Why this is so I may not know.  I only know that no better and surer way could have been discovered to train a race of heroes.  For no man ever becomes a hero who has not learned to battle with the world and himself.  Does it not look as if God loved a heroic soul as much as men worship one, and as if he intended that man should attain to it?  Man was born and bred in hardship that he might be a hero.

  “Careless seems the great avenger; history’s pages but record
  One death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the word;
  Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
  Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
  Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

  “Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
  Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
  Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
  Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
  And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.”

The Crown Prince of Prussia has less spending money than many a young fellow in Berlin.  He is trained to economy, industry, self-control.  He is to learn something better than habits of luxury, to rule himself, and thus later the German Empire.  The children of a great captain, themselves to be soldiers, must endure hardness like good soldiers.  And man is to fight his way to a throne.

But his powers are still in their infancy and the goal far above him.  What he is to become you and I can hardly appreciate.  First of all, the body will become finer, fitted for nobler ends.  It will not be allowed to degenerate.  It may become less fitted for the rough work, which can be done by machinery; it will be all the better for higher uses.  It is to be transformed, transfigured.  The eye may not see so far, it will be better fitted for perceiving all the beauties of art and nature.  It will become a better means of expressing personality, as our personality becomes more “fit to be seen.”  It is continually gaining a speech of its own.  And will not the ear become more delicate, a better instrument for responding to the finest harmonies, and better gateway to our highest feelings?  We may not have so many molar teeth for chewing food, but may not our mouths become ever finer instruments for speech and song?  In other words, the body is to be transfigured by the mind and become its worthy servant and representative.

As we learn to live for something better than food and clothes, and cease to pamper the body, it will become better and healthier.  Science will stamp out many diseases, and we shall learn to prevent others by right living.  And what a change in our moral and religious life will be made by good health.  What a cheerful courage and hope it will give.

Man will become more intelligent.  He will learn the laws of heredity and of life in general.  He will see deeper into the relations of things.  He will recognize in himself and his environment the laws of progress.  He will clearly discern great moral truths, where we but dimly see lights and shadows.