ssertion 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