cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply
domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not
become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red
shirt will also be a hero in a white one. Civilization, imperfect as
it is, has already procured for us better food, better air, and better
behavior; it gives us physical training on system; and its mental
training, by refining the nervous organization, makes the same quantity
of muscular power go much farther. The young English ensigns and
lieutenants who at Waterloo (in the words of Wellington) "rushed to meet
death, as if it were a game of cricket," were the fruit of civilization.
They were representatives, indeed, of the aristocracy of their nation;
and here, where the aim of all institutions is to make the whole nation
an aristocracy, we must plan to secure the same splendid physical
superiority on a grander scale. It is in our power, by using even very
moderately for this purpose our magnificent machinery of common schools,
to give to the physical side of civilization an advantage which it has
possessed nowhere else, not even in England or Germany. It is not yet
time to suggest detailed plans on this subject, since the public mind
is not yet fully awake even to the demand. When the time comes, the
necessary provisions can be made easily,--at least, as regards boys;
for the physical training of girls is a far more difficult problem
The organization is more delicate and complicated, the embarrassments
greater, the observations less carefully made, the successes fewer,
the failures far more disastrous. Any intelligent and robust man may
undertake the physical training of fifty boys, however delicate their
organization, with a reasonable hope of rearing nearly all of them, by
easy and obvious methods, into a vigorous maturity; but what wise man
or woman can expect anything like the same proportion of success, at
present, with fifty American girls?