Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene Part 2

D. The fourth gymnastic aim is symmetry and correct proportions. Anthropometry and average girths and dimensions, strength, etc., of the parts of the body are first charted in percentile grades; and each individual is referred to the apparatus and exercises best fitted to correct weaknesses and subnormalities. The norms here followed are not the canons of Greek art, but those established by the measurement of the largest numbers properly grouped by age, weight, height, etc. Young men are found to differ very widely. Some can lift 1,000 pounds, and some not 100; some can lift their weight between twenty and forty times, and some not once; some are most deficient in legs, others in shoulders, arms, backs, chests. By photography, tape, and scales, each is interested in his own bodily condition and incited to overcome his greatest defects; and those best endowed by nature to attain ideal dimensions and make new records are encouraged along these lines. Thus this ideal is also largely though not exclusively remedial.

This system can arouse youth to the greatest pitch of zest in watching their own rapidly multiplying curves of growth in dimensions and capacities, in plotting curves that record their own increment in girths, lifts, and other tests, and in observing the effects of sleep, food, correct and incorrect living upon a system so exquisitely responsive to all these influences as are the muscles. To learn to know and grade excellence and defect, to be known for the list of things one can do and to have a record, or to realize what we lack of power to break best records, even to know that we are strengthening some point where heredity has left us with some shortage and perhaps danger, the realization of all this may bring the first real and deep feeling for growth that may become a pa.s.sion later in things of the soul. Growth always has its selfish aspects, and to be constantly pa.s.sing our own examination in this respect is a new and perhaps sometimes too self-conscious endeavor of our young college barbarians; but it is on the whole a healthful regulative, and this form of the struggle toward perfection and escape from the handicap of birth will later move upward to the intellectual and moral plane. To kindle a sense of physical beauty of form in every part, such as a sculptor has, may be to start youth on the lowest round of the Platonic ladder that leads up to the vision of ideal beauty of soul, if his ideal be not excess of brawn, or mere brute strength, but the true proportion represented by the cla.s.sic or mean temperance balanced like justice between all extremes. Hard, patient, regular work, with the right dosage for this self-cultural end, has thus at the same time a unique moral effect.

The dangers of this system are also obvious. Nature's intent can not be too far thwarted; and as in mental training the question is always pertinent, so here we may ask whether it be not best in all cases to some extent, and in some cases almost exclusively, to develop in the direction in which we most excel, to emphasize physical individuality and even idiosyncrasy, rather than to strive for monotonous uniformity. Weaknesses and parts that lag behind are the most easily overworked to the point of reaction and perhaps permanent injury. Again, work for curative purposes lacks the exuberance of free sports: it is not inspiring to make up areas; and therapeutic exercises imposed like a sentence for the shortcomings of our forebears bring a whiff of the atmosphere of the hospital, if not of the prison, into the gymnasium.

These four ideals, while so closely interrelated, are as yet far from harmonized. Swedish, Turner, Sargent, and American systems are each, most unfortunately, still too blind to the others' merits and too conscious of the others' shortcomings. To some extent they are prevented from getting together by narrow devotion to a single cult, aided sometimes by a pecuniary interest in the sale of their own apparatus and books or in the training of teachers according to one set of rubrics. The real elephant is neither a fan, a rope, a tree nor a log, as the blind men in the fable contended, each thinking the part he had touched to be the whole. This inability of leaders to combine causes uncertainty and lack of confidence in, and of enthusiastic support for, any system on the part of the public. Even the radically different needs of the s.e.xes have failed of recognition from the same partisans.h.i.+p. All together represent only a fraction of the nature and needs of youth. The world now demands what this country has never had, a man who, knowing the human body, gymnastic history, and the various great athletic traditions of the past, shall study anew the whole motor field, as a few great leaders early in the last century tried to do; who shall gather and correlate the literature and experiences of the past and present with a deep sense of responsibility to the future; who shall examine martial training with all the inspirations, warnings, and new demands; and who shall know how to revive the inspiration of the past animated by the same spirit as the Turners, who were almost inflamed by referring back to the hardy life of the early Teutons and trying to reproduce its best features; who shall catch the spirit of, and make due connections with, popular sports past and present, study both industry and education to compensate their debilitating effects, and be himself animated by a great ethical and humanistic hope and faith in a better future. Such a man, if he ever walks the earth, will be the idol of youth, will know their physical secrets, will come almost as a savior to the bodies of men, and will, like Jahn, feel his calling and work sacred, and his inst.i.tution a temple in which every physical act will be for the sake of the soul. The world of adolescence, especially that part which sits in closed s.p.a.ces conning books, groans and travails all the more grievously and yearningly, because unconsciously, waiting for a redeemer for its body. Till he appears, our culture must remain for most a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-bred diseases. The modern gymnasium performs its chief service during adolescence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which not a few, but every youth, should make large use. Its spirit should be instinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a point of high, although not quite its highest, intensity. While the stimulus of rivalry and even of records is not excluded, and social feelings may be appealed to by unison exercises and by the club spirit, and while compet.i.tions, tournaments, and the artificial motives of prizes and exhibitions may be invoked, the culture is in fact largely individual. And yet in this country the annual Turnerfest brings 4,000 or 5,000 men from all parts of the Union, who sometimes all deploy and go through some of the standard exercises together under one leader. Instead of training a few athletes, the real problem now presented is how to raise the general level of vitality so that children and youth may be fitted to stand the strain of modern civilization, resist zymotic diseases, and overcome the deleterious influences of city life. The almost immediate effects of systematic training are surprising and would hardly be inferred from the annual increments tabled earlier in this chapter. Sandow was a rather weakly boy and ascribes his development chiefly to systematic training.

We have s.p.a.ce but for two reports believed to be typical. Enebuske reports on the effects of seven months' training on young women averaging 22.3 years. The figures are based on the 50 percentile column.

