468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Selection put aside, we have recourse only to exercise and 

 regime. The desire to make an athlete of every one must, of 

 necessity, be abandoned. The ideal human type varies with the 

 times ; now it is intellectual activity that is in dominant force, 

 and it is not possible to bring muscular work and cerebral work 

 to the front with equal vigor. Physiological knowledge on this 

 subject is extensive enough for us to account for the fact. Cere- 

 bral labor is a considerable expenditure of energy, a source of 

 nervous exhaustion quite comparable to the expenditure of energy 

 that accompanies the production of mechanical labor in the mus- 

 cles ; whence we conceive that, beyond a certain amount of physi- 

 cal exercise regulated by hygiene, the total sum of the expenditure 

 of nervous and muscular energy may become excessive and entire- 

 ly debilitating. It is wisdom to abandon the constant practice of 

 violent exercises ; to take deliberate measures to restore athletic 

 brutality would be a remedy worse than the disease. It would 

 also be wise to leave uncalled-for and useless exercises to the cir- 

 cus people. 



All exercise which, often repeated, tends to modify the external 

 form and adapt the human organism to abnormal machines or 

 movements, to eccentric attitudes, belongs to the domain of the 

 acrobat, and is of no interest in view of general education. We 

 thus arrive, by elimination, at the point of preserving as materials 

 of the programmes of physical education the general measures 

 which augment the productiveness of man considered as a source 

 of mechanical work, on the condition that those measures do not 

 deteriorate the human machine itself, and do not change the nor- 

 mal relations of that which it has been agreed to call the physical 

 and the moral. Physical education, in short, ought to confirm 

 health, give a harmonious development to the body, and teach 

 how best to utilize the muscular force in the different applica- 

 tions which are demanded in life. We should also have regard 

 to the necessities imposed by the social medium, and try to obtain 

 results by intensive means, requiring little time and little space, 

 and which address a large number at once. 



To these three essentials of physical education health, har- 

 monious development, economical utilization of muscular force 

 correspond a series of exercises which can not produce their 

 maximum useful effect without being subjected to regulations of 

 which we proceed to sketch the principal features. 



Health may be with equal ease confirmed or destroyed by 

 exercise. It is only necessary to refer to the deplorable condition 

 of the ancient athletes, with whom the enormous mass of the mus- 

 cles absorbed all the activity of the organism. Health, therefore, 

 does not depend on the size of the muscles nor on absolute mus- 

 cular force. It is the harmony of the functions, and does not 



