782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of play, which is so often unduly criticised, would have its proper recog- 

 nition. 



It has always seemed to me that in that once high though brief 

 development of human existence ; in that period, if we can believe that 

 the art of the period came from the life of it, when the human form 

 took its most magnificent model for the artist still to copy ; in that 

 period when the perfection of bodily feature and build indicated, of it- 

 self, how splendid must have been the health of the living organizations 

 that stood forth to be copied and recopied for ever — it has alwaj^s 

 seemed to me, I repeat, that in that wonderful period of Greek history, 

 so effulgent and so short, the reason why such physical excellence was 

 attained rested on the circumstance that among the favored cultivated 

 few, for they were few, after all, there was from the beginning to the 

 end of life no such thing as work and play. Everything was existence 

 — nothing less and nothing more. Every office, every duty, every act 

 must have been an existence for the moment, varied but never divisible 

 into one of two conditions, practical pain or practical pleasure. Life 

 was an enjoyment which nothing sullied except death, and which was 

 purified even from death by the quick-consuming fire, that the life 

 might begin again instantaneously and incorruptibly. 



If by some grand transformation we could in our day approach to 

 this conception which has been rendered to us by the history of art, 

 and could act upon it, we should, in a generation or two, attain a degree 

 of health which no sanitary provision, in the common meaning of that 

 term, can ever supply. If we could turn our houses into models of 

 sanitary perfection ; if we could release our toiling millions from half 

 their daily labor ; if we could tell want to depart altogether ; if we 

 could give means of education to every living human being — we should 

 not remove care, and therefore we should not secure health, unless with 

 it all we could also remove the idea of the distinction of labor and 

 pleasure, the morbid notion that some must work and some must play, 

 that the world may make its round. 



In this country, so differently placed to the country of the great 

 and the ancient nation of which I have spoken, it is impossible, perhaps, 

 ever to introduce a joyousness like to that which the favored old civil- 

 ization enjoyed. Our climate is of itself a sufficient obstacle to such a 

 realization. Where the physical conditions of life are so unequal, 

 where we waste in structure of body, whether we will it or not, at cer- 

 tain fixed seasons, and gain, whether we will it or not, at other fixed 

 seasons, it is impossible to attain such excellence by any diversion of 

 mind or variation of pursuit. For universal gladness the sun must 

 play his part, doing his spiriting gently, but never actually hiding the 

 brightness of his face. From us, for long intervals, his face is hidden. 

 Under these variations of the external light and scenery around us we 

 have to cripple our minds through our bodies. Our clothing must be 

 heavy during long stages of the year, and our food so comparatively 