--------+----+-----------------+---- | | Strength of | |Lung | | | |right |left |Total |capacity| legs |back |chest|forearm|forearm|Strength --------+----+---+---+---+----+----+---- Before training | 2.65 | 93 |65.5 | 27 | 26 | 23 | 230 After six months| 2.87 | 120 |81.5 | 32 | 28 | 25 | 293 --------+----+---+---+---+----+----+----

By comparing records of what he deems standard normal growth with that of 188 naval cadets from sixteen to twenty-one, who had special and systematic training, just after the period of most rapid growth in height, Beyer concluded that the effect of four years of this added a little over an inch of stature, and that this gain as greatest at the beginning. This increase was greatest for the youngest cadets. He found also a marked increase in weight, nearly the same for each year from seventeen to twenty one. This he thought more easily influenced by exercise than height. A high vital index ratio of lung capacity to weight is a very important attribute of good training. Beyer[1] found, however, that the addition of lung area gained by exercise did not keep up with the increase thus caused in muscular substance, and that the vital index always became smaller in those who had gained weight and strength by special physical training. How much gain in weight is desirable beyond the point where the lung capacity increases at an equal rate is unknown. If such measurements were applied to the different gymnastic systems, we might be able to compare their efficiency, which would be a great desideratum in view of the unfortunate rivalry between them. Total strength, too, can be greatly increased. Beyer thinks that from sixteen to twenty-one it may exceed the average or normal increment fivefold, and he adds, "I firmly believe that the now so wonderful performances of most of our strong men are well within the reach of the majority of healthy men, if such performances were a serious enough part of their ambition to make them do the exercises necessary to develop them." Power of the organs to respond to good training by increased strength probably reaches well into middle life.

It is not encouraging to learn that, according to a recent writer,[2] we now have seventy times as many physicians in proportion to the general population as there are physical directors, even for the school population alone considered. We have twice as many physicians per population as Great Britain, four times a many as Germany, or 2 physicians, 1.8 ministers, 1.4 lawyers per thousand of the general population; while even if all male teachers of physical training taught only males of the military age, we should have but 0.05 of a teacher per thousand, or if the school population alone be considered, 20 teachers per million pupils. Hence, it is inferred that the need of wise and cla.s.sified teachers in this field is at present greater than in any other. But fortunately while spontaneous, unsystematic exercise in a well-equipped modern gymnasium may in rare cases do harm, so far from sharing the prejudice often felt for it by professional trainers, we believe that free access to it without control or direction is unquestionably a boon to youth. Even if its use be sporadic and occasional, as it is likely to be with equal opportunity for out-of-door exercises and especially sports, practise is sometimes hygienic almost inversely to its amount, while even lameness from initial excess has its lessons, and the sense of manifoldness of inferiorities brought home by experiences gives a wholesome self-knowledge and stimulus.

In this country more than elsewhere, especially in high school and college, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connection with field sports and record compet.i.tions for both teams and individuals who aspire to champions.h.i.+p. This has given the former a healthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. Scores of records have been established for running, walking, hurdling, throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for various shorter and longer distances and under manifold conditions, and for both amateurs and professionals, who are easily accessible. These, in general, show a slow but steady advance in this country since 1876, when athletics were established here. In that year there was not a single world's best record held by an American amateur, and high-school boys of to-day could in most, though not in all lines, have won the American champions.h.i.+p twenty-five years ago. Of course, in a strict sense, intercollegiate contests do not show the real advance in athletics, because it is not necessary for a man in order to win a champions.h.i.+p to do his best; but they do show general improvement.

We select for our purpose a few of those records longest kept. Not dependent on external conditions like boat-racing, or on improved apparatus like bicycling, we have interesting data of a very different order for physical measurements. These down to present writing-July, 1906-are as follows: For the 100-yard dash, every annual record from 1876 to 1895 is 10 or 11 seconds, or between these, save in 1890, where Owen's record of 9-4/5 seconds still stands. In the 220-yard run there is slight improvement since 1877, but here the record of 1896 (Wefers, 21-1/5 seconds) has not been surpa.s.sed. In the quarter-mile run, the beet record was in 1900 (Long, 47 seconds). The half-mile record, which still stands, was made in 1895 (Kilpatrick, 1 minute 52-2/5 seconds); the mile run in 1895 (Conneff, 4 minutes 15-3/5 seconds). The running broad jump shows a very steady improvement, with the best record in 1900 (Prinstein, 24 feet 7-1/4 inches). The running high jump shows improvement, but less, with the record of 1895 still standing (Sweeney, 6 feet 5-5/8 inches). The record for pole vaulting, corrected to November, 1905, is 12 feet 132/100 inches (Dole); for throwing the 16-pound hammer head, 100 feet 5 inches (Queckberner); for putting the 16-pound shot, 49 feet 6 inches (Coe, 1905); the standing high jump, 5 feet 5-1/2 inches (Ewry); for the running high jump, 6 feet 5-5/8 inches (Sweeney). We also find that if we extend our purview to include all kinds of records for physical achievement, that not a few of the amateur records for activities involving strength combined with rapid rhythm movement are held by young men of twenty or even less.

In putting the 16-pound shot under uniform conditions the record has improved since the early years nearly 10 feet (Coe, 49 feet 6 inches, best at present writing, 1906). Pole vaulting shows a very marked advance culminating in 1904 (Dole, 12 feet 132/100 inches). Most marked of all perhaps is the great advance in throwing the 16-pound hammer. Beginning between 70 and 80 feet in the early years, the record is now 172 feet 11 inches (Flanagan, 1904). The two-mile bicycle race also shows marked gain, partly, of course, due to improvement in the wheel, the early records being nearly 7 minutes, and the best being 2 minutes 19 seconds (McLean, 1903). Some of these are world records, and more exceed professional records.[3] These, of course, no more indicate general improvement than the steady reduction of time in horse-racing suggests betterment in horses generally.

In Panh.e.l.lenic games as well as at present, athleticism in its manifold forms was one of the most characteristic expressions of adolescent nature and needs. Not a single time or distance record of antiquity has been preserved, although Grasberger[4] and other writers would have us believe that in those that are comparable, ancient youthful champions greatly excelled ours, especially in leaping and running. While we are far from cultivating mere strength, our training is very one-sided from the Greek norm of unity or of the ideals that develop the body only for the salve of the soul. While gymnastics in our sense, with apparatus, exercises, and measurements independently of games was unknown, the ideal and motive were as different from ours as was its method. Nothing, so far as is known, was done for correcting the ravages of work, or for overcoming hereditary defects; and until athletics degenerated there were Do exercises for the sole purpose of developing muscle.

On the whole, while modern gymnastics has done more for the trunk, shoulders, and arms than for the legs, it is now too selfish and ego-centric, deficient on the side of psychic impulsion, and but little subordinated to ethical or intellectual development. Yet it does a great physical service to all who cultivate it, and is a safeguard of virtue and temperance. Its need is radical revision and coordination of various cults and theories in the light of the latest psycho-physiological science.

