A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development | Page 4

heart a higher praise than can be uttered by the tongue. But
let me ask you, What would Washington's qualities of mind and heart
have availed his country, unless the manly strength, the frame of iron
had been added? A good man he might have been, a patriot he surely
would have been; but the Father of his Country, never! The soul that
trusted in God, the conscience that felt the omnipotence of justice and
right, the heart that beat for his country's weal alone, the mind that
thought out her freedom, was upborne by the body that knew no fatigue,
by the nerves that knew not how to tremble.
Washington had to endure physical fatigue enough to have killed three
ordinary men. And how well did his youth prepare him for a life of
protracted toil. Hear his biographer Irving. "He was a
self-disciplinarian in physical as well as mental matters, and practised
himself in all kinds of athletic exercises, such as running, leaping,
pitching quoits, and tossing bars. His frame even in infancy had been
large and powerful, and he now excelled most of his playmates in
contests of agility and strength. As a proof of his muscular power, a
place is still pointed out at Fredericksburg, near the lower ferry, where,
when a boy, he threw a stone across the river. In horsemanship, too, he
already excelled, and was ready to back, and able to manage, the most
fiery steed. Traditional anecdotes still remain of his achievements in

this respect."
Some of you have doubtless seen in Thackeray's 'Virginians,' that
young Warrington found that he was more than a match for the English
jumpers, as indeed, writes he, he ought to be, as he could jump
twenty-one feet and a half, and no one in Virginia could beat him,
except Colonel G. Washington.
It is needless to say that I do not mean to exalt the body at the expense
of the higher faculties. I only maintain that the rest are incomplete
without the physical element; in which indeed all the other powers
dwell, and by means of which they are more or less clearly manifested.
There may, of course, be vast physical energy without any
corresponding development of mind or soul, as any blacksmith or prize
fighter could tell us. And further, there may be a character, in which
some of the higher qualities may exist in great perfection, coupled, too,
with mighty force of body, and yet the character may be incomplete.
Take, as an instance, another of America's great men.
Daniel Webster! perhaps the most cavernous head, set upon the
strongest shoulders, which has appeared upon the planet, since the soul
of Socrates went back to God. Daniel Webster! strong mind in strong
body, leader and king of men, deep-chested, lion-voiced, whose words
of power moved men as the wind moves the sea, whose eloquence had
a physical energy, a bodily grandeur about it like to that of no other
man. Daniel Webster! pride of all Americans; to you I leave it to say
where he was weak. It belongs not to me, a stranger, to pluck one laurel
from that stately brow; his own brethren must do it, with reluctant and
half remorseful hands, pitying the errors which marred so grand a
character, but saying of him as I would say of England, Webster, with
all thy faults, I love thee still.
Our analysis of human character, necessarily one-sided and imperfect,
is now ended. It remains for us to ask, What are its bearings upon
American education? How far does American education fulfil the wants
of Human Nature, and wherein does it disregard them? The title of my
Lecture tells plainly enough, where I think that the great deficiency is
found; a deficiency which reacts upon both mind and morals, and
ofttimes utterly defeats the best efforts of clergymen and teachers. I
assert, then, that, in America, the body is almost entirely neglected.
Thirty thousand clergymen, from as many pulpits, advocate the claims

of the conscience and the soul. A hundred thousand teachers are busied
throughout the length and breadth of the land in training the intellect,
while a man could almost count on his fingers the number of those
engaged in training the body. The intellectual training which the
masses receive, is the highest glory of American education. If I wanted
a stranger to believe that the Millennium was not far off, I would take
him to some of those grand Ward Schools in New York, where able
heads are trained by the thousand. When I myself entered them, I was
literally astonished. When I looked at the teachers who instructed that
throng of young souls, I could not help saying to myself, Ah! dear
friends, it would do you good to know what