to the bodies of men, and will, like Jahn, feel his calling and work sacred, and his institution a temple in which every physical act will be for the sake of the soul. The world of adolescence, especially that part which sits in closed spaces conning books, groans and travails all the more grievously and yearningly, because unconsciously, waiting for a redeemer for its body. Till he appears, our culture must remain for most a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-bred diseases. The modern gymnasium performs its chief service during adoles- cence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which 64 GYMNASTICS not a few, but every youth, should make large use. Its spirit should be instinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a point of high, although not quite its highest, intensity. "While the stimulus of rivalry and even of records is not excluded, and social feelings may be appealed to by unison exercises and by the club spirit, and while competitions, tournaments, and the artificial motives of prizes and exhibitions may be invoked, the culture is in fact largely individual. And yet in this country the annual Turnerfest brings 4,000 or 5,000 men from all parts of the Union, who sometimes all deploy and go through some of the standard exercises together under one leader. Instead of training a few athletes, the real problem now presented is how to raise the gen- eral level of vitality so that children and youth may be fitted to stand the strain of modern civilization, resist zymotic diseases, and overcome the deleterious influ- ences of city life. The almost immediate effects of sys- tematic training are surprising and would hardly be inferred from the annual increments tabled earlier in this chapter. Sandow was a rather weakly boy and ascribes his development chiefly to systematic training. We have space but for two reports believed to be typical. Enebuske reports on the effects of seven months' training on young women averaging 22.3 years. The figures are based on the 50 percentile column.
Before training.. After six months.
it C a %z cc o fl u 93 27 32 26 28 23 25 HS By comparing records of what he deems standard normal growth with that of 188 naval cadets from six- 65 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE teen to twenty-one, who had special and systematic train- ing, just after the period of most rapid growth in height, Beyer concluded that the effect of four years of this added a little over an inch of stature, and that this gain was greatest at the beginning. This increase was great- est for the youngest cadets. He found also a marked increase in weight, nearly the same for each year from seventeen to twenty-one. This he thought more easily influenced by exercise than height. A high vital index or ratio of lung capacity to weight is a very important attribute of good training. Beyer ^ found, however, that the addition of lung area gained by exercise did not keep up with the increase thus caused in muscular substance, and that the vital index always became smaller in those who had gained weight and strength by special physical training. How much gain in weight is desirable beyond the point where the lung capacity increases at an equal rate is unknown. If such measurements were applied to the different gymnastic systems, we might be able to com- pare their efficiency, which would be a great desideratum in view of the unfortunate rivalry between them. Total strength, too, can be greatly increased. Beyer thinks that from sixteen to twenty-one it may exceed the average or normal increment fivefold, and he adds, *' I firmly believe that the now so wonderful performances of most of our strong men are well within the reach of the majority of healthy men, if such performances were a serious enough part of their ambition to make them do the exercises necessary to develop them. ' ' Power of the organs to respond to good training by increased strength probably reaches well into middle life.
1 See H. G. Beyer. The Influence of Exercise on Growth. American Physical Education Review, September-December, 1896, vol. 1, pp.
66 GYMNASTICS It is not encouraging to learn that, according to a recent writer,^ we now have seventy times as many physicians in proportion to the general population as there are physical directors, even for the school popula- tion alone considered. We have twice as many physi- cians per population as Great Britain, four times as many as Germany, or 2 physicians, 1.8 ministers, 1.4 lawyers per thousand of the general population; while even if all male teachers of physical training taught only males of the military age, we should have but 0.05 of a teacher per thousand, or if the school population alone be considered, 20 teachers per million pupils. Hence, it is inferred that the need of wise and classified teachers in this field is at present greater than in any other. But fortunately while spontaneous, unsystematic exercise in a well-equipped modern gymnasium may in rare cases do harm, so far from sharing the prejudice often felt for it by professional trainers, we believe that free access to it without control or direction is unquestionably a boon to youth. Even if its use be sporadic and occasional, as it is likely to be with equal opportunity for out-of-door exercises and especially sports, practise is sometimes hygienic almost inversely to its amount, wiiile even lameness from initial excess has its lessons, and the sense of manifoldness of inferiorities brought home by experiences gives a w^holesome self-knowledge and stimulus.
