XXXIV 
DOES ACQUIRED VIGOR COUNT? 
N ordinary talk we often hear of a mysterious 
quality called vigor, but it is very rarely that 
any one even asks for a definition. It is evidently 
something more than strength, for men with 
powerful thews and sinews are often far from 
vigorous; it is something more than health, for a 
centenarian sea-anemone cannot be called vigorous. 
The quality seems to mean capacity for living 
intensely, yet without any loss of balance, a power 
of expending energy lavishly, yet without: ceasing 
to have plenty in reserve, an ability to resist strain 
and to defy fatigue. It implies being ever ready 
for great exertions, and yet having staying power. 
It must depend in part on an harmonious adjust- 
ment of the various functions of the body, including 
those of internal secretion and those which keep 
the wheels, so to speak, of the body-mind or mind- 
body from becoming either clogged or rusty. 
Probably it expresses a certain perfection in the 
characteristic quality which living creatures—in 
contrast to inanimate systems—have of circum- 
venting the second law of thermo-dynamics—of at 
least delaying the tendency that energy has in its 
transformations to pass into unavailable form. We 
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