ing
worthy of the name of language. But man alone, with his better brain
and better anatomical structure of throat and mouth, and the closer
interdependence with his fellows, has attained to articulate speech.
And this again has become the bond to a still closer union.

Now our only question is, How does social life enable and aid man to
conform to environment? We are interested not so much in his
happiness as in his progress. It helps and improves the body by
giving him a better and more constant supply of more suitable food,
and better protection from inclemency of the weather, and in many
other ways. Baths and gymnasia are built, and medical science
prolongs life. Yet make the items as many as you can, and what a
long list of disadvantages to man physically you must set over
against these. Many of these evils will doubtless disappear as
society becomes better organized, but some will always remain to
plague us. We pamper or abuse our stomachs, and dyspepsia results.
We live in hot-houses, and a host of diseases are fostered by them.
Indeed it would be hard to count up the diseases for which social
life is directly or indirectly responsible. Social life becomes more
and more complicated, and our nervous systems cannot bear the
strain. Medical science saves alive thousands who would otherwise
die, and these grow up to bear children as weak as themselves. We
are looking now at the physical side alone; and from this standpoint
the survival of the invalid is a sore evil. Now society will and
must become healthier; we shall not always abuse our bodies as
sinfully as we now do. Still, viewed from the standpoint of the body
alone, the best, as it seems to me, which we can claim, is that
social life does no more harm than good.

What has social life done for man intellectually? Much. It gives him
schools and colleges. But are our systems of education an unmixed
good? How many of our schools and colleges are places where men are
stuffed with facts until they have no time nor inclination to think?
They may turn out learned men; do they produce thinkers? And how
about the spread of knowledge? Is it not a spread of information?
And most of what goes forth from the press is not worthy of even
that name, or is information which a man had better be without. We
are proud of being a nation of readers. And reading is good, if a
man thinks about what he reads; otherwise it is like undigested food
in the stomach, an injury and a curse