CHAPTER XI. PHYSICAL EDUCATION. WE educate our minds, and neglect our bodies.— In our present social state, it is a rare thing to meet with persons who have submitted their bodies to the discipline of General Laws, and have laboured to expand their power, and to improve their sensibilities. A sound mind in a sound body has, however, been now for many years the rallying cry of a very large class of individuals, especially in our own country, and in America; and it has been clearly seen, that one of the means for procuring a healthy mental state, is to procure a healthy bodily state. By health we do not mean merely the absence of disease, of pain, of chronic affections, or acute disorders, but we mean that state in which all the faculties are fulfilling, with ease and delight, their various degrees of strength and growth. It will be readily seen that for all his happiness in this life, Man must depend on his obedience to the natural and moral laws of God. At present we have only to do with the natural laws-those which affect man in his corporeal conditions, or in reference to his association with the exterior world. At the same time it will be easily perceived how attention to the moral laws secures frequently a healthy bodily condition; and, on the contrary, how possible it is for Man apparently to live in harmony with Nature's exterior laws, but, by transgressing some moral law, to entail upon himself punishment and misery. Language is poor, and very inexpressive. But we may lay it down as a principle of moral duty, to guard and preserve the health of the body. True, it is but a tent, a house to dwell in, a tabernacle pitched in the wilderness; true it is but a temple reared to solemnise worship in; but, because it is all this, there should be a rigid carefulness and vigilance over it. Let us take care that we do not make this guardianship of the body a half duty. We do not mean to deify the body, and to worship dietetics. "Man obeys the highest order of his being, when he takes his life in his hand, and boldly ventures it for something he values more than self."* We would not found a moral code upon a phy * Edwin P. Whipple. sical law. There are no duties which are not resolveable into moral duties. To guard the health, then, is a moral duty health is not the supreme consideration-"the life is more than meat;" but health is the means to supreme duties. What conditions are annexed to health? Failing here, all around us becomes giddy. Father, husband, citizen, Christian-the vital action of each is connected with the sound state of the body. What mental conditions are annexed to it? Independence, power, prosecution of study-all of them depend upon the healthy action of our organization. Will my reader revolve and re-revolve the fol.. lowing passage from Bishop Butler's "Analogy" in his mind? "Now," says he, "in the present state, all things that we enjoy, and a great part of what we suffer, is placed in our own power. For pleasure and pain are the consequences of our actions; and we are endowed by the Author of our nature with capacities of seeing these consequences. "I know not that we have any one kind or degree of enjoyment, but by the means of our own actions. And, by prudence and care, we may, for the most part, pass our days in tolerable ease and quiet; or, on the contrary, we may, by passion and ungoverned rashness, wilfulness, or even negligence, make ourselves as miserable as ever we please; and many do please to make themselves extremely miserable; i. e. they do what they know beforehand will render them so. They follow those ways, the fruit of which they know, by instruction, example, and experience, will be disgrace, and poverty, and sickness, and untimely death. This every one observes to be the general course of things: though it is to be allowed we cannot find, by experience, that all our sufferings are owing to our own follies." Every chapter in this volume is only designed to embody a few hints which may be expanded by the reader. The question of physical education may readily be condensed into a few rules, very simple, very obvious, easily practised, and yet, by all classes of society, strangely neglected: and when it is remembered to what an extent these rules are neglected, is it not amazing that life is preserved to us so long as it is? The truth and beauty of the lines of Dr. Watts are never perceived until we have obtained some acquaintance with the human frame. "Our life contains a thousand strings, And dies if one be gone; Strange that a harp of thousand strings Strange, indeed! Is it chance, or is it Providence, think you, when the gay young voyagers in their boat pass within a hair's breadth of fifty unseen rocks, or dangerous sand-banks, every one of which would, if touched, have been fatal to the boat, and to their own lives? Thus rashly, ignorantly, thoughtlessly, every day do we jeopardise our lives ; sometimes overtaxing our powers, and then allowing them to lie idle and unemployed; and yet so reckless as we are how long the stream of life bears us on, it is as if some invisible spirit turned the rudder, and led the boat securely, to avoid the lurking dangers which every where lay spread around it and before it. Colton says "the excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest about thirty years after date." Oh, let the young man remember, that Nature, indeed, is our creditor. "Nature," says George Combe, "may be said to allow us to run an account current, in which many small transgressions seem at the time to be followed by no penalty, when in fact they are all charged to the debit side of the account; and, after the lapse of years, are summed up, and closed by a fearful balance against the transgressor. If you mortgage yourself to Nature, be sure the account has to be paid some day, and the more protracted the period of payment, the more fearful, generally, will be the interest exacted. The mortgage has to be paid. I should not wonder if the reader is in debt to Nature, for, in our artificial state of life, all our |