Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/339

Rh It is true that brain directs all this activity, but muscle is the motive power. And the muscle of one generation is the source and support of the brain-power of the following generations. "What else accounts for the prodigal activity" of the descendants of the early settlers of this country, but the fact that obliged, when cast on a land like ours, to battle with the elements and conquer the forests by their own bodily strength, they lived an out-door life in the main, and stored up an immense "capital of vitality" which they handed down to their posterity? Some of that posterity are not content to use the interest of that capital, but are spending the principal. What is the consequence? Not only enfeeblement of body and mind, but sterility; and thus, many of the old New England families are dying out in the homes of their race, and are giving place to the strong new-comers.

As to individuals, what kinds of men fight their way to the front ranks in all callings, and hold their places there, as men eminent in their day and generation? Men of strong body. Consider the premiers of England—men like Brougham, Palmerston, and Gladstone—working at an age when many a weaker man would either be in his grave or be preparing for it! Some exercise—horseback-riding or felling trees—keeps up their strength long after threescore and ten. It is only necessary to mention Washington, Jackson, Webster, and Lincoln, to call attention to the fact that among eminent American public men vigor of mind and vigor of body go together. Notice the great pulpit orators of to-day—such as Spurgeon, Beecher, John Hall, and Phillips Brooks. Among moneyed men, did not Commodore Vanderbilt owe something of his vast fortune to his strong body? Could he have endured the strain of building that fortune, and would he have had the vigor to extend it, had it not been for the out-door life of his early manhood? If you find a really successful man, who builds and keeps either a reputation or a fortune by honest hand work, he is generally a man of vigorous body. "All professional biography teaches that to win lasting distinction in sedentary in-door occupations, which task the brain and nervous system, extraordinary toughness of body must accompany extraordinary mental power." Again, "To attain success and length of service in any of the learned professions, including that of teaching, a vigorous body is well-nigh essential."

It would be out of place to advise a farmer who is already tired of digging and plowing, or a mason who has had enough of bricklaying, to exercise his body. A little play to limber the stiffened muscles might be a good thing. A little brain-work might be better. But of real hard-working exercise of body each working-man gets enough from his day's labor. If he only get good food and enough of it, and have time for sufficient sleep, and get pure air to breathe, and clean water to drink and to bathe in, he will do well enough, as far as