XII. SEEKING WHAT IS WORTH WHILE

I.

Faith.

In God-In one's fellows - In one's self.

2. Purpose.

"The world stands aside to let pass the man who knows where he is going."

3. Preparation.

Laying the foundation of good health, good education, good companionship, and good morals.

4. Integrity of character.

Holding one's self to the performance of things he knows he ought to do.

5. Usefulness in service.

If a man produces nothing, he is either a cipher or a grafter. 6. Influence.

Obtained by increasing the number of one's friends and strengthening the ties with them.

7. Good cheer.

"Laugh and the world laughs with you."

THE ETHICAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL TRAINING

GEORGE J. FISHER, M. D.

SECRETARY PHYSICAL WORK, INTERNATIONAL Y. M. C. A.

SECRETARY THE ATHLETIC LEAGUE OF NORTH AMERICA, NEW YORK CITY

Any propaganda of religious education to be effective must include the education of the whole man. As Dr. Hartwell says: "Many, perhaps most, who have urged the cultivation of the mens sana in corpore sano have considered mind and body to be so loosely connected that the one may be sound while the other may not. But more and more in our day the belief gains ground that neither mind nor body can be wholly sound unless both are.

"We speak of mental education, of physical education, and moral education, but it is for convenience only. Education and training are one because man is one."

Scientific physical training is not so much muscle making as muscle training. The term muscle is used too frequently as an antonym for brain, in a sense of inferiority. This is disparaging its true function. The muscles constitute more than mere automatic motor apparatus. They are the master tissues of the body, and all other organs serve them in a subordinate capacity. Muscle activity stimulates metabolism. They are practically organs of digestion; they are intimately related to the development of heat, power, and energy. Flabby muscles have associated with them general lowered vitality, lack of resistance, liability to colds, and impairment of nutrition. So that firm and well-toned muscles are productive of the feelings and sensations of well-being and the joy of living. But they perform a higher function than this, for together with the nerves which connect them with the brain they constitute the executive machinery of the body, for with our muscles we do things. The perfect adjustment of nerve and muscle contributes skill, poise, control, quickness of action. These characters are largely muscular. They may be termed muscle virtues. Lack of control, lack of endurance, fidgetiness, and lack of skill are largely muscle faults, and, as Dr. Stanley Hall says, "if the muscles are undeveloped or grow relaxed and flabby, the dreadful chasm between good intentions and their execution is liable to appear and widen. Character may be defined as a plexus of motor habits. Muscles are the vehicles of habituation, imitation, obedience, character, and even of manners and customs.”

Motor power is related to intelligence and character. "Motor

power," says Dr. Bolton, "is not a simple phenomenon; it is capable of being analyzed into a number of elements, the most important of which are rapidity of voluntary control, steadiness and precision of movement, variety of action and quickness. In the feeble-minded there is inability to act quickly. Mental development and motor power go hand in hand. Tests of motor power are used as measures of intelligence or mental alertness.

"The explanation of motor development is based upon the growth of interrelations among nerve elements. Cells put out processes, these processes place the cells in communication with many of their neighbors, so that when they are thrown into activity their neighbors must act, and many cells or groups of cells acting simultaneously make possible precise, rapid, and nicely adjusted movements."

"The relation of mental to motor development finds its explanation in something like this: the movements of the voluntary muscles are felt in consciousness; in fact, the possibility of a voluntary movement depends upon the consequences of the movement being felt. The greater the variety of movements that can be performed, the more precise they are; the more steady and rapid, the greater the fund of sense experience they will yield up to consciousness, out of which are to be built the various products of mental activity. Every new movement acquired adds a new piece of furniture to the mental household. Mind, whatever its metaphysical nature may be, is a device to aid us in getting on in the world of things; minds are to direct activity and to control conduct.

Mind and movement must develop together, for without movement there is no mind. In so far as an individual is wanting in motor development, he is wanting in mental development."

