Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/348

334 and sports is that in them the mind is occupied without being taxed. It is diverted from its usual cares. The sports are well called recreative. Both body and mind are recreated by them.

To affect the chest and the underlying organs, such as lungs and heart, the most direct means lies in exercise of the muscles of the arms and shoulders. If a person has weak lungs, one of the first objects at which he should aim should be the strengthening the muscular system covering the chest. If such a person is weak, let him begin exercise very cautiously, and increase very slowly the duration, frequency, and difficulty of his exercises until he is made to breathe hard. In taking a full inspiration, not only are the lungs affected, but, strange as it may seem, the brain and spine also. "The fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord is essential to their safety. The motions dependent on the action of the heart are much weaker on the spinal cord than on the brain, while those connected with breathing are more constant and considerable on the former, from the more powerful distention of the veins of the spinal canal. . . . The fluid surrounding brain and spine regulates their vascular fullness," and "it is manifest that, in order to keep up the proper alternations between the brain and spinal cord, and between the heart and lungs, it is not enough to breathe pure air, but it is also necessary that it should be deeply breathed."

The effect of exercise on the character is felt most of all on the will. This is very natural, for in all muscular exercise a certain amount of resistance has to be overcome, and the power which acts through the muscles to overcome this resistance is will-power. Development of muscular strength is, therefore, to a certain extent development of will. It becomes development of the highest kind of will, that of self-mastery—when to take exercise a man resolutely overcomes the distaste for it. This feeling often comes upon us, when we are weary with brain-work and are inclined to rest, and to forego exercise. But let any man resist the temptation and take the exercise, and he will find that the brain is rested and refreshed, and the whole body renewed and invigorated.

It is not true that so much given to body is just so much taken from brain. It has been the aim of the writer to show that all parts of the body, the brain and the nervous system among the rest, contribute to the vigor of the whole; that the muscular system forms about half of the body, and is a very important contributor to the health of all the organs. Body and brain are parts of a harmonious whole. Either neglected makes trouble for the other. Each appropriately exercised means not only health and strength to that one, but vigor to both. This hue and cry against exercise and sport, as being detrimental to mental culture, is founded on a mistaken theory that the material and spiritual parts of a man are enemies—so much less material, so much more spiritual. But it ought to be observed that a