Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/578

562 he says in his address to Mrs. Fry, the benevolent Quaker lady who interested herself so deeply in the inmates of jails and penitentiaries. He admired many things about that amiable lady. "I like," he says—

"Your dove-like habits and your silent preaching; But I don't like your Newgateory teaching."

"Nugatory" Tom thought it, and nugatory, indeed, the great mass of such teaching has been, as prison chaplains would themselves confess. But if it is the case that the energies of the mind and of the moral nature are sadly cramped and confined through imperfect physical development and abnormal physical habit, what may we not hope for if, by proper gymnastic exercise and sound sanitary conditions, we are able to remedy, to a great extent, these bodily defects? The idea that body and mind work together, and that it can not be well with the one if it is ill with the other, was a commonplace among the ancient Greeks; but for ages the truth was lost sight of, and was indeed supplanted by the antagonist error that if we would cultivate and develop the soul we must oppress and dishonor the body. We are now working back to the Greek point of view; and, with the exact methods of modern science to aid us, may be expected to turn whatever of truth it contains to better use than they did. The Greeks held, empirically, that rhythm of sound and rhythm of motion—particularly simple rhythms free from all bravura—had a regularizing effect upon the thoughts and a moderating effect upon the passions. Now, this is precisely what the average criminal nature most needs. The criminal is essentially a man who does not naturally act in unison or harmony with his fellow-men—he is prone to strike discordant notes—that is, to perform irregular and lawless actions. This disposition is probably due in part to distrust of himself, arising from a secret consciousness of deficiency. To such a man, a well-directed course of bodily exercise means, in the first place, the development of his physical organs and faculties; in the second place, a certain sense of power resulting therefrom; thirdly, a heightened self-respect and self-confidence; fourthly, a sense of the value of method; fifthly, a more regular flow of thought to more definite objects; and, sixthly, a certain development of the social instinct arising from a generally improved bodily and intellectual condition.

It may be accepted as a general principle that when a given result proves very difficult if not impossible of attainment we are trying to take too big a step to get at it—that is, we are overlooking some intermediate stage or stages that have to be passed through before we can get at our objective point. It is as if we wanted to get up-stairs all at once, instead of proceeding step by step. Well, in regard to criminals, we have preached at them in the effort to reach their spiritual nature; we have set the schoolmaster on them, in the effort to rouse their dormant intellectual faculties; now, at length, after abundant evidence as to how little either chaplain or schoolmaster can effect, we are trying what the drill-master can do to mend their crooked bodies, to reform their shambling gait, to fix the vacant or wandering eye, to infuse life, vigor, and "snap" into spiritless frames; and at last it seems as if we were on the right track. After all. what did St. Paul tell us long ago? "First that which is natural" (physical), "then that which is spiritual." Well, without heeding him any more than the ancient Greeks, who, in this matter at least, were so wise, we have in the main been working, or trying to work, on the spiritual, and leaving the natural to shift for itself, even when its defects have been most conspicuous, and when, owing to these defects, the spiritual has been almost non-existent. It is time to go back on our tracks and to see to it that we make things as