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 in forms of accomplished grace and perfected strength. It is the voluntary choice of a man who is in training for power, in training for joy—the joy of contending in the Olympic dust for the crown of wild olive and for the applause of all Greece. Athletic asceticism is nothing but the intelligent application of logic to conduct. Asceticism is the discipline of a man who knows what he wants, and takes all the means to get it, and rejects all that interferes with his getting it. It makes him choose the means to be clean and fit and clear-eyed and swift. It makes him reject what leads to fat on his muscles, and mist in his eyes, languor in his blood, and dullness in his brain. He makes a religion out of the things that his heart desires, and he cheerfully consigns the other things to hell. And he feels the desirability of his object so powerfully that he lifts up his hands to the gods—the young Greek athlete lifts up his hands to the gods, and prays for victory in his race.

"Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless," said George Meredith in a beautiful letter to his son, "but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks."

I don't know whether the young Greek athlete won the race that he prayed for. But I think that after the prayer in which he put all things that he loved best under the protection of the gods, it was easy for him to understand the proverbial wisdom of his race, which declares that the half is greater than the whole. It was easy for him to avoid our