The scale of intelligence in animals rises in proportion to the number of possible muscle co-ordinations. Fully half of the human brain is concerned in the contraction of muscles. The cultivation of these motor centers acts as a great storage battery, storing up energy which can be drawn upon in later life, and is related not only to intelligence, but to the ability to do prolonged intellectual work. Their development makes for intellectual endurance. One of the tragic aspects of modern civilization is the tendency of so many men to break down in the zenith of their success in life, not for want of genius, but for lack of intellectual and physical endurance.

Furthermore, as Dr. Gulick expresses it: "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. Without the muscular system, material for psychical activity cannot be secured. All three of these processes 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 come in. As 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. Thus the fulness of the neuro-muscular experiences during early life would appear to be related to the opportunity of later psychic range.'

"Sound physical training is capable, too, of developing self-love, selfreverence, and self-control, which, according to Tennyson, 'alone lead life to sovereign power.' It is not difficult to understand how physical education may help one to acquire self-reverence as well as enlightened self-love. Self-respect is of primal importance in the formation of character. Reverence for wholeness of nature induces a man to exalt integrity and purity, to hate defilement, and to shrink from all that can impair his strength and efficiency. Self-knowledge is even more obviously a result of well-directed physical training. One learns to know what he can and what he cannot do. Consciousness of power gained through practice and exercise and the following of example brings with it power of controlling the means and determining the manner of exerting such power. It is in such ways that human education exerts its influence in the shaping and molding of character." *

Physical training teaches correct posture, and posture is related to inner states of consciousness. Fear, anger, rage, exaltation, diseaseall have their typical postural expression. In fact, if the muscular expression of these psychic states is inhibited, the intensity is modified; so conversely the development of correct posture has a stimulating effect in promoting - at least to some degree — right attitudes of mind.

Many of the worst sins with which the Church has to deal and which are responsible for the undoing of many individuals are physical in nature, such as intemperance and sexual perversion. Any effort to reform men who are habituated to such indulgences will be greatly helped by methods based upon physiology and hygiene. Here religious education and physical education must go hand in hand. The Church has not been alert in using the material available. In dealing with sexual sins religious institutions have attempted spasmodically to give instruction. But such instruction has been largely emotional and non*Dr. E. M. Hartwell, Physical Training, vol. iv., No. 2.

scientific; and often by those unqualified to present the facts. The work of education is the function primarily of the Christian physician, supplemented by the religious teacher. Religious education is needed to energize the will and to grip the conscience, and physiologic information is needed to overcome ignorance, fallacious conceptions, and morbidity, and these, when used together, will prove the most efficient methods to win men to lives of continence, sobriety, and honor.

In my judgment, there should be arranged courses in personal and practical hygiene for teaching in churches and men's clubs, and these subjects should be presented in their relation to Christian ethics. Religious education must include these subjects if men are to be taught to be truly virtuous, whole-souled, and masculine. The physical life must be interpreted in its relation to higher living.

The highest ethical and moral virtues of physical training are developed through play. It is by means of play that nature fits the child for life's activities and duties, and assists men to live at their best. Play deepens the chest, co-ordinates nerve and muscle, makes for organic vigor and physical power. Play provides exercise for the various organs of the body, according to their natural function, and thus is far more effective in producing vitality than some forms of formal gymnastics. As Joseph Lee says, "Play is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is not simply what a child likes to have, but what he must have. It is an essential part of the law of his growth, of the process by which he becomes a man at all. The creature becomes what he is by what he does. Nature decrees certain activities and builds the boy round them. Play is the intensest part of the life of a child, and it is therefore in his play hours that his most abiding lessons are learned; that his most central and determining growth takes place."

Play is of social significance. It is in play that the child is introduced into society, learns to relate himself to others, experiences the value of co-ordinated and united effort, receives the discipline of the democracy of the gang, learns to become unselfish and to sacrifice personal motives for the good of the crowd.

Play develops originality, enthusiasm, initiative, courage. A study of men who in their youth have not had wholesome and vigorous play experience shows lack in adult life in spontaneity, enthusiasm, initiative, and masculinity.

Play is related to morals. As we learn from Judge Lindsay, "The whole question of juvenile law-breaking- or at least nine-tenths of itis a question of children's play. A boy who breaks the law is in nine cases out of ten not a criminal. He is obeying an instinct that is not