Let us make clear our meaning by a well-known popular illustration. The famous pugilists, Hyer and Sullivan, as we were told by the Newspapers, went through a course of most careful training or education of the body. Its appetites, its affections, its faculties were all brought under proper regulation. They were made to practice the strictest temperance, the nicest discrimination was employed in respect to healthful and strengthening nourishment--in a word, the utmost attention was paid to the development of their corporeal powers. Now, had all this been for the promotion of the bodily health as an end (even in itself considered), it would have commanded respect as a noble, though not the noblest motive. But how are the reason and the conscience both shocked at the thought, that all this seeming care of the bodily well-being was intended only as a _means_ to the brutal contests of the ring, and these a _means_ to the still more beastly ends of the vile gamblers who had superintended this whole course of corporeal education. Do we not feel, instinctively, that the lowest intemperance is less degrading than such a use of the body and the body's health? And why should not even a deeper condemnation be visited on that kindred view which would regard the spiritual training in a similar light--which would look upon the soul's education only, or mainly, as subservient to what is called success in business, or the ends of political ambition, oft-times as deeply defiled with the base gambling spirit as any of the parties on the race course or the boxing ground, or, in short, to any object which, though better than these has no value in itself except as a means to that very thing which is so degraded from its proper ultimate rank. Let this then be our general answer to the question--What is education? We would carry it through all departments, the nursery, the family, the common school, the high school, the academy, the college, the university. It is every where the _spirit's health_, as a good _per se_, as something even higher, and better, and, therefore, more desirable than happiness, or "pleasing sensations"--as, in fact, a true end in itself, irrespective of any thing else to which it may contribute any incidental aid or utility. Take away wholly this idea, and its incidental benefits must ultimately perish. It will cease to be useful, it will, in the end, cease to stimulate thought, or to call out that enthusiasm which quickens invention, when it is degraded from the high position that gives it all its truly useful power. Its intrinsic beauty is the source of its utility, its dignity of its value, its glory of its strength.