The Atlantic Monthly | Page 2

of those opinions may have been indirectly beneficial, we wish to state the truth as it looks to us, to exhibit the facts which bear upon this subject in the shape and hue they have to our own minds, and to give the grounds of our conviction that a cultivated mind is the best friend and ally of the body.
* * * * *
Would it not be singular, if anything different were true? You say, and you say rightly, that the best part of a man is his mind and soul, those spiritual elements which divide him from all the rest of the creation, animate or inanimate, and make him lord and sovereign over them all. You say, and you say wisely, that the body, however strong and beautiful, is nothing,--that the senses, however keen and vigorous, are nothing,--that the outward glories, however much they may minister to sensual gratification, are nothing,--unless they all become the instruments for the upbuilding of the immortal part in man. But what a tremendous impeachment of the wisdom or power of the Creator you are bringing, if you assert that the development of this highest part, whether by its direct influence on the body, or indirectly by the habits of life which it creates, is destructive of all the rest, nay, self-destructive! You may show that every opening bud in spring, and every joint, nerve, and muscle in every animate creature, are full of proofs of wise designs accomplishing their purposes, and it shall all count for less than nothing, if you can demonstrate that the mind, in its highest, broadest development, brings anarchy into the system,--or, mark it well, produces, or tends to produce, habits of living ruinous to health, and so ruinous to true usefulness. At the outset, therefore, the very fact that the mind is the highest creation of Divine wisdom would force us to believe that that development of it, that increase of knowledge, that sharpening of the faculties, that feeding of intellectual hunger, which does not promote joy and health in every part, must be false and illegitimate indeed.
And it is hardly too much to say, that, in a rational being, thought is almost synonymous with vitality of all sorts. The brain throws out its network of nerves to every part of the body; and those nerves are the pathways along which it sends, not alone physical volitions, but its mental force and high intelligence, to mingle by a subtile chemistry with every fibre, and give it a finer life and a more bounding elasticity. So one might foretell, before the study of a single fact of experience, that, other things being equal, he who had few or no thoughts would have not only a dormant mind, but also a sluggish and inert body, less active than another, less enduring, and especially less defiant of physical ills. And one might prophesy, too, that he who had high thoughts and wealth of knowledge would have stored up in his brain a magazine of reserved power wherewith to support the faltering body: a prophecy not wide apart, perhaps, from any broad and candid observation of human life.
And who can fail to remember what superior resources a cultivated mind has over one sunk in sloth and ignorance,--how much wider an outlook, how much larger and more varied interests, and how these things support when outward props fail, how they strengthen in misfortune and pain, and keep the heart from anxieties which might wear out the body? Scott, dictating "Ivanhoe" in the midst of a torturing sickness, and so rising, by force of a cultivated imagination, above all physical anguish, to revel in visions of chivalric splendor, is but the type of men everywhere, who, but for resources supplied by the mind, would have sunk beneath the blows of adverse fortune, or else sought forgetfulness in brutalizing and destructive pleasures. Sometimes a book is better far than medicine, and more truly soothing than the best anodyne. Sometimes a rich-freighted memory is more genial than many companions. Sometimes a firm mind, that has all it needs within itself, is a watchtower to which we may flee, and from which look down calmly upon our own losses and misfortunes. He who does not understand this has either had a most fortunate experience, or else has no culture, which is really a part of himself, woven into the very texture of the soul. So, if there were no facts, considering the mind, and who made it, and how it is related to the body, and how, when it is a good mind and a well-stored mind, it seems to stand for all else, to be food and shelter and comfort and friend and hope, who could believe anything else than that a well-instructed soul could do