Other things being equal, the educated man in any vocation is quite as
likely as another to be active, quick in every motion and free in every
limb.
* * * * *
But admit all that is claimed. Admit that increasing intelligence has
changed the average of man's life from the twenty-five years of the
seventeenth century to the thirty-five of the eighteenth or the
forty-five years of the nineteenth century. Admit, too, that the best
educated men of this generation will live five or ten years more than
the least educated men. Ought we to be satisfied with things as they
are? Should we not look for more than the forty or fifty years of human
life? Assuredly. But it is not our superfluous sainthood which is
destroying life. It is not that we have too much saintliness, but too
little, too limited wisdom, too narrow intelligence, too small an
endowment of virtue and conscience. It is our fierce absorption in
outward plans which plants anxieties like thorns in the heart. It is out
sloth and gluttony which eat out vitality. It is our unbridled appetites
and passions which burn like a consuming fire in our breasts.
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