I do not mean to make my readers uncomfortable, by suggesting that every man is physically unsound:  I speak of intellectual and moral unsoundness.  You know, the most important thing about a horse is. his body; and accordingly when we speak of a horse’s soundness or unsoundness, we speak physically; we speak of his body.  But the most important thing about a man is his mind; and so, when we say a man is sound or unsound, we are thinking of mental soundness or unsoundness.  In short, the man is mainly a soul; the horse is mainly and essentially a body.  And though the moral qualities even of a horse are of great importance,—­such qualities as vice (which in a horse means malignity of temper), obstinacy, nervous shyness (which carried out into its practical result becomes shying); still the name of screw is chiefly suggestive of physical defects.  Its main reference is to wind and limb.  The soundness of a horse is to the philosophic and stable mind suggestive of good legs, shoulders, and hoofs; of uncongested lungs and free air-passages; of efficient eyes and entire freedom from staggers.  It is the existence of something wrong in these matters which constitutes the unsound horse, or screw.

But though the great thing about rational and immortal man is the soul:  and though accordingly the most important soundness or unsoundness about him is that which has its seat there; still, let it be said that even as regards physical soundness there are few men whom a veterinary surgeon would pass, if they were horses.  Most educated men are physically in very poor condition.  And particularly the cleverest of our race, in whom intellect is most developed and cultivated, are for the most part in a very unsatisfactory state as regards bodily soundness.  They rub on:  they manage somehow to get through their work in life; but they never feel brisk or buoyant.  They never know high health, with its attendant cheerfulness.  It is a rare case to find such a combination of muscle and intellect as existed in Christopher North:  the commoner type is the shambling Wordsworth, whom even his partial sister thought so mean-looking when she saw him walking with a handsome man.  Let it be repeated, most civilized men are physically unsound.  For one thing, most educated men are broken-winded.  They could not trot a quarter of a mile without great distress.  I have been amused, when in church I have heard a man beyond middle age singing very loud, and plainly proud of his volume of voice, to see how the last note of the line was cut short for want of wind.  I say nothing of such grave signs of physical unsoundness as little pangs shooting about the heart, and little dizzinesses of the brain; these matters are too serious for this page.  But it is certain that educated men, for the most part, have great portions of their muscular system hardly at all developed, through want of exercise.  The legs of even hard brain-workers are generally exercised a good deal; for the constitutional exercise of such is usually walking.  But in large town such men give fair play to no other thews and sinews.  More especially the arms of such men are very flabby.  The muscle is soft, and slender.  If the fore legs of a horse were like that, you could not ride him but at the risk of your neck.