In this country more than elsewhere, especially in high school and college, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connection with field sports and record competitions for both teams and individuals who aspire to championship. This has given the former a 1 J. H. McCurdy, Physical Training as a Profession. Association Seminar, March, 1902, vol. 10, pp. 11-24.
67 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE healthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. Scores of records have been established for run- ning, walking, hurdling, throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for various shorter and longer distances and under manifold conditions, and for both amateurs and professionals, who are easily accessible. These, in general, show a slow but steady advance in this country since 1876, when athletics were established here. In that year there was not a single world's best record held by an American amateur, and high-school boys of to-day could in most, though not in all lines, have won the American championship twenty-five years ago. Of course, in a strict sense, intercollegiate contests do not show the real advance in athletics, because it is not necessary for a man in order to win a championship to do his best; but they do show general improvement.
We select for our purpose a few of those records long- est kept. Not dependent on external conditions like boat- racing, or on improved apparatus like bicycling, we have interesting data of a very different order for physical measurements. These down to present writing — July, 1906 — are as follows: For the 100-yard dash, every annual record from 1876 to 1895 is 10 or 11 seconds, or between these, save in 1890, where Owen's record of 9f seconds still stands. In the 220-yard run there is slight improvement since 1877, but here the record of 1896 (Wefers, 21 -J seconds) has not been surpassed. In the quarter-mile run, the best record was in 1900 (Long, 47 seconds). The half-mile record, which still stands, was made in 1895 (Kilpatrick, 1 minute 52| sec- onds); the mile run in 1895 (Conneff, 4 minutes 15| seconds). The running broad jump shows a very steady improvement, with the best record in 1900 (Prinstein, 24 feet 7 J inches). The running high jump shows im- 68 GYMNASTICS 68 GYMNASTICS provement, but less, with the record of 1895 still stand- ing (Sweeney, 6 feet 5| inches). The record for pole vaulting, corrected to November, 1905, is 12 feet Iff inches (Dole); for throwing the 16-pound hammer head, 100 feet 5 inches (Queckberner); for putting the 16- pound shot, 49 feet 6 inches (Coe, 1905); the standing high jump, 5 feet 5J inches (Ew^ry); for the running high jump, 6 feet 5f inches (SweenejO- We also find that if w^e extend our purview to include all kinds of records for physical achievement, that not a few of the amateur records for activities involving strength com- bined with rapid rhythm movement are held by young men of twenty or even less.
In putting the 16-pound shot under uniform condi- tions the record has improved since the early years nearly 10 feet (Coe, 49 feet 6 inches, best at present writing, 1906). Pole vaulting shows a very marked advance cul- minating in 1904 (Dole, 12 feet iU inches). Most marked of all perhaps is the great advance in throwing the 16-pound hammer. Beginning between 70 and 80 feet in the early years, the record is now 172 feet 11 inches (Flanagan, 1904). The two-mile bicycle race also shows marked gain, partly, of course, due to im- provement in the wheel, the early records being nearly 7 minutes, and the best being 2 minutes 19 seconds (McLean, 1903). Some of these are world records, and more exceed professional records.^ These, of course, no more indicate general improvement than the steady re- duction of time in horse-racing suggests betterment in horses generally.
1 These records are taken from the World Almanac, 1906, and Olympic Games of 1906 at Athens. Edited by J. E. Sullivan, Com- missioner from the United States to the Olympic Games. Spalding's Athletic Library, New Yor.k, Julv, 1906.
