As a Matter of Course | Page 7

restful state of
mind and body prepares one for the best effects from exercise, fresh air,
and nourishment. This instinct is the more disobeyed because with the
need for rest there seems to come an inability to take it, so that not only
is every impediment magnified, but imaginary impediments are erected,
and only a decided and insistent use of the will in dropping everything
that interferes, whether real or imaginary, will bring a whiff of a breeze
from the true rest-current. Rest is not always silence, but silence is
always rest; and a real silence of the mind is known by very few.
Having gained that, or even approached it, we are taken by the

rest-wind itself, and it is strong enough to bear our full weight as it
swings us along to renewed life and new strength for work to come.
The secret is to turn to silence at the first hint from nature; and sleep
should be the very essence of silence itself.
All this would be very well if we were free to take the right amount of
rest, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment; but many of us are not. It will
not be difficult for any one to call to mind half a dozen persons who
impede the good which might result from the use of these four
necessities simply by complaining that they cannot have their full share
of either. Indeed, some of us may find in ourselves various stones of
this sort stopping the way. To take what we can and be thankful, not
only enables us to gain more from every source of health, but opens the
way for us to see clearly how to get more. This complaint, however, is
less of an impediment than the whining and fussing which come from
those who are free to take all four in abundance, and who have the
necessity of their own especial physical health so much at heart that
there is room to think of little else. These people crowd into the various
schools of physical culture by the hundred, pervade the rest-cures, and
are ready for any new physiological fad which may arise, with no result
but more physical culture, more rest-cure, and more fads. Nay, there is
sometimes one other result,--disease. That gives them something
tangible to work for or to work about. But all their eating and breathing
and exercising and resting does not bring lasting vigorous health,
simply because they work at it as an end, of which self is the centre and
circumference.
The sooner our health-instinct is developed, and then taken as a matter
of course, the sooner can the body become a perfect servant, to be
treated with true courtesy, and then forgotten. Here is an instinct of our
barbarous ancestry which may be kept and refined through all future
phases of civilization. This instinct is natural, and the obedience to it
enables us to gain more rapidly in other, higher instincts which, if our
ancestors had at all, were so embryonic as not to have attained
expression.
Nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest,--so far as these are not taken
simply and in obedience to the natural instinct, there arise physical
stones in the way, stones that form themselves into an apparently
insurmountable wall. There is a stile over that wall, however, if we will

but open our eyes to see it. This stile, carefully climbed, will enable us
to step over the few stones on the other side, and follow the physical
path quite clearly.

III.
AMUSEMENTS.
THE ability to be easily and heartily amused brings a wholesome
reaction from intense thought or hard work of any kind which does
more towards keeping the nervous system in a normal state than almost
anything else of an external kind.
As a Frenchman very aptly said: "This is all very well, all this study
and care to relieve one's nerves; but would it not be much simpler and
more effective to go and amuse one's self ?" The same Frenchman
could not realize that in many countries amusement is almost a lost art.
Fortunately, it is not entirely lost; and the sooner it is regained, the
nearer we shall be to health and happiness.
One of the chief impediments in the way of hearty amusement is
over-seriousness. There should be two words for "serious," as there are
literally two meanings. There is a certain intense form of taking the
care and responsibility of one's own individual interests, or the interests
of others which are selfishly made one's own, which leads to a
surface-seriousness that is not only a chronic irritation of the nervous
system, but a constant distress to those who come under this serious
care. This is taking life au grand serieux. The superficiality of this
attitude