< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu
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PARASITIC CULTURE

biologically speaking, is the culture derived through performing activities associated with the natural, that is to say, fundamental and longe-stablished, functions of life. These are, in general, the spontaneous play-activities of childhood, and the productive work-activities of manhood and womanhood, each performed under normal conditions of stimulus and environment. Neither artificial gymnastics nor the feats of strength and skill performed under the stimulus of the prize-ring or athletic field come under these heads.

How such considerations have begun to affect the thought of critical students of physical culture may be illustrated by the conclusions of Dr. Jules Payot, set forth in his book on "The Education of the Will":

The qualities of vital resistance are in no way dependent upon muscular strength. A man may be an athlete in a circus, or able to do the heaviest porter work, and yet have very poor health, while another man who lives in his study may have an iron constitution with mediocre muscular power. Not only have we no reason to aspire to athletic strength, but rather we ought to avoid it; because it can only be developed by violent exercise, and such exercises not only interfere with the regularity of the respiration, and cause very distinct congestion in the veins of the neck and brow, but they are undoubtedly weakening and exhausting. . . . We have come to the conclusion, therefore, that it is not England with her violent system of exercise which we ought to imitate in this connection, but rather Sweden who has completely given up such ruinous physical efforts for young people in her schools. There the object is to make young people strong and healthy, and they have perceived, that excessive physical exercises are more sure to lead to a breakdown than excessive study.

Turning now to intellectual culture, we have to consider whether the law of waste and disease, operative throughout the biological world, applies to the unused organs of the mind that have been developed through stunts in mathematics and the classical languages, as there is accumulating evidence for believing it does to physical organs trained in the gymnasium and on the athletic field. Here, it must be acknowledged, our evidence may seem less tangible and conclusive. It is harder, even for minds familiar with the facts of neurology and psychology, to image the special processes of nervous stimuli, the building up of cortical neurones, and the establishing of association-centers involved in mathematical and linguistic study, than it is to image the enlarged biceps of the disciple of punching-bag or gridiron education. For minds unfamiliar with such facts, it is absolutely impossible. Hence the whole process of intellectual culture, both to the average student and to the average onlooker, be he teacher or parent, has no concreteness whatever. It is a mere matter of subjective impression and a priori opinion. But the difficulty of our problem need not deter us. Our evidence, however intangible and remote from average experience, is sure to become clearer the longer it is considered in the light of the general scientific facts of life that are gradually becoming so extensively popularized.

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