Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/198

198 plays, and the natural instinct of the child causes it to indulge in games and sports. Men, if they are wise, vary their mental labour and sedentary lives with sports and games. The success which has attended the introduction of golf and kindred games of recent years, shows that the old natural instinct of man is not dead.

The Yogis hold that the instinct toward games—the feeling that exercise is needed, is but the same instinct that causes man to labour at congenial occupations—it is the call of nature toward activity—varied activity. The normal, healthy body is a body that is equally well nourished in all of its parts, and no part is properly nourished unless it is used. A part that is unused receives less than the normal amount of nourishment, and in time becomes weakened. Nature has provided man with exercise for every muscle and part of his body, in natural work and play. By natural work, we do not mean the work attendant upon some particular form of bodily labour, for a man following one trade only exercises one set of muscles, and is apt to become "muscle-bound," and is in as much need of exercise as the man who sits at his desk all day, with the exception that the man working at his trade usually has the advantage of more out-of-door life.

We consider the modern plans of "Physical Culture" very poor substitutes for out-of-door work and play. They have no interest attached to them, and the mind is not called into play as it is in the case of work or games. But still anything in the way of exercise is better than nothing. But we protest against that form of Physical Culture which