We stand to-day the product of our past ideals. We are making our future in form and texture and dynamics by the force of our present hour idealism. Finer and finer, more and more immaterial and lustrous we become, according to the use and growth of our real and inner life. It is the quickening spirit which beautifies the form, and draws unto itself the excellences of nature. The spiritual person is lighter for his size, longer-lived, of more redundant health, of a more natural elasticity, capable of infinitely greater physical, mental, and moral tasks, than the tightly compacted earth-bound man.... That is not a mere painter's flourish which adds a halo to the head of a saint. It is there if we see clearly. If the sanctity is radiant, the glow is intense enough to refract the light, to cast a shadow, to be photographed, even caught with the physical eye.
16
THE PLAN IS ONE
I was relating the experience of the Columbian. In his case there had been much time, so there could be no mistake. He had devoted himself to making and keeping a rather magnificent set of muscles which manifested even through white man's clothing. He did this with long days of sailing and swimming, cultivating his body with the assiduity of a convalescent.... I told him in various ways he was not getting himself out of his work; explained that true preparation is a tearing off of husks one after another; that he was a fine creation in husk, but that he must get down to the quick before he could taste or feel or see with that sensitiveness which would make any observation of his valuable. With all this body-building, he was in reality only covering himself the thicker. If a man does this sort of thing for a woman's eye, he can only attract a creature of blood and iron whose ideal is a policeman—a very popular ideal....
For two or three days he would work terrifically, then, his weight besetting, he would placate himself with long tissue-feeding sports. I told him that he had everything to build upon; that true strength really begins where physical strength ends; that all that he had in equipment must be set in order and integrated with his own intrinsic powers, it being valueless otherwise. I pointed out that he was but a collector of things he could not understand, because he did not use them; that the great doers of the world had toiled for years upon years, as he did not toil for one week's days successively.... It would not do, except for short intervals, and it came to me that my best service was to get out from under. I told him so, and the manliness of his acceptance choked me. I told him to go away, but to come again later if he mastered Inertia in part.... It was not all his fault. From somewhere, an income reached him regularly, a most complete and commanding curse for any boy.
... I do not believe in long vacations. Children turned loose to play for ten weeks without their tasks, are most miserable creatures at the end of the first fortnight. They become more at ease as the vacation period advances, but that is because the husk is thickening, a most dangerous accretion. The restlessness is less apparent because the body becomes heavy with play. It all must be worn down again, before the fitness of faculty can manifest.
If one's body is ill from overexertion, it must rest; if one's mind is ill from nervousness, stimulation, or from excessive brain activity, it must rest; but if one's soul is ill, and this is the difference, nothing but activity will help it, and this activity can only be expressed through the body and mind. Surplus rest of body or mind is a process of over-feeding, which is a coarsening and thickening of tissue, which in its turn causes Inertia, and this word I continually capitalise, for it is the first devil of the soul.