Gymnastics allies itself to biometric work. The present academic zeal for physical development is in great need of closer affiliation with anthropometry. This important and growing department will be represented in the ideal gymnasium of the future-First, by courses, if not by a chair, devoted to the apparatus of measurements of human proportions and symmetry, with a kinesological cabinet where young men are instructed in the elements of auscultation, the use of calipers, the sphygmograph, spirometer, plethysmograph, kinesometer to plot graphic curves, compute average errors, and tables of percentile grades and in statistical methods, etc. Second, anatomy, especially of muscles, bones, heart, and skin, will be taught, and also their physiology, with stress upon myology, the effects of exercise on the flow of blood and lymph, not excluding the development of the upright position, and all that it involves and implies. Third, hygiene will be prominent and comprehensive enough to cover all that pertains to body-keeping, regimen, sleep, connecting with school and domestic and public hygiene-all on the basis of modern as distinct from the archaic physiology of Ling, who, it is sufficient to remember, died in 1839, before this science was recreated, and the persistence of whose concepts are an anomalous survival to-day. Mechanico-therapeutics, the purpose and service of each chief kind of apparatus and exercise, the value of work on stall bars with chest weights, of chinning, use of the quarter-staff, somersaults, rings, clubs, dumb-bells, work with straight and flexed knees on machinery, etc., will be taught. Fourth, the history of gymnastics from the time of its highest development in Greece to the present is full of interest and has a very high and not yet developed culture value for youth. This department, both in its practical and theoretical side, should have its full share of prizes and scholars.h.i.+ps to stimulate the seventy to seventy-five per cent of students who are now unaffected by the influence of athletics. By these methods the motivation of gymnastics, which now in large measure goes to waste in enthusiasm, could be utilised to aid the greatly needed intellectualization of those exercises which in their nature are more akin to work than play. Indeed, Guts.m.u.ths's first definition of athletics was "work under the garb of youthful pleasure." So to develop these courses that they could chiefly, if not entirely, satisfy the requirements for the A.B. degree, would coordinate the work of the now isolated curriculum of the training-schools with that of the college and thus broaden the sphere of the latter; but besides its culture value, which I hold very high, such a step would prepare for the new, important, and, as we have seen, very inadequately manned profession of physical trainers. This has, moreover, great but yet latent and even unsuspected capacities for the morals of our academic youth. Grote states that among the ancient Greeks one-half of all education as devoted to the body, and Galton urges that they as much excelled us as we do the African negro. They held that if physical perfection was cultivated, moral and mental excellence would follow; and that, without this, national culture rests on an insecure basis. In our day there are many new reasons to believe that the best nations of the future will be those which give most intelligent care to the body.

[Footnote 1: See H.G. Beyer. The Influence of Exercise on Growth. American Physical Education Review, September-December, 1896, vol. I, pp. 76-87.]

[Footnote 2: J.H. McCurdy, Physical Training as a Profession.

a.s.sociation Seminar, March, 1902, vol. 10, pp. 11-24.]

[Footnote 3: These records are taken from the World Almanac, 1906, and Olympic Games of 1906 at Athens. Edited by J.E. Sullivan, Commissioner from the United States to the Olympic Games. Spalding's Athletic Library, New York, July, 1906.]

[Footnote 4: O.H. Jaeger, Die Gymnastik der h.e.l.lenen. Heitz, Stuttgart 1881. L. Grasberger's great standard work, Erziehung und Untericht im kla.s.sischen Alterthum. Wurzburg, 1864-81, 3 vols.]

CHAPTER VI

PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES

The view of Groos partial and a better explanation of play proposed as rehearsing ancestral activities-The glory of Greek physical training, its ideals and results-The first spontaneous movements of infancy as keys to the past-Necessity of developing basal powers before those that are later and peculiar to the individual-Plays that interest due to their antiquity-Play with dolls-Play distinguished by age-Play preferences of children and their reasons-The profound significance of rhythm-The value of dancing and also its significance, history, and the desirability of re-introducing it-Fighting-Boxing-Wrestling-Bus.h.i.+do-Foot-ball-Military ideals-Showing off-Cold baths-Hill climbing-The playground movement-The psychology of play-Its relation to work.

Play, sports, and games const.i.tute a more varied, far older, and more popular field. Here a very different spirit of joy and gladness rules. Artifacts often enter but can not survive unless based upon pretty purely hereditary momentum. Thus our first problem is to seek both the motor tendencies and the psychic motives bequeathed to us from the past. The view of Groos that play is practise for future adult activities is very partial, superficial, and perverse. It ignores the past where lie the keys to all play activities. True play never practises what is phyletically new; and this, industrial life often calls for. It exercises many atavistic and rudimentary functions, a number of which will abort before maturity, but which live themselves out in play like the tadpole's tail, that must be both developed and used as a stimulus to the growth of legs which will otherwise never mature. In place of this mistaken and misleading view, I regard play as the motor habits and spirit of the past of the race, persisting in the present, as rudimentary functions sometimes of and always akin to rudimentary organs. The best index and guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages is found in the instinctive, untaught, and non-imitative plays of children which are the most spontaneous and exact expressions of their motor needs. The young grow up into the same forms of motor activity, as did generations that have long preceded them, only to a limited extent; and if the form of every human occupation were to change to-day, play would be unaffected save in some of its superficial imitative forms. It would develop the motor capacities, impulses, and fundamental forms of our past heritage, and the transformation of these into later acquired adult forms is progressively later. In play every mood and movement is instinct with heredity. Thus we rehea.r.s.e the activities of our ancestors, back we know not how far, and repeat their life work in summative and adumbrated ways. It is reminiscent albeit unconsciously, of our line of descent; and each is the key to the other. The psycho-motive impulses that prompt it are the forms in which our forebears have transmitted to us their habitual activities. Thus stage by stage we reenact their lives. Once in the phylon many of these activities were elaborated in the life and death struggle for existence. Now the elements and combinations oldest in the muscle history of the race are rerepresented earliest in the individual, and those later follow in order. This is why the heart of youth goes out into play as into nothing else, as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. This is why, unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body, and also why it so makes for unity of body and soul that the proverb "Man is whole only when he plays" suggests that the purest plays are those that enlist both alike. To address the body predominantly strengthens unduly the fleshy elements, and to overemphasize the soul causes weakness and automatisms. Thus understood, play is the ideal type of exercise for the young, most favorable for growth, and most self-regulating in both kind and amount. For its forms the pulse of adolescent enthusiasm beats highest. It is unconstrained and free to follow any outer or inner impulse. The zest of it vents and satisfies the strong pa.s.sion of youth for intense erethic and perhaps orgiastic states, gives an exaltation of self-feeling so craved that with no vicarious outlet it often impels to drink, and best of all realizes the watchword of the Turners, frisch, frei, frohlich, fromm [Fresh, free, jovial, pious.].

