the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is
developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among
ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its
warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience--when we see that
the function is still in great measure subordinated to the
appearance--we have further reason for inferring such an origin.

It is curious that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental
as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful.
Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that
knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to
that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, music, poetry,
rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until Socrates taught, had but little
bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects; while knowledge aiding
the arts of life had a very subordinate place. And in our own
universities and schools at the present moment, the like antithesis
holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that
throughout his after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies
his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that
in his shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in
playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little
aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire--so little,
that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory; and if he
occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or alludes to some Greek myth, it
is less to throw light on the topic in hand than for the sake of effect.
If we inquire what is the real motive for giving boys a classical
education, we find it to be simply conformity to public opinion. Men
dress their children's minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing
fashion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on paint before leaving his hut, not
with a view to any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be
seen without it; so, a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on,
not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be disgraced
by being found ignorant of them--that he may have "the education of a
gentleman"--the badge marking a certain social position, and bringing a
consequent respect.

This parallel is still more clearly displayed in the case of the other
sex. In the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has
continued to predom