PSYCHICAL ASPECTS OF MUSCULAR EXERCISE. 797 



tone of the venous system, are both related to a moderate amount of 

 muscular exercise, and these are all largely facts in the hygiene of the 

 brain. 



5. Muscular contraction appears to be closely related to the 

 genesis of all forms of psychic activity. Not only do the vaso-motor 

 and muscular systems express the thinking, feeling, and willing of 

 the individual, but the muscular apparatus itself appears to be a 

 fundamental part of the apparatus for these psychical states. With- 

 out the muscular system, material for psychic activity can not be 

 secured. All three of these processes — thinking, feeling, willing — are 

 more or less remotely connected with a rehearsal in the body, both 

 neural and muscular, of the acts by which the original material for 

 the mental process came in. As President Hall puts it, we think in 

 terms of muscular action, more or less remote, and all the parts that 

 were concerned in the original activities are more or less active in 

 the thought. ISTerve currents are constantly going to muscles and 

 coming from sense organs, all being a part of the thinking apparatus. 

 If this is true, the fullness of the neuro-muscular experiences during 

 early life would appear to be related to the opportunity of later 

 psychic range. This is borne out by the fact that both in animals and 

 in men, taken at large, the scale of intelligence corresponds to the 

 scale of wideness of range in muscular co-ordinations. The more 

 complicated the neuro-muscular apparatus, the higher the intelli- 

 gence. It is true that in the individual life we profit mainly by our 

 racial inheritance of all these complicated mechanisms, but even here 

 we may expect to find that the individuals who live a rich psychic 

 life have been, on the whole, those who during early life have had 

 the rich and full experience in regard to muscular co-ordinations. 

 It is not, however, merely in terms of intellect that the muscular 

 system is important. The sensibilities, or feelings, or emotions, are 

 definitely related both to muscular and to visceral states. We are 

 accustomed to think of the expression of the body, particularly the^ 

 expression of the face, as merely the outward manifestation of the 

 inward state. The modern psychology, however, is telling us that 

 this muscular contraction is a necessary part of the feeling itself, 

 and that where the muscular expression of the feeling can be in- 

 hibited, the feeling itself is not the same. Kage is not rage until it 

 expresses itself in muscular action of some form. It may be merely 

 in the stiffening of the whole body, the clinching of the hands, or 

 holding the jaws firmly together. Here, again, do we find the rich- 

 ness of feeling associated without exception in races with a fine de- 

 velopment of the neuro-muscular and vaso-motor systems. This is 

 related to muscular exercise. When we come to the regal faculty, 

 the will, our modern psychology again tells us that will must express 



