The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-10-12 00:00:00

CANON KINGSLEY ON HIYSICAL
EDUCATION.
At the re-opening,of the Birmingham and Midland
Institute on Monday evening, the inaugural address
was delivered by the Rev. Canon Kingsley. After
some general advice to the students, Canon Kingsley
There Is a subject on which I must beg leave to speak
somewhat at length one very near to my heart and very
heavy on my heart, both as a Chrietian, and, I trust, a
patriot. I hone that my lean are exaggerated. I should
thank God to find myself mistaken. But I must say here
as elsewhere—in semen or out of season—l want the
science of health taught more widely, more systematically,
than I find it taught anywhere. We talk of our hardy fore-
fathers, and rightly, tut they were hardy just as are savages
generally hardy, bemuse none but the hardy lived. Abe
populatien of this island increased slewly, if at all, for
centuries. Tboee terrible laws of natural selection, which
beim in the eurrival of the fittest. cleared oil the leas fit in
every generation, principally by infantile illnesses, often by
whelesale pestilence, and left, on the whole, those of the
strongest constitution to continue a sturdy, valiant, enter
prising Gee,. Theu came a sudden climee. The
rapid imrease of eopalesion during the first half
of this ci ntury begun at a moment when the Eng-
lish stock wise specially ex hau ited at the end of
the twenty.five years' French war At the beginnbig
of that war—and, indeed, ever since the war with Spain in
1719—a war popularly snubbed as the one about Jenkins'a
ear, tut which was, I hold, one of the most just and the
nees, world-tmportaet—as it was certainly one of the most
popular wars in which this country ever engaged—the
English people, from the gentleman who led to the commos
soldier or miler who followed him, were, I believe, one of
the mightiest and moot capable races which the world has
ever seen, comparable best to the obi Roman at his mightb
eat and most capable period. They created the British
Empire ; they won for us our colonies, our commerce, the
mastery of the seas of all the world, but how!
" Their bones are scattered far and wide,
By mount, by stream, by sea."
Year after year, till the final triumph of Waterloo, battle,
Mamas, fatigue had been carrying elf our stoutest, ablest,
healthiest young men, each of whom, alas represented a
maiden left at home, unmarried or married, most probably
to a worse man. The strongest went to the war, and each
who fell 101 l a marl weaker that himself to continue the race.
The middle clam., being most engaged in peaceful pursuits,
suffered less of this decimation of their finest and youngest
men, and to that fact I attribute much of their increasing pre,
ponderancein electoral, social, and political agenciesunbi this
day. But now, my it very deliberately and earnestly, it is their
turn to beware indeed of all classes, and for this relates; here
Is, as you may see, the most hideous of all physical curses
which man can Inflict on himself, for thin simple reason,
SIMS it reverses the very laws of nature, and is MOPS cruel
even than pestilence. Instead of leaning in the survival of
the fittest it issues in the survival of the less fit, and there-
fore, if protracted, must deteriorate generations yet unborn;
and yet a peace, prosperous, civilised, human, such as we,
thank God, enjoy now is fraught with the very same danger.
In the first place, tens of thousands— who knows it null—
lead sedentary lives, stooping, aaphyxiated, employing as
small a fraction of their bodies as their minds; and that
such • life must tell upon their offspring—may be for genera-
tions to come—what medical man does not know full weU ;
and all this in dwellings, workshops, mines, and what not?—
the very atmosphere of which tends to unhealth and not to
health—to drunkenness as a solace under the feeling of un-
health and depressing influences.
nut now —and this is one of the most fearful problems with
which modern civilisation has to deal—we interfere with
natural selection from comcientions core of life, just as much
am war itself does. War kills the most fit to live. We spend
vest energies in saving alive those who, looking at them
from a merely physical point of view, are most fit to die.
Everything which tends to make it mere easy to live—
every sanitary reform, prevention of pestilence, medical
discovery, amelioration of climate, drainage of soil, im-
provement of dwelling houses, workhouses, prisons, every
reformatory school, every Malaita', every cure of drunken-
lieu —every influeuce, in short, which has, no I am told,
increased the aversce length of life iu these Islands
since the first mtabliehmeut of life Insurance offices
led years ago by nearly one-third—every influence of
Ole kind, I say saves persons' lives who would other-
wise have died : and the great majority of these persons,
even In surgical cases and cases of zymotic disease, will be
those of the leant resisting power—the weaklier thus pre-
served, to produce In their teen a weaklier progeny. Do
I say that we ought not to save them if we until Uod forhlt!
The weakling, the diseased, whether infant or adult is there
on earth, a British citizen, and no more responsible for its
weakliness than for its existence ; society—that is, In plain
English, you and I and our ancestors—are responsible for
those; and we must fulfil our duty, and keep them in life,
and, if we can, heal, strengthen, develop to the utmost, and
make the best of that which Fate and our own deserving'
have given ILO to deal with.
