(3) Health makes morality easier and likelier. The pernicious influence of bodily frailty and abnormality upon mind and morals has always been recognized (cf. the mens sana in corpore sano of the ancients), but was never so clearly seen as today. The lack of proper nutrition or circulation, the state of depressed vitality resulting from want of fresh air, exercise, or sleep, are important factors in the production of insanity and crime. Over fatigue means a weakening of the power of attention, and hence of will, a paralyzing of the highest brain centers, a lowered resistance to the more primitive instincts and passions. Chronic irritability, moroseness, pathological impulses of all sorts, generally betokens eyestrain, dyspepsia, constipation, or some other bodily derangement. With the regaining of normal health the unruly impulses usually become quieter, sympathy flows more freely, the man becomes kinder, more tolerant, and morally sane. Professor Chittenden of Yale is quoted as saying that "lack of proper physical condition is responsible for more moral … ills than any other factor." Certain temptations, at least, bear more hardly upon the man of weak and unstrung nerves; in Rousseau's well known words, "The weaker the body, the more it commands." And in general, abnormal organic conditions involve a warping of the judgment, a twisted or unbalanced view of life (e.g. Wordsworth's "Spontaneous reason breathed by health"), which leads away from the path of virtue. All honor, then, to the men who have kept clean and true and cheerful through years of bodily depression; such conquest over evil conditions is one of the finest things in life. But nobility of character is hard enough to attain without adding the obstacle of a reluctant body; and although some virtues are easier to the invalid, and some temptations removed from his circumscribed field of activity, it remains true in general that health is the great first aid to morality.
Can we attain to greater health and efficiency? If health is, then, so important to the individual and society, its pursuit is not a selfish or a trivial matter; it is rather a serious and unavoidable duty. The gospel of health is sorely needed in our modern world. Young men and women use up their apparently limitless capital with heedless waste; those who start with a lesser inheritance neglect the means at their command for increasing their stock of strength and winning the power and exuberance of life that might be theirs. There are, of course, many cases of undeserved ill health; we ill understand as yet the causes and enemies of bodily vigor, and many a gallant fight for health has gone unrewarded. But in the great majority of cases a wise conduct of life would retain robust strength for the threescore or more years of our allotted course, increase it for those who start poorly equipped, and regain it for those who by mischance, blunder, or imprudence have lost their heritage. Yet half the world hardly knows what real health is. Our hospitals and sanitariums are crowded, our streets are full of half-sick people-hollow chests, sallow faces, dark-rimmed eyes, nervous, run-down, worn-out, brain-fagged, dragging on their existence, or dying before their time, robbed by stupidity and ignorance of their birthright of full-breathed rosy-cheeked health, and robbing the society that has reared them of the full quota of their service. Health is not merely freedom from disease; we have a right to what Emerson called "plus health." And among the men who rightly awaken our enthusiasm are those who out of a frail childhood have built up for themselves by perseverance and will a manhood of physical power, endurance, and efficiency.
The principles of health for the normal man are few and simple, the reward great; what stands in the way is partly our apathy and indifference, partly our incontinent appetites, partly the unwholesome and deadening social influences in which we find ourselves enmeshed. For those who care enough, almost unlimited vistas open up; as Spinoza has it, "No one has yet found the limits of what the body can do." William James was convinced [Footnote: See his essay, "The Energies of Man," in Memories and Studies.] that the potentialities of human energy and efficiency are but half realized by the best of us. We must learn better to run the human machine. Our prevalent disregard of the conditions of bodily vigor, our persistent carelessness in the elementary matters of hygiene and health, is nothing short of criminal.
"We would have health, and yet still use our bodies ill; Bafflers of our own prayers from youth to life's last scenes."
