Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/455

Rh evidences to be supplied than is usually done in the presentations of the Darwinian theory. In the immense field of research opened by Darwin after the fall of the zoölogical-paleontological dogma, the cultivation of which will employ the plowshares of many generations, we have plainly indicated to us one point where the work is urgent. On the other hand, a surer foundation might now be laid for the determination of one of the practical questions relating to exercise.

All are agreed as to the importance of bodily exercise for modern civilized mankind. With the knightly tournaments of the middle ages, in which, moreover, only an extremely small minority ever took part, physical training has more and more declined. Jean Jacques Rousseau, by his educational romance, gave the impulse to a movement that was fast taken up, especially in Germany, and, borne through the national and military struggles of the war of freedom, has culminated in the German turning.

Physical exercise had been pursued by us in this form for half a century when doubts were raised as to its fitness. To the German turning was opposed a theoretically devised form of physical training, the so-called Swedish movement, or gymnastics, the ground thought of which was the limitation of the exercises to extremely simple, although varied, motions. Since these movements were performed against resistance, a methodical strengthening of all the individual muscles was thought to result from them, and the true ideal of an athletic muscular system to be reached.

Again, from another point of view do we hear the superior fitness of the German turning doubted. The European nation which stands foremost in physical accomplishments, and which attaches the highest value to bodily vigor, the English, has till very recently known nothing like the German turning. Separated more than ever from the Continent during the French Revolution and the Empire, it was little affected by the movement of which Rousseau was the pioneer. Jahn's arguments, with their somewhat German-chauvinistic coloring, found but little acceptance there. The English, however, had less use for turning than the nations of the Continent. Thanks to the rural life of the wealthy classes and the common training of the youth in public institutions, a number of national games and contests (riding, rowing, games of ball of various kinds) had been formed, which afforded a superior empirical schooling in the various movements called forth in them; as the achievements of the English mountain-climber, who has just put Chimborazo under his feet, sufficiently illustrate. The passionate interest felt through the length and breadth of Sir Charles Dilke's "Greater Britain" in the annual contest between the dark-blue Oxford and the light-blue Cambridge oarsmen on the Thames can only be compared with the enthusiasm of the Greeks for their national games of competition, and goads the youth to the most earnest exertion.