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NORMAL.
NORMAL.
--spirit, the heart, is in it. We are not to do less work by thinking, but to get greater results, more home comforts. We are to help civilization by thinking away heartless drudgery. We cannot stop its grand progress to this end. Look at the past. At first we pulled our wheat, then cut it with a sickle, then with a cradle, next we made our horses do part of the work with a reaper, and to-day with our self-binding harvesters they do nearly all of it. We make steam do the threshing. And the end is not yet. The time is coming when the great natural forces of gravitation, electricity, chemism, or some unknown form of energy will be harnessed to ingenious machines—invented by educated minds—and thus require not more than half man's time to get wealth, leaving him the other half to educate himself, and to think out the laws which govern us, and to enjoy their beauty.
A THREEFOLD EDUCATION.
The universe is composed of two parts, matter and force. God and man direct force to change the form of matter. By harnessing force to ingenious machines, man makes it change the various forms of material to food and clothing and shelter, and these in their most beautiful forms. The most ingenious machines of all are animate. Vital force is harnessed to these animal muscles. Man has dominion over all animals, himself included, but he must of necessity use his own muscles to assist his direction of the other machines. The muscles of the body then must be skillful and strong. To give them the needed skill and strength requires physical education.
The kind of force that directs these animal and inanimate machines is mind. Mind, through an engine called the brain produces thought. Thought is the action of mental force in directing the other forces. Thought, expressed in language, directs even those potent machines called men.
To produce either mental or muscular action, man uses vital force or energy. If he use all in muscular action, he will have none left with which to think. A man who drudges all day cannot think to good advantage. A tired body makes a weary brain. You say, "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." Yes, you cannot keep your hands idle. If they are not doing good work, they will be doing bad. But remember you also say, "An idle brain is the devil's workshop." You mean that the brain is God's workshop, and if idle, empty, the man himself becomes a very devil; a breaker of all good laws; a destroyer of free-to-do-right government like ours.
We must think. Hard physical labor is not man's purpose in life.Men, for their own good, must always do some muscular labor. All work is ennobling, if the artist-
We must think that we may find out our duty. The minds of the ruling majority must be educated, to know their duty at the nominating convention and the polls. Mental education trains men to see things as they are.
But to know our duty and leave it undone is to lose all. We cannot do, unless we know, but the doing is the nobler. We are not only to know what is right and what is wrong, but we are to do the right by obeying the conscience, the soul, the force which directs the mind and controls the desires. Moral education trains the motive power which inspires all mental and physical effort. We need more of this training in our homes and in our schools.
From the first, body and mind and soul act together and must be trained together. Thus only can we have broad, cultured symmetrical men. The three parts must be developed equally to come up to God's measure of a man—a strong-bodied, great minded, whole-souled MAN. JOHN DICE.