One more pertinent fact. Take in England any number of families you please, whose parents can read and write, and an equal number of families whose parents cannot read and write, and the number of children in the latter class of families who will die before the age of five years will greatly exceed that in the former class,some thirty or forty per cent. So surely does a thoughtful ordering of life come in the train of intelligence. If faith is to be placed in statistics of any sort, then it holds true in foreign countries that human life is long in proportion to the degree that knowledge, refinement, and virtue are diffused. That is, sainthood, so far from destroying the body, preserves it.
I anticipate the objection which may be made to our last argument. Abroad, we are told, there is such an element of healthy, out-door life, that any ill effects which might naturally follow in the train of general education are neutralized. Abroad, too, education with the masses is elementary, and advanced also with more moderation than with us. Abroad, moreover, the whole social being is not pervaded with the intense intellectual activity and fervor which are so characteristic especially of New England life.
Come home, then, to our own Massachusetts, which some will have is school-mad. What do you find? Here, in a climate proverbially changeable and rigorous,here, where mental and moral excitements rise to fever-heat,here, where churches adorn every landscape, and school-houses greet us at every corner, and lyceums are established in every village,here, where newspapers circulate by the hundred thousand, and magazines for our old folks, and "Our Young Folks," too, reach fifty thousand,here, in Massachusetts, health is at its climax: greater and more enduring than in bonnie England, or vine-clad France, or sunny Italy. I read some statistics the other day, and I have ever since had a greater respect for the land of "east-winds, and salt-fish and school-houses," as scandalous people have termed Massachusetts. What do these statistics say? That, while in England the deaths reach annually 2.21 per cent of the whole population, and in France 2.36 per cent, and in Italy 2.94 per cent, and in Austria 3.34 per cent, in Massachusetts, the deaths are only 1.82 per cent annually. Even in Boston, with its large proportion of foreign elements, the percentage of deaths is only 2.35. It may be said, in criticism of these statements, that in our country statistics are not kept with sufficient accuracy to furnish correct data. However this may be in our rural districts, it certainly is not true of the metropolis. The figures are not at hand, but they exist, and they prove conclusively that those wards in Boston which have a population most purely native reach a salubrity unexcelled. So that, with all the real drawbacks of climate, and the pretended drawbacks of unnatural or excessive mental stimulus, the health here is absolutely unequalled by that of any country in Europe. Certainly, if the mental and moral sainthood which we have does not build up the body, it cannot be said that it does any injury to it.
Have we noted what a splendid testimony the war which has just closed has given to the physical results of our New England villages and put into the ranks of our armyyoung men who learned the alphabet at four, who all through boyhood had the advantages of our common-school system, who had felt to the full the excitement of the intellectual life about themhave stood taller, weighed heavier, fought more bravely and intelligently, won victory out of more adverse circumstances, and, what is more to the point, endured more hardship with less sickness, than a like number of any other race on earth. We care not where you look for comparison, whether to Britain, or to France, or to Russia, where the spelling-book has almost been tabooed, or to Spain, where in times past the capacity to read the Bible was scarcely less than rank heresy, at least for the common people. This war has been brought to a successful issue by the best educated army that ever fought on battle-field, or, as the new book has it, by "the thinking bayonet," by men whose physical manhood has received no detriment from their intellectual culture.
These assertions are founded upon statistics which have been preserved regiments whose members were almost exclusively native-born. And the results are certainly in accordance with all candid observation. It may, indeed, be said that the better health of our army has been after all the result of the better care which the soldier has taken of himself. We answer, the better care was the product of his education. It may be said again that this health was owing in a great measure to the superior watchfulness exercised over the soldier by others, by the Government, by the Sanitary Commission, and by State agencies. Then we reply, that this tenderness of the soldier, if tenderness it be, and this sagacity, if sagacity prompted the care, were both the offspring of that high intelligence which is the proper result of popular education.
There is but one possible mode of escape from such testimony. This whole train of argument is inconclusive, it may be asserted, because what is maintained is not that intellectual culture is unhealthful, where it is woven into the web of active life, but only where the pursuit of knowledge is one's business. It may be readily allowed, that, where the whole nature is kept alive by the breath of outward enterprise, when the great waves of this world's excitements are permitted to roll with purifying tides into the inmost recesses of the soul, the results of mental culture may be modified. But what of the saints? What of the literary men par excellence?
Ah! if you restrain us to that line of inquiry, the argument will be trebly strong, and the facts grow overwhelmingly pertinent and conclusive. Will you examine the careful registry of deaths in Massachusetts which has been kept the last twenty years? It will inform you that the classes whose average of life is high up, almost the highest up, are with us the classes that work with the brain,the judges, the lawyers, the 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.