Ancient Greece, the history and literature of which owe their perennial charm for all later ages to the fact that they represent the eternal adolescence of the world, best ill.u.s.trates what this enthusiasm means for youth. Jager and Guildersleeve, and yet better Grasberger, would have us believe that the Panh.e.l.lenic and especially the Olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern prize exhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, Derby day, a Wagner festival, a meeting of the British a.s.sociation, a country cattle show, intercollegiate games, and medieval tournament; that they were the "acme of festive life" and drew all who loved gold and glory, and that night and death never seemed so black as by contrast with their splendor. The deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to the inspiration of the G.o.ds, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and in doing them honor these discordant states found a bond of unity. The victor was crowned with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied with each other for the honor of having given him birth, their walls were taken down for his entry and immediately rebuilt; sculptors, for whom the five ancient games were schools of posture, competed in the representation of his form; poets gave him a pedigree reaching back to the G.o.ds, and Pindar, who sang that only he is great who is great with his hands and feet, raised his victory to symbolize the eternal prevalence of good over evil. The best body implied the best mind; and even Plato, to whom tradition gives not only one of the fairest souls, but a body remarkable for both strength and beauty, and for whom weakness was perilously near to wickedness, and ugliness to sin, argues that education must be so conducted that the body can be safely entrusted to the care of the soul and suggests, what later became a slogan of a more degenerate gladiatorial athleticism, that to be well and strong is to be a philosopher-valare est philosophari. The Greeks could hardly conceive bodily apart from psychic education, and physical was for the sake of mental training. A sane, whole mind could hardly reside in an unsound body upon the integrity of which it was dependent. Knowledge for its own sake, from this standpoint, is a dangerous superst.i.tion, for what frees the mind is disastrous if it does not give self-control; better ignorance than knowledge that does not develop a motor side. Body culture is ultimately only for the sake of the mind and soul, for body is only its other ego. Not only is all muscle culture at the same time brain-building, but a book-worm with soft hands, tender feet, and tough rump from much sitting, or an anemic girl prodigy, "in the morning hectic, in the evening electric," is a monster. Play at its best is only a school of ethics. It gives not only strength but courage and confidence, tends to simplify life and habits, gives energy, decision, and promptness to the will, brings consolation and peace of mind in evil days, is a resource in trouble and brings out individuality.

How the ideals of physical preformed those of moral and mental training in the land and day of Socrates is seen in the identification of knowledge and virtue, "Kennen und Konnen." [To know and to have the power to do] Only an extreme and one-sided intellectualism separates them and a.s.sumes that it is easy to know and hard to do. From the ethical standpoint, philosophy, and indeed all knowledge, is the art of being and doing good, conduct is the only real subject of knowledge, and there is no science but morals. He is the best man, says Xenophon, who is always studying how to improve, and he is the happiest who feels that he is improving. Life is a skill, an art like a handicraft, and true knowledge a form of will. Good moral and physical development are more than a.n.a.logous; and where intelligence is separated from action the former becomes mystic, abstract, and desiccated, and the latter formal routine. Thus mere conscience and psychological integrity and righteousness are allied and mutually inspiring.

Not only play, which is the purest expression of motor heredity, but work and all exercise owe most of whatever pleasure they bring to the past. The first influence of all right exercise for those in health is feeling of well-being and exhilaration. This is one chief source of the strange enthusiasm felt for many special forms of activity, and the feeling is so strong that it animates many forms of it that are hygienically unfit. To act vigorously from a full store of energy gives a reflex of pleasure that is sometimes a pa.s.sion and may fairly intoxicate. Animals must move or cease growing and die. While to be weak is to be miserable, to feel strong is a joy and glory. It gives a sense of superiority, dignity, endurance, courage, confidence, enterprise, power, personal validity, virility, and virtue in the etymological sense of that n.o.ble word. To be active, agile, strong, is especially the glory of young men. Our nature and history have so disposed our frame that thus all physiological and psychic processes are stimulated, products of decomposition are washed out by oxygenation and elimination, the best reaction of all the ganglionic and sympathetic activities is accused, and vegetative processes are normalized. Activity may exalt the spirit almost to the point of ecstasy, and the physical pleasure of it diffuse, irradiate, and mitigate the s.e.xual stress just at the age when its premature localization is most deleterious. Just enough at the proper time and rate contributes to permanent elasticity of mood and disposition, gives moral self-control, rouses a love of freedom with all that that great word means, and favors all higher human aspirations.

In all these modes of developing our efferent powers, we conceive that the race comes very close to the individual youth, and that ancestral momenta animate motor neurons and muscles and preside over most of the combinations. Some of the elements speak with a still small voice raucous with age. The first spontaneous movements of infancy are hieroglyphs, to most of which we have as yet no good key. Many elements are so impacted and felted together that we can not a.n.a.lyze them. Many are extinct and many perhaps made but once and only hint things we can not apprehend. Later the rehearsals are fuller, and their significance more intelligible, and in boyhood and youth the correspondences are plain to all who have eyes to see. Pleasure is always exactly proportional to the directness and force of the current of heredity, and in play we feel most fully and intensely ancestral joys. The pain of toil died with our forebears; its vestiges in our play give pure delight. Its variety prompts to diversity that enlarges our life. Primitive men and animals played, and that too has left its traces in us. Some urge that work was evolved or degenerated from play; but the play field broadens with succeeding generations youth is prolonged, for play is always and everywhere the best synonym of youth. All are young at play and only in play, and the best possible characterization of old age is the absence of the soul and body of play. Only senile and overspecialized tissues of brain, heart, and muscles know it not.

