A League of Learning 301
to look after the physical well-being of the children until
they are fourteen years old, but not any longer? Would you
consider that Great Britain had done anything notable in
resolving to look after the bodily health of the boys and
girls until they are sixteen, and in beginning to think of ex-
tending their care till they are eighteen? On the contrary,
you would think us foolish if we fixed any limit of age.
Physical health must be a national care always, even to the
last moment of life.
Can you assign any valid justification for the very dif-
ferent attitude which both nations, yours and mine, take to
mental health? Is a stunted mind of so much less impor-
tance than a stunted body? When will we see that it is
morally and socially imperative that, all our lives long, there
shall be some interest of some kind in some science, in some
branch of learning or of art, that shall occupy the leisure
hours and widen the outlook and enrich the soul of the man
of business and of the working man alike? There is more
and more leisure and there is more and more pay coming
to the working man, I believe; and I am delighted with the
fact. But I want the working man to be led and guided to
a better use of his leisure, and a better use of his higher pay.
And I know of no better way than that he should be educated
to such a stage that he shall continue all his life long to
delight in history or in literature, in physical experiment or
in some other of the thousand and one ways in which the
world imparts its meaning and beauty to man—the world
which, day and night, by its constant laws and its never
ceasing changes, is tempting the mind of man to come and
understand and enjoy it. Nature is one grand treasury of
truths of every kind, waiting to be possessed by man; and
the majority of us walk blindly through these treasures
without ever seeing their worth.