Power Through Repose | Page 4

BODY

THE literature relating to the care of the human body is already very
extensive. Much has been written about the body's proper food, the air
it should breathe, the clothing by which it should be protected, the best
methods of its development. That literature needs but little added to it,
until we, as rational beings, come nearer to obeying the laws which it
discloses, and to feeling daily the help which comes from that
obedience.
It is of the better use, the truer guidance of this machine, that I wish
especially to write. Although attention is constantly called to the fact of
its misuse,--as in neglected rest and in over-strain,--in all the unlimited
variety which the perverted ingenuity of a clever people has devised, it
seems never to have come to any one's mind that this strain in all things,
small and great, is something that can be and should be studiously
abandoned, with as regular a process of training, from the first simple
steps to those more complex, as is required in the work for the
development of muscular strength. When a perversion of Nature's laws
has continued from generation to generation, we, of the ninth or tenth
generation, can by no possibility jump back into the place where the
laws can work normally through us, even though our eyes have been
opened to a full recognition of such perversion. We must climb back to
an orderly life, step by step, and the compensation is large in the
constantly growing realization of the greatness of the laws we have
been disobeying. The appreciation of the power of a natural law, as it
works through us, is one of the keenest pleasures that can come to man
in this life.
The general impression seems to be that common-sense should lead us
to a better use of our machines at once. Whereas, common-sense will
not bring a true power of guiding the muscles, any more than it will
cause the muscles' development, unless having the common-sense to
see the need, we realize with it the necessity for cutting a path and
walking in it. For the muscles' development, several paths have been

cut, and many who are in need are walking in them, but, to the average
man, the road to the best kind of muscular development still remains
closed. The only training now in use is followed by sleight-of-hand
performers, acrobats, or other jugglers, and that is limited to the
professional needs of its followers.
Again, as the muscles are guided by means of the nerves, a training for
the guidance of the muscles means, so far as the physique is concerned,
first, a training for the better use of the nervous force. The nervous
system is so wonderful in its present power for good or ill, so
wonderful in its possible power either way, and so much more
wonderful as we realize what we do not know about it, that it is not
surprising that it is looked upon with awe. Neither is it strange that it
seems to many, especially the ignorant, a subject to be shunned. It is
not uncommon for a mother, whose daughter is suffering, and may be
on the verge of nervous prostration because of her misused nerves, to
say, "I do not want my daughter to know that she has nerves." The poor
child knows it already in the wrong way. It is certainly better that she
should know her nerves by learning a wholesome, natural use of them.
The mother's remark is common with many men and women when
speaking of themselves,--common with teachers when talking to or of
their pupils. It is of course quite natural that it should be a prevailing
idea, because hitherto the mention of nerves by man or woman has
generally meant perverted nerves, and to dwell on our perversions,
except long enough to shun them, is certainly unwholesome in the
extreme.

II.
PERVERSIONS IN THE GUIDANCE OF THE BODY

SO evident are the various, the numberless perversions of our powers
in the misuse of the machine, that it seems almost unnecessary to write
of them. And yet, from another point of view, it is very necessary; for
superabundant as they are, thrusting their evil results upon us every day
in painful ways, still we have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, and
for want of a fuller realization of these most grievous mistakes, we are
in danger of plunging more and more deeply into the snarls to which

they bring us. From nervous prostration to melancholia, or other forms
of insanity, is not so long a step.
It is of course a natural sequence that the decadence of an entire
country must follow the waning powers of the individual citizens.
Although that