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.
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