Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/503

Rh muscle that is not exercised becomes atrophied; the muscle that works too much becomes diseased. The mind that is not exercised decays; the mind that labors too much is distorted, and we reach the sad result of weakening the understanding by the excess of labor to which we subject it, of destroying the instrument we use.

The philosophers of the eighteenth century extolled what they vaguely called a return to the state of nature. They imagined that man was primarily a perfect being, and that, as his intellectual and social growth have gone on, he has correspondingly degenerated and become vicious. Nature did well, they said, but civilization made him wicked. The reverse of this, however, is nearer the truth; and if we had to look for types of moral perfection, we should not go among savage peoples. Neither do savages excel the civilized races in vigor and health of body. But while we recognize that savages are not men whose bodies and minds are in a supreme condition of excellence, we have to acknowledge that civilized man has singularly neglected his body, that vesture to which it is necessary to attach some importance; for, without that vesture, there is no man.

It is indeed hard to maintain the equilibrium of body and mind. If we should try to lead an exclusively animal life, devoted to eating, walking, sleeping, and making love, we should find such existence insipid enough. We could not maintain it if we would, for there are a thousand features of our present life that we could not eliminate. But we can and should recommend and require that a considerable place be given to physical exercise. English youth, who practice passionately at cricket, cycling, and canoeing, are at the same time good Hellenists, and often excellent mathematicians. It is all the better for the mind to work, on condition that the body is also exercised. A sound mind in a sound body was the ancient maxim of the school of Salerno, and no better formula has yet been found. Let us, then, have some regard for the well-being of the body. Let us learn to keep our muscles in full energy, to breathe the fresh and bracing air of the mountains and the sea; or, if these are too far away, the air of the fields around our towns. By brief distractions of this kind we will benefit the mind.

The sad thing about the matter is, that it is not so much intellectual labor, of which the mind is capable of doing a great deal, as irregularities in that labor, that do the harm. We are satisfied that the great workers, who have performed grand achievements by genius or patience, owe their triumph less to a temporary excess of labor, than to continuous, regular, persevering work,