CHAPTER II—THE PHYSICAL SIDE
That mankind has a spiritual, mental and physical side to his nature has been acknowledged for many centuries. That they are of equal importance has been accepted but for a comparatively short time. Time was when the spiritual nature was developed, the mental side cultivated, and the physical scorned and abused. The pale face and emaciated form were indications of the pure heart. The starved body meant the well nourished soul. When men were most deeply concerned with the future beyond the grave, and this life was but a penance, a period to be endured, a terrible battle to win, having little joy, and almost no pleasure not labeled wicked, it was natural that they should treat with a measure of scorn or ignore altogether the physical body in which dwelt so much of evil. But when man realized that eternity begins here and now, he turned his thoughts to the present welfare of his fellows, and the physical side assumed a new importance.
In some cases the importance attached to physical welfare is out of proportion. It is always difficult to keep a sense of proportion when new light on any line of truth bursts upon men’s minds. But in the main the place of the physical side is not exaggerated. Every teacher in the public school realizes it as she sees what a tremendous difference has been made in the spiritual and intellectual development of a child who after years of ineffectual struggle to see has been given glasses that make it possible for him to do the same work as his classmates. She realizes it as with astonishment she sees a boy transformed before her eyes, changed into an entirely different child as the weeks and months pass, because the troublesome and deadening adenoids have been removed. She realizes it as she sees a poor, weak little girl, undersized and underfed, changed into a new being under treatment, with plenty of nourishing food and fresh air. The experience of the past ten years alone, in the public schools, will convince one of the value of the physical.
Certain it is that the physical side exists, and is to be reckoned with in the development of human life to the highest possible point. The more we know about the physical side, the more we stand in awe of ourselves, and the more we appreciate the wonderful machine with which we are to do our work in the world.
I saw recently two locomotives that taught me again what it all means. One had been in a wreck and lay pitched over on its side, its splendid power gone. Its size and its powerful strength made its ruin more pitiful, and its utter helplessness appealed strongly to all who looked at it. Near it on the second track, all hot and panting, ready and waiting to pull its heavy load up the steep grade, was a fellow engine, in full possession of its powers: how strong, how complete, how perfectly able to perform its task it seemed as it stood there on the track beside its helpless brother. For days I could not forget the picture, and when I looked into the faces of my girls in their teens all it suggested impressed me anew.
How I should like to have them fully equipped physically to meet the demands which life will bring to them! The girl in her teens has a physical side of tremendous significance and importance, for it is during these years that she develops her powers or wrecks them. It is her time of rapid growth, of severe tax upon every part of her physical being. It is during these years she meets her crises.
We have seen that early in her teens a girl begins to care “how she looks.”
She should be encouraged to look well. She should dress carefully, which does not mean expenditure of much money, but does mean thought. She should be taught that dress means much, and physical condition even more.