THE INFLUENCE OF EXERCISE UPON HEALTH. 323 



study dead things, and that modern languages furnish enough disci- 

 pline, and are, besides, useful. To the scientist, science is god of all, 

 even of education. To him no man is properly educated unless his 

 mind is stored with scientific ideas and trained by the scientific meth- 

 ods of the nineteenth century. Languages, ancient and modern, 

 mathematics, science, philosophy, all advance their claims to be the 

 best educators of the coming man. Meanwhile the coming man is 

 nothing but a child, and must submit himself to his elders to be 

 experimented upon according to the theories of teachers or parents. 



For men, women, and children alike, I wish to enter a plea for a 

 part of them much neglected in most discussions on education, and 

 too much left out of sight in most theories of education the body. In 

 fact, for centuries past, many educators have seemed to regard the 

 body as a rival of the brain, if not an enemy of it. They have appar- 

 ently been filled with the idea that strength and time given to the 

 body are strength and time taken from the mind. Unfortunately for 

 the cause of good education, this erroneous idea is not held by teachers 

 alone, but is a very prevalent one generally, the current dictum being 

 that, representing by unity a person's force, whatever part of this unit 

 is taken for the body leaves necessarily just that much less for the mind. 



To combat this idea, and to replace it by a much more reasonable 

 idea, I had almost said by the very opposite idea, shall be the chief 

 though not the only aim of these pages. 



To all races which have shown power in any direction the main 

 source of that power has been physical. This is acknowledged to be 

 true with regard to the conquering races of the past. With regard to 

 the present we are too apt to think that the progress of civilization 

 has changed the conditions of power, so that races physically weak, if 

 they are only wise, can successfully compete with and finally over- 

 come the strong races. 



Take the Greeks. For a long time they were a conquering race 

 masters of the world of their time. But their influence has extended 

 far beyond their day and beyond the limits of their little world. 

 " It is no disgrace to a nineteenth-century American to go to school 

 to the Greeks. They are still, in their own lines, the leaders of man- 

 kind. They are the masters." " Attica was about as large as Rhode 

 Island. Rhode Island is a noble little Commonwealth. Yet it has en- 

 joyed political liberty longer than the democracy of Athens lasted, 

 and in the midst of the blazing light of this much-lauded century. 

 What now is or will be the influence of Rhode Island on the world's 

 history compared with the unmeasured and imperishable influence of 

 Athens ? Whence the difference ? " * The causes of the difference 

 were manifold. One cause was their physical education. Hand in 

 hand with their mental discipline, which was simple but thorough, 

 went gymnastic exercise. " Until the time of Alexander, the main 



* Professor George P. Fisher, "Princeton Review," March, 1S84. 



