their debilitating effects, and be himself animated by a great ethical
and humanistic hope and faith in a better future. Such a man, if he
ever walks the earth, will be the idol of youth, will know their
physical secrets, will come almost as a savior to the bodies of men,
and will, like Jahn, feel his calling and work sacred, and his
institution a temple in which every physical act will be for the sake
of the soul. The world of adolescence, especially that part which sits
in closed spaces conning books, groans and travails all the more
grievously and yearningly, because unconsciously, waiting for a
redeemer for its body. Till he appears, our culture must remain for
most a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-bred
diseases. The modern gymnasium performs its chief service during
adolescence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which not a
few, but every youth, should make large use. Its spirit should be
instinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a point
of high, although not quite its highest, intensity. While the stimulus
of rivalry and even of records is not excluded, and social feelings
may be appealed to by unison exercises and by the club spirit, and
while competitions, tournaments, and the artificial motives of prizes
and exhibitions may be invoked, the culture is in fact largely
individual. And yet in this country the annual _Turnerfest_ brings
4,000 or 5,000 men from all parts of the Union, who sometimes all
deploy and go through some of the standard exercises together under
one leader. Instead of training a few athletes, the real problem now
presented is how to raise the general level of vitality so that
children and youth may be fitted to stand the strain of modern
civilization, resist zymotic diseases, and overcome the deleterious
influences of city life. The almost immediate effects of systematic
training are surprising and would hardly be inferred from the annual
increments tabled earlier in this chapter. Sandow was a rather weakly