Gulick[1] has urged that what makes certain exercises more interesting than others is to be found in the phylon. The power to throw with accuracy and speed was once pivotal for survival, and non-throwers were eliminated. Those who could throw unusually well best overcame enemies, killed game, and sheltered family. The nervous and muscular systems are organized with certain definite tendencies and have back of them a racial setting. So running and dodging with speed and endurance, and hitting with a club, were also basal to hunting and fighting. Now that the need of these is leas urgent for utilitarian purposes, they are still necessary for perfecting the organism. This makes, for instance, baseball racially familiar, because it represents activities that were once and for a long time necessary for survival. We inherit tendencies of muscular coordination that have been of great racial utility. The best athletic sports and games a composed of these racially old elements, so that phylogenetic muscular history is of great importance. Why is it, this writer asks, that a city man so loves to sit all day and fis.h.!.+ It is because this interest dates back to time immemorial. We are the sons of fishermen, and early life was by the water's side, and this is our food supply. This explains why certain exercises are more interesting than others. It is because they touch and revive the deep basic emotions of the race. Thus we see that play is not doing things to be useful later, but it is rehearsing racial history. Plays and games change only in their external form, but the underlying neuro-muscular activities, and also the psychic content of them, are the same. Just as psychic states must be lived out up through the grades, so the physical activities most be played off, each in its own time.

The best exercise for the young should thus be more directed to develop the basal powers old to the race than those peculiar to the individual, and it should enforce those psycho-neural and muscular forms which race habit has banded down rather than insist upon those arbitrarily designed to develop our ideas of symmetry regardless of heredity. The best guide to the former is interest, zest, and spontaneity. Hereditary moment, really determine, too, the order in which nerve centers come into function. The oldest, racial parts come first, and those which are higher and represent volition come in much later.[2] As Hughlings Jackson has well shown, speech uses most of the same organs as does eating, but those concerned with the former are controlled from a higher level of nerve-cells. By right mastication, deglut.i.tion, etc., we are thus developing speech organs. Thus not only the kind but the time of forms and degrees of exercise is best prescribed by heredity. All growth is more or less rhythmic. There are seasons of rapid increment followed by rest and then perhaps succeeded by a period of augmentation, and this may occur several times. Roberts's fifth parliamentary report shows that systematic gymnastics, which, if applied at the right age, produce such immediate and often surprising development of lung capacity, utterly fail with boys of twelve, because this nascent period has not yet come. Donaldson showed that if the eyelid of a young kitten be forced open prematurely at birth and stimulated with light, medullation was premature and imperfect; so, too, if proper exercise is deferred too long, we know that little result is achieved. The sequence in which the maturation of levels, nerve areas, and bundles of fibers develop may be, as Flechsig thinks, causal; or, according to Cajal, energy, originally employed in growth by cell division, later pa.s.ses to fiber extension and the development of latent cells; or as in young children, the nascent period of finger movements may stimulate that of the thumb which comes later, and the independent movement of the two eyes, their subsequent coordination, and so on to perhaps a third and yet higher level. Thus exercise ought to develop nature's first intention and fulfil the law of nascent periods, or else not only no good but great harm may be done. Hence every determination of these periods is of great practical as well as scientific importance. The following are the chief attempts yet made to fix them, which show the significance of adolescence.

The doll curve reaches its point of highest intensity between eight and nine,[3] and it is nearly ended at fifteen, although it may persist. Children can give no better reason why they stop playing with dolls than because other things are liked better, or they are too old, ashamed, love real babies, etc. The Roman girl, when ripe for marriage, hung up her childhood doll as a votive offering to Venus. Mrs. Carlyle, who was compelled to stop, made sumptuous dresses and a four-post bed, and made her doll die upon a funeral pyre like Dido, after speaking her last farewell and stabbing herself with a penknife by way of Tyrian sword. At thirteen or fourteen it is more distinctly realized that dolls are not real, because they have no inner life or feeling, yet many continue to play with them with great pleasure, in secret, till well on in the teens or twenties. Occasionally single women or married women with no children, and in rare cases even those who have children, play dolls all their lives. Gales's[4] student concluded that the girls who played with dolls up to or into p.u.b.escent years were usually those who had the fewest number, that they played with them in the most realistic manner, kept them because actually most fond of them, and were likely to be more scientific, steady, and less sentimental than those who dropped them early. But the instinct that "dollifies" new or most unfit things is gone, as also the subtle points of contact between doll play and idolatry. Before p.u.b.erty dolls are more likely to be adults; after p.u.b.erty they are almost always children or babies. There is no longer a struggle between doubt and reality in the doll cosmos, no more abandon to the doll illusion; but where it lingers it is a more atavistic rudiment, and just as at the height of the fever dolls are only in small part representatives of future children, the saying that the first child is the last doll is probably false. Nor are doll and child comparable to first and second dent.i.tion, and it is doubtful if children who play with dolls as children with too great abandonment are those who make the best mothers later, or if it has any value as a preliminary practise of motherhood. The number of motor activities that are both inspired and unified by this form of play and that can always be given wholesome direction is almost incredible, and has been too long neglected both by psychologists and teachers. Few purer types of the rehearsal by the individual of the history of the race can probably be found even though we can not yet a.n.a.lyze the many elements involved and a.s.sign to each its phyletic correlate.

In an interesting paper Dr. Gulick[5] divides play into three childish periods, separated by the ages three and seven, and attempts to characterize the plays of early adolescence from twelve to seventeen and of later adolescence from seventeen to twenty-three. Of the first two periods he says, children before seven rarely play games spontaneously, but often do so under the stimulus of older persons. From seven to twelve, games are almost exclusively individualistic and compet.i.tive, but in early adolescence "two elements predominate-first, the plays are predominantly team games, in which the individual is more or less sacrificed for the whole, in which there is obedience to a captain, in which there is cooperation among a number for a given end, in which play has a program and an end. The second characteristic of the period is with reference to its plays, and there seems to be all of savage out-of-door life-hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, stealing, swimming, rowing, sailing, fighting, hero-wors.h.i.+p, adventure, love of animals, etc. This characteristic obtains more with boys than with girls." "The plays of adolescence are socialistic, demanding the heathen virtues of courage, endurance, self-control, bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm."

