arfed? Which of the two lives is
normal? They used all their faculties and utilized all their powers.
Do we? The only force or product which we are willing to see wasted
is the highest mental and moral power. Our engines and turbine
wheels utilize the last ounce of pressure of the steam or water. The
manufacturers pay high wages to hands who can tend machines run at
the highest possible speed. The profits of modern business come
largely from the utilization of force or products formerly wasted.
But how far do we utilize the highest faculties of the mind, which
have to do with character, the crowning glory of human development?
Are we not eminently "penny-wise and pound-foolish?" A ship which
uses only its donkey-engines, and does nothing but take in and get
out cargo is a dismantled hulk. A captain who thinks only of cargo,
and engines, and the length of the daily run, but who takes no
observations and consults no chart, will make land only to run upon
rocks. Are we not too much like such dismantled hulks, or ships
sailing with priceless cargoes but with mad captains?

But we have not yet seen the worst results of this waste of our
highest powers. The sessile animal, which lives mainly for
digestion, does not attain as good digestive organs as his more
active neighbor, who subordinates digestion to muscle. Lower powers
reach their highest development only in proportion as they are
strictly subordinated to higher. This may be called a law of
biology. And our lower mental powers fail of their highest
development and capacity mainly because of the lack of this
subordination.

But a disused organ is very likely to become a seat of disease and
to thus enfeeble or destroy the whole body. And this disease effects
the most complete ruin when its seat is in the highest organs.
Dyspepsia is bad enough, but mania or idiocy is infinitely worse.
And our moral powers are always enfeebled, and often diseased, from
lack of strong exercise. And some blind guides, seeing only the
disease, cry out for the extirpation of the whole faculty, as some
physicians are said to propose the removal of the vermiform
appendage in children. Similarly might the drunkard argue against
the value of brain, because it aches after a debauch. Our work is
hard labor, and we gain no enjoyment in the use of our mental
powers; for the enjoyment of any activity is proportional to the
height and glory of the purpose for which it is employed. As long as
we are