Our astonishing prosperity is due to the large total of brain-activity that is being applied in the development of the natural resources, industries, and social life of our nation--a total to which women as well as men contribute, and the poorer people as well as the richer. That they are able to make this common contribution, is due to the fact, that we educate not only men but women, not only the rich but the poor; that they are keenly stimulated to make it, is due to the natural resources of the country, to the mobile conditions of society, and to the peculiar system of educating all classes and both sexes together, which conditions combine to afford to the various individuals, inviting possibilities for acquiring wealth and influence. Along with this tremendous brain activity, a very large proportion of our people are carrying on an unusual amount of muscular activity. That is, our active brains multiply things to be done faster than they supply us with mechanical contrivances and organization in industry, to reduce muscular labor. In looking at the conditions of English life we observe: I. Comparative repose, the absence of an exciting hope and a hurried and worrying activity. A large part of the nation attempt to lead nothing beyond a simple animal life, putting their entire energies into animal force, and using this animal force for the benefit of those above them, almost as completely as the horse or the ox. This statement is so true of the agricultural laborers as to admit of very little palliation, and it is scarcely less true of the unskilled working classes in the towns. In all the lower ranks of society there are great obstacles to advancement in position, because each plane of life is crowded with its own members; because each class is educated in schools where only children of that class are found, and where the education is especially adapted to that class--that is, to their industrial needs and to what is expected in that grade of society--and does not fit them for any other place in society. One-fifth of the nation cannot read, and the education of the great majority of the remainder, when not limited to the "three R's," does not go far enough to create a taste for reading books; and, shut off as they have been from participation in political life, they have too little interest in public concerns to read the newspapers. That is, as compared with our life, the possibilities for advancement are limited, the average education is of a low order, and the stimulus that comes from an acquaintance with the habits of those above them is absent. Nearly all the spurs to ambition are wanting, and in consequence there is little tendency to do more work than is necessary to keep along in the old ways. The skilled artisans have in this matter of opportunity for advancement more in common with the circumstances of our life. This sphere is not overcrowded, but they, too, lack the means for education