growing period these are specially strong, and the important
thing is that they be guided and organized in relation to the
needs of maturity. In combining mental and physical training we
are in some measure furnishing this guidance, doing
intentionally what nature did originally without design.

In the uncivilized state the stress of life was chiefly
physical. The civilized man has to a large degree reversed this
old order, in that the use of the body is incidental in his
work, the stress being placed upon the brain. He piles his life
high with complexities and in place of life being for
necessities, and they few and simple, it is largely for
comforts which we call necessities, and Professor Huxley has
said that the struggle for comforts is more cruel than the
struggle for existence.

This stress which is put upon conscious effort in civilization
places a new and severe tax upon the brain. It intensifies and
narrows the range of man's activities; it causes him to
specialize and localize the strain to a degree that may be
dangerous. It is certainly true that every man has his breaking
strain, and there is nothing that will raise the limit of
endurance like a strong and well-developed body.

The Italian physiologist, Mosso, showed by an ingenious device
that when a person lying quite still was required to add a
column of figures, blood left the extremities and flowed toward
the brain. Any emotional state or effort of thought produces
the same result. This demonstration that we think to our
fingers' ends suggests the importance of a strong body as a