February, ’20] 
O’KANE: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
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57 
and complete. Such physical fitness promptly carries over into the 
mental world. It clarifies judgment. It eliminates boredom from 
routine. It establishes confidence. It carries its possessor forward 
to an undreamed-of realization of his own possibilities. It makes us 
pleasanter people to live with. 
Few of us possess real physical fitness. Of the thousands of men 
who have been examined by the Life Extension Institute,—most of 
them men of exceptional intelligence and training,—an astonishing 
percentage are found to be physically impaired. Usually these men 
did not know of their impairment or that they could readily, in most 
cases, attain a degree of health and efficiency hitherto unguessed. 
It has been easy to slip into ways that reduce physical vigor in 
these modern days of highly organized mental and economic life. The 
grandfathers of most of us had to be physically active. On the whole 
they probably lived a more normal physical existence than most of 
us enjoy. There is no essential harm in present-day strenuous living 
if we order it thoughtfully. But we must think about it. We can avoid 
subjecting ourselves to senseless hurry, to unnecessary eye strain, to 
ill-considered diet, to worries carried home. We can work, play and 
sleep in the rejuvenating oxidation of fresh air. 
None of us ought to permit himself to finish the day’s work with 
reserve energy materially depleted. Fatigue is not local. When any 
part of us grows tired our blood stream carries the poison to other 
parts of our body; we cannot overwork one part without feeling the 
ill effects elsewhere. It is helpful to remember this, because physi¬ 
ologists have come to have a new conception of the importance of 
brief and frequent relaxation as a means of maintaining one’s store 
of reserve energy. We shall work better if we deliberately seek 
it. 
We need occasional long vacations. There is no other way in which 
to get a renewed and freshened outlook on our work and to clarify 
our appreciation of life’s values. Keeping one’s nose to the grindstone 
is neither the proper place for the nose nor a suitable occupation for 
the grindstone. “There is nothing,” said Stevenson, “so much a 
man’s business as his amusements.” If we stay close to our work long 
enough and steadily enough, we come to believe, after a time, that the 
work would collapse without our help. Eminent statesmen in our own 
recollection have illustrated this phenomenon. We get into a habit of 
daily routine which unconsciously we dislike to break. We need the 
change but we shy from it. There is no surer proof that a new set of 
surroundings and a new viewpoint will be wholesome for us. 
Even without waiting for a vacation period we may find great help 
in restoring to our daily round something of the physical activity that 