69 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE In Panhellenic games as well as at present, athleti- cism in its manifold forms was one of the most character- istic expressions of adolescent nature and needs. Not a single time or distance record of antiquity has been pre- served, although Grasberger ^ and other writers would have us believe that in those that are comparable, ancient youthful champions greatly excelled ours, especially in leaping and running. While we are far from cultivating mere strength, our training is very one-sided from the Greek norm of unity or of the ideals that develop the body only for the sake of the soul. While gymnastics in our sense, with apparatus, exercises, and measure- ments independently of games was unknown, the ideal and motive were as different from ours as was its method. Nothing, so far as is known, was done for correcting the ravages of work, or for overcoming hereditary defects; and until athletics degenerated there were no exercises for the sole purpose of developing muscle.
On the whole, while modern gymnastics has done more for the trunk, shoulders, and arms than for the legs, it is now too selfish and ego-centric, deficient on the side of psychic impulsion, and but little subordinated to ethical or intellectual development. Yet it does a great physical service to all who cultivate it, and is a safeguard of virtue and temperance. Its need is radical revision and coordination of various cults and theories in the light of the latest psycho-physiological science.
Gymnastics allies itself to biometric work. The pres- ent academic zeal for physical development is in great need of closer affiliation with anthropometry. This im- portant and growing department will be represented in 1 O. H. Jaeger, Die Gymnastik der Hellenen. Heitz, Stuttgart, 1881. L. Grasberger's great standard work, Erziehung und Untericht im klas- sischen Alterthum. Wiirzburg, 1864-81, 3 vols.
70 GYMNASTICS the ideal gymnasium of the future — First, by courses, if not by a chair, devoted to the apparatus of measure- ments of human proportions and symmetry, with a kinesological cabinet where young men are instructed in the elements of auscultation, the use of calipers, the sphygmograph, spirometer, plethysmograph, kinesometer to plot graphic curves, compute average errors, and tables of percentile grades and in statistical methods, etc. Second, anatomy, especially of muscles, bones, heart, and skin, will be taught, and also their physiology, with stress upon myology, the effects of exercise on the flow of blood and lymph, not excluding' the development of the upright position, and all that it involves and im- plies. Third, hygiene will be prominent and compre- hensive enough to cover all that pertains to body-keeping, regimen, sleep, connecting with school and domestic and public hygiene — all on the basis of modern as distinct from the archaic physiology of Ling, who, it is sufficient to remember, died in 1839, before this science was recre- ated, and the persistence of whose concepts are an anomalous survival to-day. Mechanieo-therapeutics, the purpose and service of each chief kind of apparatus and exercise, the value of work on stall bars with chest weights, of chinning, use of the quarter-staff, somer- saults, rings, clubs, dumb-bells, work with straight and flexed knees on machinery, etc., will be taught. Fourth, the history of gymnastics from the time of its highest development in Greece to the present is full of interest and has a very high and not yet developed culture value for youth. This department, both in its practical and theoretical side, should have its full share of prizes and scholarships to stimulate the seventy to seventy-five per cent of students who are now unaffected by the influence of athletics. By these methods the motivation of gymnas- YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE tics, which now in large measure goes to waste in en- thusiasm, could be utilized to aid the greatly needed intellectualization of those exercises which in their nature are more akin to work than play. Indeed, Gutsmuths's first definition of athletics was " work under the garb of youthful pleasure." So to develop these courses that they could chiefly, if not entirely, satisfy the re- quirements for the A. B. degree, would coordinate the work of the now isolated curriculum of the training- schools with that of the college and thus broaden the sphere of the latter; but besides its culture value, which I hold very high, 'such a step would prepare for the new, important, and, as we have seen, very inadequately manned profession of physical trainers. This has, more- over, great but yet latent and even unsuspected capaci- ties for the morals of our academic youth. Grote states that among the ancient Greeks one-half of all education was devoted to the body, and Galton urges that they as much excelled us as we do the African negro. They held that if physical perfection was cultivated, moral and mental excellence would follow; and that, without this, national culture rests on an insecure basis. In our day there are many new reasons to believe that the best nations of the future will be those which give most intel- ligent care to the body.
