SANDOW ON PHYSICAL TRAINING.

I.

A PLEA FOR PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

n spite of the increasing value of individual life-the distinctive mark of the civilization of our time-little has as yet been done, on large lines at least, to secure for the masses of the people who do the work of the world that degree and maintenance of physical well-being implied in the phrase, "a sound mind in a sound body." For those even whom we are pleased to call "the flower of our population," we have systematically and intelligently done next to nothing in the way of physical culture. Only in recent years has physiology been put on the curriculum of our public schools and the young have been enabled to get some inkling into the framework of their bodies and the physical conditions on which organic life is held. Whether this knowledge, in the main, goes beyond an appreciation of the necessity for air, light, food, clothing, and cleanliness, as conditions essential to health, may be greatly doubted. What is remembered of the theoretic laws of health when school-days are over, is, if we except the case of the comparatively small contingent that goes on to the study of medicine as a profession, of little value in the practical government of our bodies. Even what we have picked up about sanitation is generally lost before we have well entered upon manhood, or is effectively and grimly set at naught in our homes by the plumber. Where physiology has been properly taught, we may not all be as heathen in our knowledge of the requisites of health. In a few fortunate instances, the youth may know something of the processes of waste and renovation in the body; but how those processes work to the best advantage and show their most beneficent results under the systematic exercise of the muscular system, is, admittedly, given to but few of us fully to appreciate or wisely to understand. Even the ancient Greeks, noted as they were for their fine physical development, grace and symmetry of form, groped largely in the dark regarding many things which modern physiological science has now made plain. This is well understood; but, with the higher knowledge that modern science has brought us, how indifferent has been our approach to

THE CONSUMMATE BEAUTY OF PHYSICAL FORM

for which the Greek-especially the Athenian athlete-was famed. Greek and Roman alike knew, in a high degree, the value of bodily exercise, and in their competitive games, as well as in their training for war, adopted a system of physical education which produced wonderful results. They knew nothing, however, of biology and the marvel of the body's cell-structure, the key which, it may be said, has opened to a modern age the doors of its microscopic vision and revealed almost the secret of life itself, with its ever-recurrent motions of waste and renewal. They did not know, as Mr. Archibald Maclaren, the great English authority on Physical Education, has observed, "that man's material frame is composed of innumerable atoms, and that each separate and individual atom has its birth, life, and death; and that the strength of the body as a whole, and of each part individually, is in relation to the youth or newness of its atoms. Nor did they know that this strength is consequently attained by, and is retained in relation to, the frequency with which these atoms are changed, by shortening their life, by hastening their removal and their replacement by others; and that whenever this is done by natural activity, or by suitable employment, there is ever an advance in size and power, until the ultimate attainable point of development is reached. They simply observed that the increased bulk, strength, and energy of the organ or limb is in relation to the amount of its employment, and they gave it employment accordingly."

This, in the main, was the sum of knowledge possessed by the ancients in relation to physical training; yet unscientific-as we now understand the term-as it was, its results were wonderful in promoting strength and activity. Of course, in giving themselves so ardently to physical education, the Greeks and Romans must have observed much else, as the results of muscular exercise, that was beneficial to the youth in training. Though they had little knowledge of the why and wherefore in physiological law, they saw its gratifying effects and so betook themselves, with increasing national enthusiasm, to the exercises of the gymnasium and the campus. The physiological action on the lungs and the blood produced by quickened respiration, incident to regular periods of muscular exercise, they might not know; but they saw clearly its health-giving results, on the mind as well as on the body, though no doubt, with them as with us, it was the few only who were qualifying themselves for the service of war who had the benefit of this experience in training. Interest in the physical well-being of any beyond those who were designed to bear arms, there was none in either Athens or Rome. Outside of that favoured class there was no public provision for physical education; though there were always patriotic and high-spirited youth whom the thirst for distinction drew into the competitive arena to take part in wrestling contests, swimming matches, chariot racing, and other national sports and games. With us, of recent years at least, physical training has gone beyond the parade-ground or barrack-room of the soldier. It has happily found its way into our schools and colleges, and, in a few of them, at any rate, it takes a place on the curriculum hardly inferior to that assigned to intellectual studies. Of late years, also, provision has specially been made for it by athletic clubs and other organizations for recreation, of a private or corporate character, with results that have gone far to neutralize the physical deterioration that in our over-competitive age is incident to

THE JAR AND FRET OF BUSINESS LIFE.

Theoretically, at least, we all pay tribute to the value and importance of physical education. We admire physical strength and beauty, and recognize, though only faintly as yet, the inter-relation of mind and matter. We know, moreover, that a healthy, active brain is sadly handicapped by an ill-developed, sickly body. We see around us every day of our lives masses of our race of imperfect growth and unsound constitution, and almost daily the lesson comes home to us of the break-down of some friend or acquaintance, whose weakness of body could not withstand the mental and bodily strain in the struggle of life. Yet it is not strength, so much as health, that is the crying want of the time. It is stamina, and the power, in each of us, to do our daily work with the least friction and the greatest amount of comfort and ease. Only the few are called upon, like the great traveller or the soldier in a campaign, to endure protracted fatigue and encounter serious obstacles in nature or severities of climate, from which most of us shrink, and for the undertaking of which few of us have either the will-power or the courage. "A small portion only of our youth are in uniform," observes the authority we have already quoted; "but other occupations, other demands upon mind and body, advance claims as urgent as ever were pressed upon the soldier in ancient or modern times. From the nursery to the school, from the school to the college, or to the world beyond, the brain and nerve strain goes on-continuous, augmenting, intensifying. Scholarships, competitive examinations, speculations, promotions, excitements, stimulations, long hours of work, late hours of rest, jaded frames, weary brains, jarring nerves-all intensified and intensifying-seek in modern times for the antidote to be found alone in physical action. These are the exigencies of the campaign of life for the great bulk of our youth, to be encountered in the schoolroom, in the study, in the court of law, in the hospital, and in the day and night visitations to court and alley and lane; and the hardships encountered in these fields of warfare hit as hard and as suddenly, sap as insidiously, destroy as mercilessly, as the night-march, the scanty ration, the toil, the struggle, or the weapon of a warlike enemy.

"Yes, it is health rather than strength that is the great requirement of modern men at modern occupations; it is not the power to travel great distances, carry great burdens, lift great weights, or overcome great material obstructions; it is simply that condition of body, and that amount of vital capacity, which shall enable each man in his place to pursue his calling, and work on in his working life, with the greatest amount of comfort to himself and usefulness to his fellow-men. How many men, earnest, eager, uncomplaining, are pursuing their avocations with the imminency of a certain breakdown ever before them-or with pain and weariness, languor and depression, when fair health and full power might have been secured, and the labour that is of love, now performed incompletely and in pain, might have been performed with completeness and in comfort."

Nor is the remedy hard to apply or likely to be at all doubtful in its results. It is Nature's own panacea-the remedy, as we have seen, which the nations of antiquity, intelligent and highly civilized as they were, found effective in war as well as conducive to the health and vigour of youth. But physical strength was not only "the veritable God of antiquity;" it was also the pride and idol of the Middle Ages. At the latter era, the tilting-field and tourney-ground took the place of the Campus Martius and the gymnasium. There the chivalry of the time disported itself in jousts and feats of horsemanship, while the...