SOUND BODIES 



amazing popular interest in athletic games, and, lastly, 

 the marvellous conquest of the bicycle. 



After all, then, this seemingly new interest in athletics 

 is nothing new at all, but a return to nature. The 

 masses of the people are merely opening their eyes to the 

 lesson which nature has all along been ceaselessly teach- 

 ing. The normal child, obeying the impulses of nature, 

 is perpetually in motion. Its incessant activity is at 

 once a lesson and a rebuke to the sedentary philosopher, 

 but only of late has the philosopher read the lesson or 

 heeded the rebuke. 



The healthy boy takes to physical sports as the young 

 duck takes to water. So does the young wild animal. 

 But the young civilized animal is forced presently to 

 give up his sports in entering on a struggle for existence 

 that involves largely mental elements, while the wild 

 animal's struggle for existence is of a kind to keep it 

 developed as long as it lives. The result is that the wild 

 animal, unless destroyed by violence, lives out, as a rule, 

 the natural term of its life little troubled by disease. 

 The same animal made captive, and perforce deprived 

 of exercise, languishes, wrestles constantly with dis- 

 ease, and as a rule falls an early prey to consumption 

 or some allied malady. 



Civilized man who will not exercise suffers similarly 

 from disease, and on the average does not live out half 

 the term of his allotted threescore years and ten. Lack 

 of exercise is not the sole cause of this degenerative 

 tendency, of course, but it is one important cause. 

 Hence, recognizing this, it becomes the duty of man, 

 in virtue of his boasted rationality, totdispel this cause, 



[47] 



