the essential is to be sought only by the rich, or those destined to occupy a high position in society. No mistake could be more mischievous and cruel. Not only are they sources of enjoyment, but the main safeguards of purity—if, indeed, we should distinguish these; for in being the former they become the latter. The means of æsthetic cultivation are, more or less, within the reach of all. Contemplate the towering mountain and the extending plain—the starry firmament and the boundless ocean; listen to music and oratory; visit the galleries of art, mechanism, and industry. But literature is at once the most potent and most widely available instrument for the expansion of the susceptibilities. Literary artists are the true unveilers of nature.
“Blessings be on them, and eternal praise,
The poets who, on earth, have made us heirs
Of truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays.”
But for them, nature, aye and humanity too, in their higher teachings, would remain sealed books—dead languages, to the millions of the race.