a calling which so far exhausts their vitality that they have
neither the disposition nor the power to improve either their
calling or themselves.

To a student or a literary man, it is easy to explain the
necessity of the proper division of the nervous energies between
the mind and the body. Any student or literary man who has a daily
mental task to do, will do it before he exercises his body to any
great extent. If I wished to unfit my mind for a day of literary
labor, I would use the hoe in my garden for an early hour in the
morning. If I wished utterly to unfit a pupil for his daily task
of study, I would put him through an exhausting walk before
breakfast. The direction of all the nervous energies to the
support of the muscular system, and the necessary draft upon the
digestive and nutritive functions to supply the muscular waste,
leave the mind temporarily a bankrupt. I have never seen a man who
was really remarkable for acquired muscular power, and, at the
same time, remarkable for mental power. A man may be born into the
world with a fine muscular system and a fine brain, and in early
life his muscular system may have a fine development. Such a man
may subsequently have a remarkable mental development, but this
development will never be accompanied by large and regular
expenditures of muscular power. If I wished to repress the mental
growth and manifestation of a man, I would undertake to educate
him up to the point of lifting eight or ten kegs of nails. There
is danger at first of overdoing our "muscular Christianity"--
danger of getting more muscle than Christianity; and there is a
good deal more danger of overdoing our muscular intellectuality.
The difference between the kind and amount of exercise necessary
to produce a healthy machine and the kind and amount necessary to