I do not speak to-night of higher motives still—motives
which to every minister ef religion must be paramount and
awful—l speak merely of physical and social motives such as
tisreal, to tery Leinc.outcelenceedomf
man or
winoanmzth.evetnleignZewvhilLho
Pain, give pleasures for all alike, ike Him who causes his sun
to shine on the evil and on the good, and his rain to fail on the
just and on the unjust. But it is palpable that in so doing we
must year by year prmerve a large per-centage of weakly per-
sons who, marrying freely in their own class, must produce
weakly children, and they weaklier children still. Must, did I
say? There are those who are of opinion—and I, after
watching and comparing the histories of many families,
indeed, of every one with which I have Come in contact
for now five and-thirty years in town and country, can
only fear that their opinion Is but too well founded on
fact—that in the majority of casee, in all classes what-
soever, the children are tot equal to their parents, or
they again to their grandparents of the beginning of the
century and that this degrading process goes on most
surely and rapidly in our large towns, and in propor-
tion to the antiquity of those towns—this and c ignate truths
have been felt more and more deeply, as the years
have rolled on, by students of human society. English
society and English human nature are what they have be-
cools by the Indirect influences of long ages, and we can no
more reconstruct the one than we can change the other.
We must teach men, therefore, not merely that they ought
to be free, but that they are free, whether they know it or
not, for good and for evil; and we must do that in this coos
by teaching them sound practical science—the science of
physiology as applied to health. It is still& question whether
science has fully discovered those laws of hereditary health,
the disregard of which causes so many marriages disastrous
to generations yet unborn.
But much valuable light has been thrown on this most
serious and most important subject during the last few years.
Eay, our light, and l thank God for it, is more widely and
deeply diffused mouth by month as to the value of healthy
habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure air, rule water,
of various kinds of food, as each tends to make bone, fat,
or muscle, provided only that tho food be miadelterateil ; the
value of various kinds of clothilig, of physieal exercise, and
of a free and equal development of the brain powers,
without undue overstrain in any one direction, "We don't
want our children to he stripped giants and bravos, but
clean, able, highly educated. Intellect is what we want, and
Intellect makes money. Intellect rules the world. I would
rather see my son a genius than an athlete " ladies and
gentlemen, and so would I but what if, for want of learning
the laws of nature you got neither genius nor athlete, but
only an incapable, unhappy personage? Without healthy
bodies you will not, in the long run, have healthy intellects.
Of moral I my nothing. They are quite independent, as
far as my reading and olmervation go, of either healthiness
or unhealthiness ; arid I thank Clod sincerely that such is the
case, and that, in virtue and piety, Us so often chooses the
weak things of this world to confound the sti ong ; but
wherever you have a pepulation generally weakly, stunted,
scrofulous, you will find in them a corresponding type of
brain, which cannot be trusted to do good work. I would
make men and women discontented with that divineand whole
some discontent at their own physical frame and at that of
their children. I svould accustom their eyes to Orme pre-
cious heirlooms vf the human race, the statues of the
old Greek—to their tender grandeur, their ehaste healthful-
ness, their unconscious, because perfect might, and say,
" There ; there are tokens to you and to all generations yet
unborn of what man meld be once, of what he can be again,
If he would obey those laws of nature which are the voice
of erode' I would make them disoosutceilol with the ugli-
ness and dimmer, of their dweillugs ; I would make the
man discontented with the Whims of his garments—
and still more, now the women of all ranks, with that
fashion of theirs, and with everything mound them,
which they have the power of improving it it be at
all ungraceful, snperflunui, tawdry, ridiculous, unwhole-
some—l would make them discontented with what they
call their education, and say to them you call the three
Royal It's education. They are not education no more
is the knowledge which would enable you to take the
highest prizes in this institute. They are not edu-
cation. They am rnly Instruction—a necessary ground-
work In an age like this for making practical me of
your education, but not the education itself. As Mr
Gladstone says In a presage which I must have the
honour of quoting at length, As regarded all other
functions of our nature outside the domain of the life to
godward, all those functions which are Slimmed up in
what St. Paul calls the flesh and the mind, the physical and
bodily life, the tendency of the system was to exalt the
human element by proposing a model of beauty, strength,
and wisdom, in all their combinations, so elevated, that
the effort to retain them required • continual upward
atrain. It made diviurty attainable, and thus it effec•
tually directed the thought and aim if man 'along the
line of limitless desires.'" Such a scheme of relieion,
though failing grossly in the government of the pas-
liooB, and in upholding the standard of moral beauties,
Seeded powerfully to produce a lofty self respect and a
large, free, and varied conception of humanity. It moor-
orated itself in schemes of noble discipline for mind and
body. Indeed, if a life-long education and these habits of
mil I and action had their marked results (to omit madly
other ereatnesses in a philosophy, literature, and art which
remain to this day unrivalled or unsurpassed) upon those old
Greeks. and induced them to do what they did for their own
education wiehout science and without Christianity, we who
have both, what might we do if we wilt be true to our &dean-
Wel and to ourselves?