Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles

by C. W. Saleeby

THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS

We shall certainly not reach right conclusions about the physical training of girls unless we rightly understand what physical training does and does not effect, and what we desire it should effect. This applies to all education—that our aim be defined, that we shall know "what it is we are after," and it applies pre-eminently to the education, both physical and mental, of girls.

Now it will be granted, in the first place, that by physical training—whether in the form of gymnastics or games or what not—we desire to produce a healthier and more perfectly developed body. Some will add a stronger body, but as this term has two meanings constantly confused, it really contains the crux of the question. Stronger may mean stronger in the sense of resistance to disease or fatigue or strain of any kind, or it may mean stronger in the sense of the capacity to perform feats of strength. It being commonly assumed that vitality and muscularity are identical, this distinction is, on that assumption, merely academic and trivial. But as muscularity and vitality are not identical, and have indeed very little to do with each other, and as muscularity may even in certain conditions prejudice vitality, the distinction is not academic but all-important. I freely assert that it is substantially ignored by those who concern themselves with physical training, whether of boys or girls or recruits, all the world over.

Though a woman is naturally less muscular than a man, her vitality is higher. This seems to be a general truth of all female organisms. The evidence is of many orders. Thus, to begin with, women live longer, on the average, than men do. In the light of our modern knowledge of alcohol, however, we cannot regard this fact by itself as conclusive, since the average age attained by men is undoubtedly considerably lowered by alcohol, and of course to a much greater extent than obtains in the case of women. But women recover better from poisoning, such as occurs in infectious disease, and they are far more tolerant of loss of blood, as indeed they have to be. The same applies to loss of sleep or food, and to injurious influences generally. These indisputable proofs of superior vitality co-exist with much inferior muscularity, and are conclusive on the point. If men would make observations among themselves and think for a moment, they would soon perceive how foolish they are in crediting the assumptions of the strong men who so successfully persuade the public that the great thing is for a man to have big muscles. Men, muscular by nature, and still more so by nurture, are often in point of fact really weak compared with much less muscular men who, though they cannot put forth so much mechanical energy at a given moment, can yet endure fifty times the fatigue or stress or poisoning of any order. From the point of view of any sound physiology there is no comparison at all between the absurd strong man and the slight Marathon runner of small muscles but splendid vitality. If we are to test vitality in muscular terms at all—that in itself being a quite indefensible assumption—we must do so in terms of endurance, and not in terms of horse power or ass power, at any given moment.

If, then, vitality be our aim in physical training, and not muscularity as such, nor in any degree except in so far as it serves vitality, it is plain that we shall to some extent reconsider our methods.

Pre-eminently will this apply to the girl. Just because she is now becoming a woman, her vital energies are in no small degree pledged for special purposes of the highest importance, from which we cannot possibly divert them if we desire that she shall indeed become a woman. Thus, though muscular exercise of any kind is certainly not to be condemned, we must be cautious; for, in the first place, muscular exercise is no end in itself; in the second, the production of big muscles by exercise is no end in itself; and in the third place, all muscular exercise is expenditure of energy in those outward directions which are not characteristic of womanhood, and which must always be subordinated to those interests that are.

At this period of which we are speaking there are constructions of the most important kind going on in the girl's body, compared with which the construction of additional muscular tissue is of much less than no importance. These building-up processes are, we know, characteristic of the woman. Their right inception is a matter of the greatest importance. They involve the actual accumulation of food material and the building up of it into gland cells and other highly organized tissues upon which complete womanhood depends. These all-important concerns are prejudiced by excessive external expenditure, and thus the care necessary for the boy at puberty is a thousandfold more necessary for the girl, though the obvious changes in her appearance and her voice may be much less marked. Greater and more costly constructions are afoot in her case than her brother's, grossly though these facts are at present ignored in what we are pleased to call education, both physical and mental.

If we are to decide what kinds of physical exercise will be most desirable, we must come to some conclusion as to what is the object of our labours, it being granted that muscular activity and the making of big muscles are not ends in themselves. The answer to this question is to be found in what I have elsewhere called the new asceticism.

In tracing the history of animal progress, we find that it coincides with and has consisted in the emergence of the psychical and its predominance over the physical. The history of progress is the history of the evolving nervous system. Muscles are the servants of the nervous system. In man progress has reached its highest phase in that the nervous system, which at first was merely a servant of the body, has become the essential thing, so that the brain is the man. The old asceticism was at least right in regarding the soul as all-important, though it was utterly wrong in considering the interests of soul and body to be entirely antagonistic, and in teaching that for the elevation of the soul we must outrage, mutilate, and deny the body. The new asceticism accepts the first principle of the old, but bases its practice on a truer conception of the relations between mind and body. The greater part of the body is composed of muscles, and it is with muscles that physical training is concerned. On our principles, then, any system of physical training worth a straw must have primary reference to the brain, since the body, including the muscles, is only the servant of the ego or self which resides in the brain. For this reason, if for no other, the development of muscle as an end in itself is beneath human dignity; the value of a muscle lies not in its size or strength, but in its capacity to be a useful and skilful agent of the brain.

The exceptions to this rule are furnished by precisely those muscles which the usual forms of physical training and gymnastics ignore and subordinate to the development of the muscles of the limbs. It does matter very much that man or woman shall have the heart, which is the most important muscle in the body, and the muscles of respiration in good order. These muscles are directly necessary for life, and are therefore servants of the brain, even though they are not in any appreciable degree the direct agents of its purposes. Any kind of physical exercise then which, while developing the muscles of the arm, for instance, throws undue strain upon the heart or involves the fixation of the chest for a considerable period—as occurs in various feats of strength, whether with weights or upon bars or the like—is ipso facto to be condemned. It is now recognized that in the training of soldiers much harm is often done in this way to the essential muscles, while others, more conspicuous but of relatively no importance, are being developed.