PART III
PERSONAL MORALITY
CHAPTER XV
HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY
With the general nature and justification of morality in our minds, we may now seek to apply our criteria of conduct to the concrete problems that confront us, first taking up those problems which, however important their social bearings, are primarily problems of private life, problems for the individual to settle, and then turning to those wider problems which the community as a whole must grapple with and solve by public action.
Bodily health is the foundation of personal morality; to act at all there must be physical energy available; and, other things equal, the man with the greatest store of vitality will live the happiest and most useful life. Christianity has too often forgotten this fundamental truth, which needs emphasis at the very outset of our concrete studies in morality.
What is the moral importance of health?
(1) Health is in itself a great contribution to the intrinsic worth of life. To awake in the morning with red blood stirring in the veins, to come to the table with hearty appetite, to go about the day's work with the springing step of abounding energy, and to reach the close of day with that healthy fatigue that quiets restless desire and betokens the blessed boon of sound and dreamless sleep-this is to be a long way on the road to contentment. Health cannot in itself guarantee happiness if other evils obtrude; but it removes many of the commonest impediments thereto, and normally produces an increase in all other values. Heightened vitality means an increased sense of power, a keener zest in everything; troubles slide off the healthy man that would stick to the less vigorous. Bodily depression almost always involves mental depression; our "blues" usually have an organic basis. It was not a superstition that evolved our word "melancholy" from the Greek "black (i.e., disordered) liver" nor is it a mere pun or paradox to say that whether life is worth living depends upon the liver.
More than this, health is opportunity. The man of abundant energy can taste more of the joys of life, can enlarge the bounds of his experience, can use precious hours of our brief span which the weakling must devote to rest, can learn more, can range farther, can venture all sorts of undertakings from which the other is precluded by his lack of strength. All these experiences, if they are guided by prudence and self-control, bring their meed of insight and skill and character. It is only through living that we grow, and health means the potentiality of life.
(2) Health means efficiency, more work done, greater usefulness to society. Sooner or later every man who is worth his salt finds some task the doing of which arouses his ambition and becomes his particular contribution to the world. How bitterly will he then regret the heritage denied him or foolishly squandered, the handicap of quivering nerves, muscular flabbiness, wandering mind, that impedes its accomplishment! Determination and persistence may, indeed, use a frail physique for splendid service; such names as Darwin, Spencer, Prescott, remind us of the strength of human will that can override physical obstacles and by long effort produce a great achievement. But for one victor in this struggle of will against body there are a hundred vanquished; and even these men of genius and grit could have accomplished far more if they had had normally serviceable bodies.