COLLEGE ATHLETICS. 447 



In order to give foundation and strength to our belief in the bene- 

 fits of physical exercise, let us consider what it does, and how really- 

 necessary it is. Though we admit the truth of all the wise sayings 

 with regard to a " sane mind in a sound body," we are yet too apt to re- 

 gard the sound body as a mere accident of inheritance or environment. 

 So we read the proposition as an hypothetical one, viz., " If the body is 

 sound, the mind will be sane." Few but physicians read it as indicat- 

 ing a connection between body and mind, by means of which we can 

 make, or help to make, a good healthy brain by making a good sound 

 body. In the fact that the brain always seems to direct the body, we 

 are prone to forget that the body carries the brain and feeds it with 

 its own life. If the body has good blood, the brain will have good 

 blood also. If the body does not furnish good material, the brain will 

 do, according to its capacity, poor work, or will not work at all. That 

 many men of weak bodies have done good brain-work in their day is 

 true, but many such men have been hindered from doing better work 

 by physical weakness. Moreover, can any man say that the work 

 done would not have been greater or better if the men doing it had 

 had better bodies ? After the body has attained maturity, most men 

 recognize the connection and sympathy between mind and body. Dur- 

 ing the time of growth, however, this interdependence is often taken 

 into small account. 



There are two kinds of brain- work one which we may very prop- 

 erly call body brain-work, and the other mind brain- work.* Most 

 people, including a great many educators of youth, consider mind 

 brain-work to be the only kind of brain-work. But body brain-work 

 is quite as essential to the healthy existence of the brain, and really 

 comes first in the order of brain-growth. The child, too young to 

 know anything except its bodily wants, and conscious of them only 

 when the denial of them causes pain, develops brain every time it 

 makes a will-directed effort to grasp the thing it wants. The move- 

 ment of its hand is as necessary to the development of its brain as the 

 guidance and government of the brain are to the growth of the hand. 

 What is true of the hand is true of the other bodily organs whose mo- 

 tion is under the control of the will. They and the brain are devel- 

 oped by reciprocal action. Interfere with this body brain-work in 

 childhood, or at any period of growth, either by repressing it or by 

 diverting from it too much vital energy to mind brain-work, such as 

 is involved in the acquisition of knowledge, and you not only stunt 

 the body, but also enfeeble the brain, by depriving both of their proper 

 growth. The worst feature of such interference, at such a time, is 

 that the evil then done can not be remedied, and the power lost to 

 body and brain can never be regained. 



Care to guard against this interference is all the more necessary in 

 cases in which the brain is large or sensitive. Now, will any man say 



* Dr. Clarke, " Building of a Brain." 