Happiness that impairs health seldom pays. Where it is a question of useful work done at the expense of our fatigue, there may be more question; normally such sacrifices are undesirable; but what seems over fatigue may not really be so, and the earnest man will err on this side rather than run risk of pusillanimous shirking. Moreover, some work practically requires an over effort for its accomplishment; and no man of mettle will begrudge his very life-blood when necessary. Overwork is "the last infirmity of noble minds." Yet when not really necessary, it must be ranked as a sin, and not too generously condoned. The intense competition of modern industry, the complexity of our economic machinery, the colossal accumulation of facts which must be mastered for success, bring heavy pressure to bear upon those who have their way to make in the world. The pace is fast, and many there are that die or break from overstrain when at the height of their usefulness. Such, overpressure does not pay; it means that less work will in the end get done. When we consider also the moral dangers it involves, the glumness or irritability of taut nerves, the unhealthy tension that demands strong excitements and does not know how to rest or enjoy quiet and restorative pleasures; when we consider the broken men and women that have to be taken care of, the widows and children of the workers who have died before their time, the children perhaps weakened for life because of the tired condition of their parents at birth; when we consider the number of defective children born to such overworked parents, we realize that it is not primarily a question of enjoying life more or less, it is a matter of grave economic and moral import. [Footnote: Cf. M. G. Schlapp, in the Outlook, vol. 100, p. 782.] Whether we actually work harder, on the whole, than our forebears, and whether there is actually a decrease in the health and endurance of the younger generation today owing to the overstrain of their parents, is open to dispute. Certainly when one compares a portrait of Reynolds, Gainsborough, or Stuart with one by Sargent, Thayer, or Alexander, there is a noticeable difference of type, indicative of a different ideal of life in the upper stratum of society, an ideal of effort and efficiency, which is far better than a patrician dilettantism, but has in turn its dangers.We need to recall the line of AEschylus, "All the gods' work is effortless and calm." Or Matthew Arnold's sonnet on Quiet Work:
"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, A lesson that on every wind is borne, A lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity: Of toil unsevered from tranquility, Of labor that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry…"
Most of us would find our powers adequate to our duties if we learned to rest when we are not working, and spend no energy in worry and fretfulness. [Footnote: Cf. W. James's essay on "The Gospel of Relaxation," in Talks to Teachers and Students, or Annie Payson Call's books, of which the best known is Power Through Repose.] This nervous leakage is a notoriously American ailment; we knit our brows, we work our fingers, we fidget, we rock in our chairs, we talk explosively, we live in a quiver of excitement and hurry, in a chronic state of tension. We need to follow St. Paul's exhortation to "Study to be quiet"; to learn what Carlyle called "the great art of sitting still." We must not lower our American ideal of efficiency, of the "strenuous life"; but it is precisely through that self-control that is willing to live within necessary limitations, and able to cut off the waste of fruitless activity of mind and body, that our national efficiency can be maintained at its highest.
Is continued idleness ever justifiable?
We do not need Stevenson's charming Apology for Idlers, to know that rest and recreation are as wholesome and necessary as work. But idleness is only profitable and really enjoyable when it comes as an interlude in the midst of activity. There is much to be done, and no one is free to shirk his share of the world's work; we may enjoy our vacations only as we have earned the right to them. Except for invalids and idiots, continued idleness never justifiable. Clothes we must have, and food, and shelter, and much else; if a man does not produce these things for himself, or some equivalent which he can fairly exchange for them, he is a parasite upon other men's labor. "Six days shalt thou labor" is the universal commandment, and "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." An old Chinese proverb runs, "If there is one idle man, there is another who is starving." Certainly a state in which the masses will have their drudgery lightened for them and opportunity for a well rounded human life given, will be attained only in a society where there are no drones; and no man or woman worthy of the name will be content to live idly on the labor of others. "Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors"; it is not fair to accept so much without giving what we can in return.
For most men and women there is, of course; no alterative; they must work or live a wretched, comfortless life, with the actual risk of starvation. A few may prefer the precarious existence of the tramp, or pauper; but they must pay the price in homelessness and hazard. Except for abnormal social conditions, the vile housing of the poor, the hopeless monotony and overlong hours of most forms of unskilled labor, the lure of drink, and the deprivation of the natural joys of life, there would be few of these voluntary idlers among the poor. The aversion to work, when it is decently agreeable, in decent surroundings, and not carried to the point of fatigue, is abnormal; and it is by the improvement of the conditions and remuneration of labor that we must seek to cure that unwillingness to work, in the poor, which Tolstoy came to believe was their greatest curse. [Footnote: See his What Shall We Do Then? (or What to Do?)]