doubted whether they contributed anything to the real problem of
civilization. Yet their mistake is still repeated in part by many good
people. Many still think that the way of the higher life consists in
forgetting the body as much as possible in order that the soul may live
in freedom. They admit the body's needs with reluctance, and treat it
as something with no essential relation to their spiritual activities.
Often they willfully neglect the duty of health. Still more often they
believe they ought to regard with disapproval the clamant desires and
cravings of our bodily natures. But in so doing they miss the real
significance of the Incarnation. Our life here is an embodied life, and
it cannot be fine unless the body is finely tempered. That body is
designed as the instrument through which the spirit may find
expression. The first essential no doubt is to submit it to discipline
and so reduce it to the place of a servant. At all costs it must be
brought under control. It must be understood, and kept in good health.
And if these things be neglected the life of the spirit is hampered and
depressed. But still spirit must express itself through body, and all
the wealth of powers with which body is endowed has significance and
worth.

For this reason the attempt to keep spiritual and bodily activities
separate always revenges itself upon its authors. On the one hand it
leads to an impoverishment of the spiritual life, for on these terms
the spirit is left with no fine instrument through which to express
itself in the real world. And on the other hand, bodily activities
divorced from the control of the spirit tend to become mere animal
things and so to produce disgust and degeneration.

But indeed the body cannot without disaster be simply ignored. The
attempt merely to repress its manifold urgencies leads to a state in