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 nought but good to its servant the body?

* * * * *

After all, we cannot evade, and we ought not to seek to evade, the
testimony of facts. No cause can properly stand on any theory, however
pleasant and cheering, or however plausible. What, then, of the facts,