CHAPTER V


GYMNASTICS


The story of Jahn and the Turners--The enthusiasm which this movement
generated in Germany--The ideal of bringing out latent powers--The
concept of more perfect voluntary control--Swedish gymnastics--Doing
everything possible for the body as a machine--Liberal physical
culture--Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements
and correcting defects--The ideal of symmetry and prescribing
exercises to bring the body to a standard--Lamentable lack of
correlation between these four systems--Illustrations of the great
good that a systematic training can effect--Athletic records--Greek
physical training.

Under the term gymnastics, literally naked exercises, we here include
those denuded of all utilities or ulterior ends save those of physical
culture. This is essentially modern and was unknown in antiquity,
where training was for games, for war, etc. Several ideals underlie
this movement, which although closely related are distinct and as yet
by no means entirely harmonized. These may be described as follows:

A. One aim of Jahn, more developed by Spiess, and their successors,
was to do everything physically possible for the body as a mechanism.
Many postures and attitudes are assumed and many movements made that
are never called for in life. Some of these are so novel that a great