PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 47 i 



ence of static efforts the body of the muscles becomes thicker 

 and more salient beneath the skin ; under the influence of ex- 

 tended movements, on the other hand, the fleshy substance pre- 

 serves its length and assumes a relation with the amplitude of 

 the movement. 



The articular surfaces are also modified by the latter style of 

 practice, and "we see how persons who preferably cultivate exer- 

 cises of suppleness and quickness present a finer and more ele- 

 gant form than those who develop athletic force by static con- 

 tractions. "With a similar constitution to begin with, those who 

 devote themselves to practice with weights, with carrying bur- 

 dens, become more massive than those who practice movements of 

 agility, like fencing and racing. The latter come near the type 

 of the ancient gladiator, the former that of Hercules. "Which 

 of them do we consider the more handsome ? 



The idea of beauty is wholly relative, and varies with places 

 and times. Artists make beauty to consist in certain proportions 

 of the parts of the skeleton and in the harmony of the muscular 

 development. "We might, perhaps, be more definite by saying 

 that to be handsome at rest and in motion the man ought to pre- 

 sent the traits of health and moderate strength, and in addition 

 to be in possession of his means of locomotion and of natural 

 defense. This view of beauty originates in the consideration that 

 there is a necessary relation between vigor, skill, agility, and the 

 outer form of the body at rest and in motion. Thus defined, the 

 type of beauty, in a given race or medium, is an ideal which we 

 seek to revive by physical education. It follows that a man 

 specially devoted to any one exercise can not be handsome. This 

 may be said of all the professions that localize muscular work in 

 a restricted region of the body. There are, however, some sports 

 that have the advantage of exercising equally the upper and lower 

 limbs ; such, for example, as wrestling, French boxing, swimming, 

 and canoeing with two oars and a sliding seat. A good gym- 

 nastics includes complete exercises, and incomplete or unsym- 

 metrical exercises, under such a condition as that they shall cor- 

 rect one another, and that the work shall bear upon the lower 

 and upper limbs. An intensive gymnastics well taught produces 

 superb subjects. Swedes, Swiss, and Germans, selected from 

 special schools of gymnastics, and the monitors of the school at 

 Joinville le Pont, might rival the finest types of antiquity. These 

 facts are, unhappily, exceptions; children come to our schools 

 with hereditary blemishes and malformations which the seden- 

 tary condition, faulty attitudes, and ill-directed exercises only 

 tend to augment. 



If we would come near to the type which we have given our- 

 selves as the ideal one, we must make a judicious choice in gym- 



