sport becomes not a means of recreation but of gambling; and instead of
sturdy races bred upon the soil, and drawing from the soil solid
qualities of mind and body, you have blighted and anaemic races, bred
amid the populous disease of cities, and incapable of any task that
shall demand steady energy, continuous thought, or sober powers of
reflection or of will.




CHAPTER V

HEALTH AND ECONOMICS

Enough has been said to show that I never heartily settled to a town
life, and that the obstacle to content was my own character. Mere
discontent with one's environment, however useful it may be as an
irritant to prevent stagnation and brutish acquiescence, obviously does
not carry one very far. Men may chafe for years at the conditions of
their lot without in any way attempting to amend them. I soon came to
see that I was in danger of falling into this condition of futility. I
was, therefore, forced to face the question whether my continual inward
protest against the kind of life which I led was founded on anything
more stable than an opinion or a sentiment? No man ever yet took a
positively heroic or original course for the sake of an opinion.
Opinion must become conviction before it has any potency to change the
ordering of life. I saw plainly that I must either bring my thoughts
to the point of conviction or discard them altogether.

There is a good phrase which is sometimes used about men who are