Basic HTML Version
Health and Efficiency
239
who remains in sinful ignorance of the laws of life and health, or
who willfully violates these laws, sins against God.
The time spent in physical exercise is not lost. The student who
is constantly poring over his books, while he takes but little exercise
in the open air, does himself an injury. A proportionate exercise
of the various organs and faculties of the body is essential to the
best work of each. When the brain is constantly taxed while the
other organs are left inactive, there is a loss of physical and mental
strength. The physical powers are robbed of their healthy tone, the
mind loses its freshness and vigor, and a morbid excitability is the
result.
In order for men and women to have well-balanced minds, all
the powers of the being should be called into use and developed.
There are in this world many who are one-sided because only one
set of faculties has been cultivated, while others are dwarfed from
inaction. The education of many youth is a failure. They overstudy,
while they neglect that which pertains to the practical life. That
[296]
the balance of the mind may be maintained, a judicious system of
physical work should be combined with mental work that there may
be a harmonious development of all the powers.
Students should have manual work to do, and it will not hurt
them if in doing this work they become weary. Do you not think that
Christ became weary? Indeed He did. Weariness injures no one. It
only makes rest the sweeter. The lesson cannot be too often repeated
that education will be of little value without physical strength with
which to use it. When students leave college, they should have better
health and a better understanding of the laws of life than when they
entered it.
Overstudy
The student who desires to put the work of two years into one
should not be permitted to have his own way. To undertake to do
double work means, with many, overtaxation of the mind and neglect
of physical exercise. It is not reasonable to suppose that the mind
can assimilate an oversupply of mental food, and it is as great a sin
to overload the mind as it is to overload the digestive organs.