Croswell[6] found that among 2,000 children familiar with 700 kinds of amus.e.m.e.nts, those involving physical exercises predominated over all others, and that "at every age after the eighth year they were represented as almost two to one and in the sixteenth year rose among boys as four to one." The age of the greatest number of different amus.e.m.e.nts is from ten to eleven, nearly fifteen being mentioned, but for the next eight or nine years there is a steady decline of number, and progressive specialisation occurs. The games of chase, which are suggestive on the recapitulation theory, rise from eleven per cent in boys of six to nineteen per cent at nine, but soon after decline, and at sixteen have fallen to less than four per cent. Toys and original make-believe games decline still earlier, while ball rises steadily and rapidly to eighteen, and card and table games rise very steadily from ten to fifteen in girls, but the increment is much less in boys. "A third or more of all the amus.e.m.e.nts of boys just entering their teens are games of contest-games in which the end is in one way or another to gain an advantage one's fellows, in which the interest is n the struggle between peers." "As children approach the teens, a tendency arises that is well expressed by one of the girls who no longer makes playthings but things that are useful." Parents and society must, therefore, provide the most favorable conditions for the kind of amus.e.m.e.nt fitting at each age. As the child grows older, society plays a larger role in all the child's amus.e.m.e.nts, and from the thirteenth year "amus.e.m.e.nts take on a decidedly cooperative and compet.i.tive character, and efforts are ore and more confined to the accomplishments of some definite aim. The course for this period will concentrate the effort upon fewer lines," and more time will be devoted to each. The desire for mastery is now at its height. The instinct is to maintain one's self independently and ask no odds. At fourteen, especially, the impulse is, in manual training, to make something and perhaps to cooperate.

McGhee[7] collected the play preferences of 15,718 children, and found a very steady decline in running plays among girls from nine to eighteen, but a far more rapid rise in plays of chance from eleven to fifteen, and a very rapid rise from sixteen to eighteen. From eleven onward with the most marked fall before fourteen, there was a distinct decline in imitative games for girls and a slower one for boys. Games involving rivalry increased rapidly among boys from eleven to sixteen and still more rapidly among girls, their percentage of preference even exceeding that of boys at eighteen, when it reached nearly seventy per cent. With adolescence, specialization upon a few plays was markedly increased in the teens among boys, whereas with girls in general there were a large number of plays which were popular with none preeminent. Even at this age the principle of organization in games so strong with boys is very slight with girls. p.u.b.erty showed the greatest increase of interest among p.u.b.escent girls for croquet, and among boys for swimming, although baseball and football, the most favored for boys, rose rapidly. Although the author does not state it, it would seem from his data that plays peculiar to the different seasons were most marked among boys, in part, at least, because their activities are more out of doors.

Ferrero and others have shown that the more intense activities of primitive people tend to be rhythmic and with strongly automatic features. No form of activity is more universal than the dance, which is not only intense but may express chiefly in terms of fundamental movements, stripped of their accessory finish and detail, every important act, vocation, sentiment, or event in the life of man in language so universal and symbolic that music and poetry themselves seem to have arisen out of it. Before it became specialized much labor was cast in rhythmic form and often accompanied by time-marking and even tone to secure the stimulus of concert on both economic and social principles. In the dark background of history there is now much evidence that at some point, play, art, and work were not divorced. They all may have sprung from rhythmic movement which is so deep-seated in biology because it secures most joy of life with least expense. By it Eros of old ordered chaos, and by its judicious use the human soul is cadenced to great efforts toward high ideals. The many work-songs to secure concerted action in lifting, pulling, stepping, the use of flail, lever, saw, ax, hammer, hoe, loom, etc., show that areas and thesis represent flexion and extension, that accent originated in the acme of muscular stress, as well as how rhythm eases work and also makes it social. Most of the old work-canticles are lost, and machines have made work more serial, while rhythms are obscured or imposed from without so as to limit the freedom they used to express. Now all basal, central, or strength movements tend to be oscillatory, automatically repet.i.tive, or rhythmic like savage music, as if the waves of the primeval sea whence we came still beat in them, just as all fine peripheral and late movements tend to be serial, special, vastly complex, end diversified. It is thus natural that during the period of greatest strength increment in muscular development, the rhythmic function of nearly all fundamental movements should be strongly accentuated. At the dawn of this age boys love marching; and, as our returns show, there is a very remarkable rise in the pa.s.sion for beating time, jigging, double shuffling, rhythmic clapping, etc. The more prominent the factor of repet.i.tion the more automatic and the less strenuous is the hard and new effort of constant psychic adjustment and attention. College yells, cheers, rowing, marching, processions, bicycling, running, tug-of-war, calisthenics and cla.s.s gymnastics with counting, and especially with music, horseback riding, etc., are rhythmic; tennis, baseball and football, basketball, golf, polo, etc., are less rhythmic, but are concerted and intense. These latter emphasise the conflict factor, best brought out in fencing, boxing, and wrestling, and lay more stress on the psychic elements of attention and skill. The effect of musical accompaniment, which the Swedish system wrongly rejects, is to make the exercises more fundamental and automatic, and to proportionately diminish the conscious effort and relieve the neuro-muscular mechanism involved in fine movements.

Adolescence is the golden period of nascency for rhythm. Before this change many children have a very imperfect sense of it, and even those who march, sing, play, or read poetry with correct and overemphasised time marking, experience a great broadening of the horizon of consciousness, and a marked, and, for mental power and scope, all-conditioning increase in the carrying power of attention and the sentence-sense. The soul now feels the beauty of cadences, good ascension, and the symmetry of well-developed periods-and all, as I am convinced, because this is the springtime of the strength movements which are predominantly rhythmic. Not only does music start in time marking, the drum being the oldest instrument, but quant.i.ty long took precedence of sense and form of content, both melody and words coming later. Even rhythmic tapping or beating of the foot (whence the poetic feet of prosody and meter thus later imposed monotonous prose to make poetry) exhilarates, makes glad the soul and inspires it to attack, gives compulsion and a sense of unity. The psychology of rhythm shows its basal value in cadencing the soul. We can not conceive what war, love, and religion would be without it. The old adage that "the parent of prose is poetry, the parent of poetry is music, the parent of music is rhythm, and the parent of rhythm is G.o.d" seems borne out not only in history, but by the nature of thought and attention that does not move in a continuum, but flies and perches alternately, or on stepping-stones and as if influenced by the tempo of the leg swinging as a compound pendulum.

