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Education
as of greater importance than a knowledge of books. He should be
surrounded with the conditions most favorable to both physical and
mental growth.
The child is not alone in the danger from want of air and exercise.
In the higher as well as the lower schools these essentials to health are
still too often neglected. Many a student sits day after day in a close
room bending over his books, his chest so contracted that he cannot
take a full, deep breath, his blood moving sluggishly, his feet cold,
his head hot. The body not being sufficiently nourished, the muscles
are weakened, and the whole system is enervated and diseased. Often
such students become lifelong invalids. They might have come from
school with increased physical as well as mental strength, had they
pursued their studies under proper conditions, with regular exercise in
the sunlight and the open air.
The student who with limited time and means is struggling to gain
an education should realize that time spent in physical exercise is not
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lost. He who continually pores over his books will find, after a time,
that the mind has lost its freshness. Those who give proper attention to
physical development will make greater advancement in literary lines
than they would if their entire time were devoted to study.
By pursuing one line of thought exclusively, the mind often be-
comes unbalanced. But every faculty may be safely exercised if the
mental and physical powers are equally taxed and the subjects of
thought are varied.
Physical inaction lessens not only mental but moral power. The
brain nerves that connect with the whole system are the medium
through which heaven communicates with man and affects the inmost
life. Whatever hinders the circulation of the electric current in the
nervous system, thus weakening the vital powers and lessening mental
susceptibility, makes it more difficult to arouse the moral nature.
Again, excessive study, by increasing the flow of blood to the
brain, creates morbid excitability that tends to lessen the power of self-
control, and too often gives sway to impulse or caprice. Thus the door
is opened to impurity. The misuse or nonuse of the physical powers
is largely responsible for the tide of corruption that is overspreading
the world. “Pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness,” are
as deadly foes to human progress in this generation as when they led
to the destruction of Sodom.