E.—REDEMPTION.
In the work of physical regeneration Nature meets the reformer more than half-way. Our children need but little encouragement to break the fetters of the fatuous restraint that dooms them to a life of physical apathy. They ask nothing but time and opportunity to redeem the coming generation from the stigma of unmanliness and debility. Physical and intellectual education should again go hand in hand if we would promote the happiness of a redeemed race on the plan that made the age of Grecian philosophy and gymnastics the brightest era in the history of mankind. Physical reform should be promoted by the systematic encouragement of athletic sports; every township should have a free gymnasium, every village a free foot-race park; by prize-offers for supremacy in competitive gymnastics wealthy philanthropists could turn thousands of boy topers into young athletes. We should have athletic county meetings, state field-days, and national or international Olympiads.
Educational ethics should fully recognize the [[45]]rights of the body. We should admit the unorthodox, but also undeniable, truth that an upright and magnanimous disposition is a concomitant of bodily strength, while fickleness, duplicity, and querulous injustice are the characteristics of debility. We should teach our children that a healthy mind can dwell only in a healthy body, and that he who pretends to find no time to take care of his health is a workman who thinks it a waste of time to take care of his tools.