Dancing is one of the best expressions of pure play and of the motor needs of youth. Perhaps it is the most liberal of all forms of motor education. Schopenhauer thought it the apex of physiological irritability and that it made animal life most vividly conscious of its existence and most exultant in exhibiting it. In very ancient times China ritualised it in the spring and made it a large part of the education of boys after the age of thirteen. Neale thinks it was originally circular or orbicular wors.h.i.+p, which he deems oldest. In j.a.pan, in the priestly Salic College of ancient Rome, in Egypt, in the Greek Apollo cult, it was a form of wors.h.i.+p. St. Basil advised it; St. Gregory introduced it into religious services. The early Christian bishops, called praesuls, led the sacred dance around the altar; and only in 692, and again in 1617, was it forbidden in church. Neale and others have shown how the choral processionals with all the added charm of vestment and intonation have had far more to do in Christianizing many low tribes, who could not understand the language of the church, than has preaching. Savages are nearly all great dancers, imitating every animal they know, dancing out their own legends, with ritual sometimes so exacting that error means death. The character of people is often learned from their dances, and Moliere says the destiny of nations depends on them. The gayest dancers are often among the most downtrodden and unhappy people. Some mysteries can be revealed only in them, as holy pa.s.sion-plays. If we consider the history of secular dances, we find that some of them, when first invented or in vogue, evoked the greatest enthusiasm. One writer says that the polka so delighted France and England that statesmen forgot politics. The spirit of the old Polish aristocracy still lives in the polonaise. The gipsy dances have inspired a new school of music. The Greek drama grew out of the evolution of the tragic chorus. National dances like the hornpipe and reel of Scotland, the Reihen, of Germany, the rondes of France, the Spanish tarantella and chaconne, the strathspey from the Spey Valley, the Irish jig, etc., express racial traits. Instead of the former vast repertory, the stately pavone, the graceful and dignified saraband, the wild salterrelle, the bourree with song and strong rhythm, the light and skippy bolero, the courtly bayedere, the dramatic plugge, gavotte, and other peasant dances in costume, the fast and furious fandango, weapon and military dances; in place of the pristine power to express love, mourning, justice, penalty, fear, anger, consolation, divine service, symbolic and philosophical conceptions, and every industry or characteristic act of life in pantomime and gesture, we have in the dance of the modern ballroom only a degenerate relict, with at best but a very insignificant culture value, and too often stained with bad a.s.sociations. This is most unfortunate for youth, and for their sake a work of rescue and revival is greatly needed; for it is perhaps, not excepting even music, the completest language of the emotions and can be made one of the best schools of sentiment and even will, inculcating good states of mind and exorcising bad ones as few other agencies have power to do. Right dancing can cadence the very soul, give nervous poise and control, bring harmony between basal and finer muscles, and also between feeling and intellect, body and mind. It can serve both as an awakener and a test of intelligence, predispose the heart against vice, and turn the springs of character toward virtue. That its present decadent forms, for those too devitalized to dance aright, can be demoralizing, we know in this day too well, although even questionable dances may sometimes work off vicious propensities in ways more harmless than those in which they would otherwise find vent. Its utilization for and influence on the insane would be another interesting chapter.

Very interesting scientifically and suggestive practically is another correspondence which I believe to be new, between the mode of spontaneous activity in youth and that of labor in the early history of the race. One of the most marked distinctions between savage and civilized races is in the longer rhythm of work and relaxation. The former are idle and lazy for days, weeks, and perhaps months, and then put forth intense and prolonged effort in dance, hunt, warfare, migration, or construction, sometimes dispensing with sleep and manifesting remarkable endurance. As civilization and specialization advance, hours become regular. The cultured man is less desultory in all his habits, from eating and sleeping to performing social and religious duties, although he may put forth no more aggregate energy in a year than the savage. Women are schooled to regular work long before men, and the difficulty of imposing civilization upon low races is compared by Bucher[8] to that of training a eat to work when harnessed to a dog-cart. It is not dread of fatigue but of the monotony of method makes them hate labor. The effort of savages is more intense and their periods of rest more prolonged and inert. Darwin thinks all vital function bred to go in periods, as vertebrates are descended from tidal ascidian.[9] There is indeed much that suggests some other irregular rhythm more or less independent of day and night, and perhaps s.e.xual in its nature, but not lunar, and for males. This mode of life not only preceded the industrial and commercial period of which regularity is a prime condition, but it lasted indefinitely longer than the latter has yet existed; during this early time great exertion, sometimes to the point of utter exhaustion and collapse, alternated with seasons of almost vegetative existence. We see abundant traces of this psychosis in the muscle habits of adolescents, and, I think, in student and particularly in college life, which can enforce regularity only to a limited extent. This is not reversion, but partly expression of the nature and perhaps the needs of this stage of immaturity, and partly the same instinct of revolt against uniformity imposed from without, which rob life of variety and extinguish the spirit of adventure and untrammeled freedom, and make the savage hard to break to the harness of civilization. The hunger for fatigue, too, can become a veritable pa.s.sion and is quite distinct from either the impulse for activity for its own sake or the desire of achievement. To shout and put forth the utmost possible strength in crude ways is erethic intoxication at a stage when every tissue can become erectile and seems, like the crying of infants, to have a legitimate function in causing tension and flus.h.i.+ng, enlarging the caliber of blood vessels, and forcing the blood perhaps even to the point of extravasation to irrigate newly growing fibers, cells, and organs which atrophy if not thus fed. When maturity is complete this need abates. If this be correct, the phenomenon of second breath, so characteristic of adolescence, and one factor in the inebriate's propensity, is ontogenetic expression of a rhythm trait of a long racial period. Youth needs overexertion to compensate for underexertion, to undersleep in order to offset oversleep at times. This seems to be nature's provision to expand in all directions its possibilities of the body and soul in this plastic period when, without this occasional excess, powers would atrophy or suffer arrest for want of use, or larger possibilities world not be realized without this regimen peculiar to nascent periods. This is treated more fully elsewhere.

