The Atlantic Monthly | Page 6

physicians, the clergymen, the professors in your colleges. The very exception to this statement rather confirms than contradicts our general position, that intellectual culture is absolutely invigorating. The cultivators of the soil live longest. But note that it is the educated, intelligent farmers, the farmers of Massachusetts, the farmers of a State of common schools, the farmers who link thought to labor, who live long. And doubtless, if they carried more thought into their labor, if they were more intelligent, if they were better educated, they would live yet longer. At any rate, in England the cultivators of her soil, her down-trodden peasantry, sluggish and uneducated, do not live out half their days. Very likely the farmer's lot, plus education and plus habits of mental activity, is the healthiest as it is the primal condition of man. Nevertheless, considering what is the general opinion, it is surprising how slight is the advantage which he has even then over the purely literary classes.
Will you go to Harvard University and ascertain what becomes of her children? Take up, then, Dr. Palmer's Necrology of the Alumni of Harvard from 1851 to 1863. You will learn, that, while the average age of all persons who in Massachusetts die after they have attained the period of twenty years is but fifty years, the average age of Harvard graduates, who die in like manner, is fifty-eight years. Thus you have, in favor of the highest form of public education known in the State, a clear average of eight years. You may examine backward the Triennial Catalogue as far as you please, and you will not find the testimony essentially different. The statement will stand impregnable, that, from the time John Harvard founded our little College in the wilderness, to this hour, when it is fast becoming a great University, with its schools in every department, and its lectures covering the whole field of human knowledge, the graduates have always attained a longevity surpassing that of their generation.
And you are to observe that this comparison is a strictly just comparison. We contrast not the whole community, old and young, with those who must necessarily have attained manhood before they are a class at all; but adults with adults, graduates with those of other avocations who have arrived at the period of twenty years. Neither do we compare the bright and peculiar luminaries of Harvard with the mass of men,--though, in fact, it is well known that the best scholars live the most years,--but we compare the whole body of the graduates, bright and dull, studious and unstudious, with the whole body of the community.
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To the array of evidence which may be brought from all the registries of all the states and universities under heaven, some may triumphantly exclaim, "Statistics are unworthy of trust." "To lie like statistics," "false as a fact," these are the stalest of witticisms. But the objection to which they give point is practically frivolous. Grant that statistics are to a certain degree doubtful, are they not the most trustworthy evidence we have? And in the question at issue, are they not the only evidence which has real force? And allowing their general defectiveness, how shall we explain, that, though gathered from all sides and by all kinds of people, they so uniformly favor education? Why, if they must err, do they err so pertinaciously in one direction? How does it happen, that, summon as many witnesses as you please, and cross-question them as severely as you can, they never falter in this testimony, that, where intelligence abounds, there physical vigor does much more abound? that, where education is broad and generous, there the years are many and happy?
If, therefore, facts can prove anything, it is that just such a condition of life as that which is growing more and more general among us, and which our common-school system directly fosters, where every man is becoming an educated man,--where the farmer upon his acres, the merchant at his desk, and the mechanic in his shop, no less than the scholar poring over his books shall be in the truest sense educated,--that such a condition is the one of all others which promotes habits of thought and action, an elasticity of temper and a breadth of vision and interest most conducive to health and vigor. It is the fashion to talk of the appearance of superior robustness so characteristic of our English brethren. But we suspect that in this case, too, appearances are deceitful. That climate may produce in us a restless energy inconsistent with rounded forms and rosy cheeks we freely allow. But in strength and real endurance the New England constitution will yield to none. And the stern logic of facts shows beyond a peradventure, that here there are