We need not stop to define this prime excellence or _well-being_ of our corporeal organism. It is sufficient for our argument that there is such a state, better than all others, and therefore most desirable. The necessary assumption of the fact is enough to show the absurdity of that view which would regard this state as a _means_ to bodily utilities lower than itself, or to any thing else as an end which is not the transcending good of the spirit. Why is bodily health desirable? What is the measure of its value? Suppose the answer to be--We want it, and we take care of it, as an excellent help to making money, or to fit us for business, or in general, as a _means_ of acquiring the _means_ for the gratification of those ends which are not only lower than the good of health, but, in many cases, actually destructive of it when attained. Would not the least reflecting mind be struck with the absurdity. It is making that which is itself an _end_, a _means_ to other things having all their value from their relation to that very thing whose position is so irrationally reversed. In how much higher a sense does the analogy hold good in respect to our spiritual organization? Education, then, aims at the HEALTH OF THE SOUL, the production of a _sound mind_. Without now going into any analysis of that in which this health consists, it is enough for us at present that there is such a state, most real as well as most desirable. There is such a _sound mind_--a good thing in itself, irrespective of any use to which it may be applied. The certainty of its reality furnishes the true answer to our question, lifting it, at once, above those views which would regard education solely as a means to some other and lower thing than could be rationally included in this essential idea of the spiritual hygieia.