Practical Ethics

by William De Witt Hyde

The best exercise that of which we are least conscious.—It is the duty of every grown person as well as of every child to take time for recreation. Exercise taken in a systematic way for its own sake is a great deal better than nothing; and in crowded schools and in sedentary occupations such gymnastic exercises are the best thing that can be had. The best exercise, however, is not that which we get when we aim at it directly; but that which comes incidentally in connection with sport and recreation. A plunge into the river; a climb over the hills; a hunt through the woods; a skate on the pond; a wade in the trout brook; a ride on horseback; a sail on the lake; camping out in the forest;—these are the best ways to take exercise. For in these ways we have such a good time that we do not think about the exercise at all; and we put forth ten times the amount of exertion that we should if we were to stop and think how much exercise we proposed to take.

Next in value to these natural outdoor sports come the artificial games; baseball, football, hare and hounds, lawn tennis, croquet, and hockey. When neither natural nor artificial sports can be had, then the dumb-bells, the Indian clubs, and the foils become a necessity.

Everyone should become proficient in as many of these sports as possible. These are the resources from which the stores of vitality and energy must be supplied in youth, and replenished in later life.

THE VIRTUE.

The value of superfluous energy.—The person whose own life-forces are at their best cannot help flowing over in exuberant gladness to gladden all he meets. Herbert Spencer has set this forth so strongly in his Data of Ethics that I quote his words: "Bounding out of bed after an unbroken sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming down with beaming face ready to laugh at the slightest provocation, the healthy man of high powers enters on the day's business not with repugnance but with gladness; and from hour to hour experiencing satisfaction from work effectually done, comes home with an abundant surplus of energy remaining for hours of relaxation. Full of vivacity, he is ever welcome. For his wife he has smiles and jocose speeches; for his children stories of fun and play; for his friends pleasant talk interspersed with the sallies of wit that come from buoyancy."

THE REWARD.

"Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance." The reward of exertion is the power to make more exertion the next time. And the reward of habits of regular exercise and habitual cheerfulness is the ability to meet the world at every turn in the consciousness of power to master it, and to meet men with that good cheer which disarms hostility and wins friends.

THE TEMPTATION.

Excitement not to be made an end in itself.—The exhilaration of sport may be carried to the point of excitement; and then this excitement may be made an end in itself. This is the temptation which besets all forms of recreation and amusement. It is the fear of this danger that has led many good people to distrust and disparage certain of the more intense forms of recreation. Their mistake is in supposing that temptation is peculiar to these forms of amusement. As we shall see before we complete our study of ethics, everything brings temptation with it; and the best things bring the severest and subtlest temptations; and if we would withdraw from temptation, we should have to withdraw from the world.

We must all recognize that this temptation to seek excitement for its own sake is a serious one. It is least in the natural outdoor sports like swimming and sailing and hunting and fishing and climbing and riding. Hence we should give to these forms of recreation as large a place as possible in our plans for exercise and amusement. We should see clearly that the artificial indoor amusements, such as dancing, card-playing, theater-going, billiard-playing, are especially liable to give rise to that craving for excitement for excitement's sake which perverts recreation from its true function as a renewer of our powers into a ruinous drain upon them. The moment any form of recreation becomes indispensable to us, the moment we find that it diminishes instead of heightening our interest and delight in the regular duties of our daily lives, that instant we should check its encroachment upon our time and, if need be, cut it off altogether. It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules, telling precisely what forms of amusement are good and what are bad. So much depends on the attitude of the individual toward them, and the associations which they carry with them in different localities, that what is right and beneficial for one person in one set of surroundings would be wrong and disastrous to another person or to the same person in other circumstances. To enable us to see clearly the important part recreation must play in every healthy life, and to see with equal clearness the danger of giving way to a craving for constant and unnatural excitement, is the most that ethics can do for us. The application of these principles to concrete cases each parent must make for his own children, and each individual for himself.