There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—Claude Bernard.
AN INDICATION.
Food reformers sometimes forget that “man does not live by bread alone,” not even when supplemented by an ample supply of fresh air and physical exercise.
It has been pointed out by psychologists that the more highly organised and highly developed the creature, the less it depends on nervous energy obtained via the stomach and the more it depends on energy generated by the brain. True, the brain must be healthy for this, and one poisoned by impure blood, due to wrong feeding, cannot be healthy. But something more than clean blood is necessary. For, as change of physical posture is necessary to avoid cramped limbs, so periodic reversal of mental attitude (consideration from other than the one view-point) is necessary to the brain's health.
Again, change of air is often prescribed when the patient's real need is a change of the personalities surrounding him. While for the lonely country dweller a bath in the magnetism of a city crowd may be a far more efficacious remedy than the medicinal baths prescribed by his physician.
For man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.—[Eds.]
FEAR AND IMAGINATION.
Regular readers will recognise in this article a continuation of the series previously entitled “Healthy Brains.” The author of “The Children All Day Long,” is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness. We regret that in the previous article, “Imagination in Play,” the following misprints occurred:—P. 475, line 4 from top, “movement” should be “moment”; p. 475, line 5 from bottom, “admiration” should be “imagination.”—[Eds.]
Some people are given to excusing their own uncharitable thoughts by saying, “I suppose I ought not to have minded her rudeness; I am afraid I am too sensitive.” In the same way, people say, “Oh, I couldn't sleep in the house alone” (or let a child go on a water-picnic, or nurse a case of delirium or do some other thing that suggested itself), “I have too much imagination.” In both cases the claim, though put in deprecating form, is made complacently enough. The correlative is: “You are so sensible, dear; I know you won't mind,” which is a formula under cover of which many kindnesses may be shirked and many unpleasant duties passed on.