"Very good," pursued Sir Patrick. "We are all of one mind as to which way the public feeling sets. If it is a feeling to be respected and encouraged, show me the national advantage which has resulted from it. Where is the influence of this modern outburst of manly enthusiasm on the serious concerns of life? and how has it improved the character of the people at large? Are we any of us individually readier than we ever were to sacrifice our own little private interests to the public good? Are we dealing with the serious social questions of our time in a conspicuously determined, downright, and definite way? Are we becoming a visibly and indisputably purer people in our code of commercial morals? Is there a healthier and higher tone in those public amusements which faithfully reflect in all countries the public taste? Produce me affirmative answers to these questions, which rest on solid proof, and I'll accept the present mania for athletic sports as something better than an outbreak of our insular boastfulness and our insular barbarity in a new form."
"Question! question!" in a general cry, from One, Two, and Three.
"Question! question!" in meek reverberation, from Smith and Jones.
"That is the question," rejoined Sir Patrick. "You admit the existence of the public feeling and I ask, what good does it do?"
"What harm does it do?" from One, Two, and Three.
"Hear! hear!" from Smith and Jones.
"That's a fair challenge," replied Sir Patrick. "I am bound to meet you on that new ground. I won't point, gentlemen, by way of answer, to the coarseness which I can see growing on our national manners, or to the deterioration which appears to me to be spreading more and more widely in our national tastes. You may tell me with perfect truth that I am too old a man to be a fair judge of manners and tastes which have got beyond my standards.
We will try the issue, as it now stands between us, on its abstract merits only. I assert that a state of public feeling which does practically place physical training, in its estimation, above moral and mental training, is a positively bad and dangerous state of feeling in this, that it encourages the inbred reluctance in humanity to submit to the demands which moral and mental cultivation must inevitably make on it. Which am I, as a boy, naturally most ready to do--to try how high I can jump? or to try how much I can learn? Which training comes easiest to me as a young man? The training which teaches me to handle an oar? or the training which teaches me to return good for evil, and to love my neighbor as myself? Of those two experiments, of those two trainings, which ought society in England to meet with the warmest encouragement? And which does society in England practically encourage, as a matter of fact?"
"What did you say yourself just now?" from One, Two, and Three.
"Remarkably well put!" from Smith and Jones.
"I said," admitted Sir Patrick, "that a man will go all the better to his books for his healthy physical exercise. And I say that again--provided the physical exercise be restrained within fit limits. But when public feeling enters into the question, and directly exalts the bodily exercises above the books--then I say public feeling is in a dangerous extreme. The bodily exercises, in that case, will be uppermost in the youth's thoughts, will have the strongest hold on his interest, will take the lion's share of his time, and will, by those means--barring the few purely exceptional instances--slowly and surely end in leaving him, to all good moral and mental purpose, certainly an uncultivated, and, possibly, a dangerous man."
A cry from the camp of the adversaries: "He's got to it at last!
A man who leads an out-of-door life, and uses the strength that God has given to him, is a dangerous man. Did any body ever hear the like of that?"
Cry reverberated, with variations, by the two human echoes: "No!
Nobody ever heard the like of that!"
"Clear your minds of cant, gentlemen," answered Sir Patrick. "The agricultural laborer leads an out-of-door life, and uses the strength that God has given to him. The sailor in the merchant service does the name. Both are an uncultivated, a shamefully uncultivated, class--and see the result! Look at the Map of Crime, and you will find the most hideous offenses in the calendar, committed--not in the towns, where the average man doesn't lead an out-of-door life, doesn't as a rule, use his strength, but is, as a rule, comparatively cultivated--not in the towns, but in the agricultural districts. As for the English sailor--except when the Royal Navy catches and cultivates him--ask Mr. Brinkworth, who has served in the merchant navy, what sort of specimen of the moral influence of out-of-door life and muscular cultivation _he_ is."
"In nine cases out of ten," said Arnold, "he is as idle and vicious as ruffian as walks the earth."
Another cry from the Opposition: "Are _we_ agricultural laborers?
Are _we_ sailors in the merchant service?"
A smart reverberation from the human echoes: "Smith! am I a laborer?" "Jones! am I a sailor?"
"Pray let us not be personal, gentlemen," said Sir Patrick. "I am speaking generally, and I can only meet extreme objections by pushing my argument to extreme limits. The laborer and the sailor have served my purpose. If the laborer and the sailor offend you, by all means let them walk off the stage!
I hold to the position which I advanced just now. A man may be well born, well off, well dressed, well fed--but if he is an uncultivated man, he is (in spite of all those advantages) a man with special capacities for evil in him, on that very account.