Perhaps next to dancing in phyletic motivation come personal conflicts, such as wrestling, fighting, boxing, dueling, and in some sense, hunting. The animal world is full of struggle for survival, and primitive warfare is a wager of battle, of personal combat of foes contesting eye to eye and hand to hand, where victory of one is the defeat and perhaps death of the other, and where life is often staked against life. In its more brutal forms we see one of the most degrading of all the aspects of human nature. Burk[10] has shown how the most b.e.s.t.i.a.l of these instincts survive and crop out irresistibly in boyhood, where fights are often engaged in with desperate abandon. Noses are bitten, ears torn, sensitive places kicked, hair pulled, arms twisted, the head stamped on and pounded on stones, fingers twisted, and hoodlums sometimes deliberately try to strangle, gouge out an eye, pull off an ear, pull out the tongue, break teeth, nose, or bones, or dislocate jaws or other joints, wring the neck, bite off a lip, and torture in utterly nameless ways. In unrestrained anger, man becomes a demon in love with the blood of his victim. The face is distorted, and there are yells, oaths, animal snorts and grunts, cries, and then exultant laughter at pain, and each is bruised, dirty, disheveled and panting with exhaustion. For coa.r.s.er natures, the spectacle of such conflicts has an intense attraction, while some morbid souls are scarred by a distinct phobia for everything suggestive of even lower degrees of opposition. These instincts, more or less developed in boyhood, are repressed in normal cases before strength and skill are sufficiently developed to inflict serious bodily injury, while without the reductives that orthogenetic growth brings they become criminal. Repulsive as are these grosser and animal manifestations of anger, its impulsion can not and should not be eliminated, but its expression transformed and directed toward evils that need all its antagonism. To be angry aright is a good part of moral education, and non-resistance under all provocations is unmanly, craven, and cowardly.[11] An able-bodied young man, who can not fight physically, can hardly have a high and true sense of honor, and is generally a milksop, a lady-boy, or sneak. He lacks virility, his masculinity does not ring true, his honesty can not be sound to the core. Hence, instead of eradicating this instinct, one of the great problems of physical and moral pedagogy is rightly to temper and direct it.

Sparta sedulously cultivated it in boys; and in the great English schools, where for generations it has been more or less tacitly recognized, it is regulated by custom, and their literature and traditions abound in ill.u.s.trations of its man-making and often transforming influence in ways well appreciated by Hughes and Arnold. It makes against degeneration, the essential feature of which is weakening of will and loss of honor. Real virtue requires enemies, and women and effeminate and old men want placid, comfortable peace, while a real man rejoices in n.o.ble strife which sanctifies all great causes, casts out fear, and is the chief school of courage. Bad as is overpugnacity, a sc.r.a.pping boy is better than one who funks a fight, and I have no patience with the sentimentality that would here "pour out the child with the bath," but would have every healthy boy taught boxing at adolescence if not before. The prize-ring is degrading and brutal, but in lieu of better ill.u.s.trations of the spirit of personal contest I would interest a certain cla.s.s of boys in it and try to devise modes of pedagogic utilization of the immense store of interest it generates. Like dancing it should be rescued from its evil a.s.sociations, and its educational force put to do moral work, even though it be by way of individual prescriptions for specific defects of character. At its best, it is indeed a manly art, a superb school for quickness of eye and hand, decision, force of will, and self-control. The moment this is lost stinging punishment follows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility and has been found to have a most beneficent effect upon a peevish or unmanly disposition. It has no mean theoretic side, of rules, kinds of blow and counters, arts of drawing out and tiring an opponent, hindering but not injuring him, defensive and offensive tactics, etc., and it addresses chiefly the fundamental muscles in both training and conflict. I do not underestimate the many and great difficulties of proper purgation, but I know from both personal practise and observation that they are not unconquerable.

This form of personal conflict is better than dueling even in its comparatively harmless German student form, although this has been warmly defended by Jacob Grimm, Bismarck, and Treitschke, while Paulsen, Professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy, and Schrempf, of Theology, have p.r.o.nounced it but a slight evil, and several Americans have thought it better than hazing, which it makes impossible. The dark side of dueling is seen in the hypertrophied sense of honor which under the code of the corps becomes an intricate and fantastic thing, prompting, according to Ziegler,[12] a club of sixteen students to fight over two hundred duels in four weeks in Jena early in this century. It is p.r.o.ne to degenerate to an artificial etiquette demanding satisfaction for slight and unintended offenses. Although this professor who had his own face scarred on the mensur, pleaded for a student court of honor, with power to brand acts as infamous and even to expel students, on the ground that honor had grown more inward, the traditions in favor of dueling were too strong. The duel had a religious romantic origin as revealing G.o.d's judgment, and means that the victim of an insult is ready to stake body, or even life, and this is still its ideal side. Anachronism as it now is and degenerating readily to sport or spectacle, overpunis.h.i.+ng what is often mere awkwardness or ignorance, it still impresses a certain sense of responsibility for conduct and gives some physical training, slight and specialized though it be. The code is conventional, drawn directly from old French military life, and is not true to the line that separates real honor from dishonor, deliberate insult that wounds normal self-respect from injury fancied by oversensitiveness or feigned by arrogance; so that in its present form it is not the best safeguard of the sacred shrine of personality against invasion of ifs rights. If, as is claimed, it is some diversion from or fortification against corrosive sensuality, it has generally allied itself with excessive beer-drinking. Fencing, while an art susceptible of high development and valuable for both pose and poise, and requiring great quickness of eye, arm, and wrist, is unilateral and robbed of the vest of inflicting real pain on an antagonist.

Bus.h.i.+do,[13] which means military-knightly ways, designates the j.a.panese conception of honor in behavior and in fighting. The youth is inspired by the ideal of Tom Brown "to leave behind him the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." It expresses the race ideal of justice, patriotism, and the duty of living aright and dying n.o.bly. It means also sympathy, pity, and love, for only the bravest can be the tenderest, and those most in love are most daring, and it includes politeness and the art of poetry. Honor is a sense of personal dignity and worth, so the bus.h.i.+ is truthful without an oath. At the tender age of five the samurai is given a real sword, and this gives self-respect and responsibility. At fifteen, two sharp and artistic ones, long and short, are given him, which must be his companions for life. They were made by a smith whose shop is a sanctuary and who begins his work with prayer. They have the finest hilts and scabbards, and are besung as invested with a charm or spell, and symbolic of loyalty and self-control, for they must never be drawn lightly. He is taught fencing, archery, horsemans.h.i.+p, tactics, the spear, ethics and literature, anatomy, for offence and defense; he must be indifferent to money, hold his life cheap beside honor, and die if it is gone. This chivalry is called the soul of j.a.pan, and if it fades life is vulgarised. It is a code of ethics and physical training.

Football is a magnificent game if played on honor. An English tennis champion was lately playing a rubber game with the American champion. They were even and near the end when the American made a bad fluke which would have lost this country its champions.h.i.+p. The English player, scorning to win on an accident, intentionally made a similar mistake that the best man might win. The chief evil of modern American football which now threatens its suppression in some colleges is the l.u.s.t to win at any price, and results in tricks and secret practise. These sneaky methods impair the sentiment of honor which is the bes