Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/798

 chiefly systematic exercise, by promoting a healthy concordant action between the heart and arteries, diminishes the resistance which the latter offer to an unusual flow of blood from the former, and therefore men in training, or men accustomed to bodily exercise, do not easily become distressed by sustained muscular exertion.

Now it is evident, without comment, how immense must be the benefit of muscular exercise. Not only does it allow time for the brain to rest when exhausted by mental work, but, by increasing the circulation all over the body, it promotes the threefold function of oxygenation, nutrition, and drainage. It thus refreshes the whole organism in all its parts; it increases by use the strength and endurance of the muscles; it maintains the heart and the lungs—or rather the whole of the circulatory and respiratory mechanisms—at the highest point of their natural efficiency; and, in general, next only to air and food, muscular exercise is of all things most essential to the vitality of the organism.

So much, then, for the physiology of recreation; and, having said this much on the abstract principles of our subject, I shall devote the rest of my paper to a consideration of this subject in its more practical aspects.

The fundamental principle of all recreation consisting, as I have said, in the rest from local exhaustion which is secured by a change of organic activity, it is clear that practical advice with regard to recreation must differ widely according to the class, and even the individual, to which it is given. Thus it would be clearly absurd to recommend a literary man, already jaded with mental work, to adopt as his means of recreation some sedentary form of amusement; while it would be no less absurd to recommend a workingman, already fatigued with bodily toil, to regale himself with athletics. And, in lower degrees, the kind and amount of recreation which it would be wise to recommend must differ with different individuals in the same class of society, according to their age, sex, temperament, pursuits, and previous habits of life. But, although all matters of detail thus require to be adjusted to individual cases, there is one practical consideration which applies equally to all cases, and which must never be lost sight of if recreation of any kind is to produce its full measure of result. This consideration is the all-important part which is played in recreation by the emotions. It is, I am sure, impossible to over-estimate the value of the emotions in this connection—a prolonged flow of happy feelings doing more to brace up the system for work than any other influence operating for a similar length of time. The physiological reasons why this should be so are not apparent; for, although we know that the emotions have a very powerful influence in stimulating the nerves which act on the various secreting organs of the body, I do not think that this fact alone is sufficient to explain the high value of pleasurable emotions in refreshing the nervous system. There