72 CHAPTER VI PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES The view of Groos partial and a better explanation of play proposed as rehearsing ancestral activities — The glory of Greek physical training, its ideals and results — The first spontaneous movements of infancy as keys to the past — Necessity of developing basal powers before those that are later and peculiar to the individual — Plays that interest due to their antiquity — Play with dolls — Play distinguished by age — Play preferences of children and their reasons — The profound significance of rhythm — The value of dancing and also its significance, history, and the desirability of re-introducing it — Fighting — Boxing — Wrest- ling— Bushido — Foot-ball — Military ideals — Showing off — Cold baths — HiU climbing — The playground movement — The psychology of play — Its relation to work.
Play, sports, and games constitute a more varied, far older, and more popular field. Here a very different spirit of joy and gladness rules. Artifacts often enter but can not survive unless based upon pretty purely hereditary momentum. Thus our first problem is to seek both the motor tendencies and the psychic motives be- queathed to us from the past. The view of Groos that play is practise for future adult activities is very par- tial, superficial, and perverse. It ignores the past where lie the keys to all play activities. True play never practises what is phyletically new; and this, industrial life often calls for. It exercises many atavistic and rudi- mentary functions, a number of which will abort before maturity, but which live themselves out in play like the tadpole's tail, that must be both developed and used as a stimulus to the gro\\i;h of legs which will otherwise never mature. In place of this mistaken and mislead- 73 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE ing view, I regard play as the motor habits and spirit of the past of the race, persisting in the present, as rudimentary functions sometimes of and always akin to rudimentary organs. The best index and guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages is found in the instinctive, untaught, and non-imitative plays of children which are the most spontaneous and exact ex- pressions of their motor needs. The young grow up into the same forms of motor activity, as did genera- tions that have long preceded them, only to a limited extent; and if the form of every human occupation were to change to-day, play would be unaffected save in some of its superficial imitative forms. It would develop the motor capacities, impulses, and fundamental forms of our past heritage, and the transformation of these into later acquired adult forms is progressively later. In play every mood and movement is instinct with heredity. Thus we rehearse the activities of our ancestors, back we know not how far, and repeat their life work in summative and adumbrated ways. It is reminiscent, albeit unconsciously, of our line of descent; and each is the key to the other. The psycho-motive impulses that prompt it are the forms in which our forebears have transmitted to us their habitual activities. Thus stage by stage we reenact their lives. Once in the phylon many of these activities were elaborated in the life and death struggle for existence. Now the elements and com- binations oldest in the muscle history of the race are re- represented earliest in the individual, and those later fol- low in order. This is why the heart of youth goes out into play as into nothing else, as if in it man remembered a lost paradise, This is why, unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body, and also why it so makes for unity of body and soul that the proverb ' ' Man is whole 74 PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES only when he plays " suggests that the purest plays are those that enlist both alike. To address the body pre- dominantly strengthens unduly the fleshy elements, and to overemphasize the soul causes weakness and automatisms. Thus understood, play is the ideal type of exercise for the young, most favorable for growth, and most self-regulating in both kind and amount. For its forms the pulse of adolescent enthusiasm beats highest. It is unconstrained and free to follow any outer or inner impulse. The zest of it vents and satisfies the strong passion of youth for intense erethic and per- haps orgiastic states, gives an exaltation of self-feeling so craved that with no vicarious outlet it often impels to drink, and best of all realizes the watchword of the Turners,^ frisch, frei, frohlich^ fromm.
Ancient Greece, the history and literature of which owe their perennial charm for all later ages to the fact that they represent the eternal adolescence of the world, best illustrates what this enthusiasm means for youth. Jager and Guildersleeve, and yet better Grasberger, would have us believe that the Panhellenic and especially the Olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern prize exhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, Derby day, a Wagner festival, a meeting of the British Association, a country cattle show, intercollegiate games, and medieval tournament; that they were the ' ' acme of festive life " and drew all who loved gold and glory, and that night and death never seemed so black as by contrast with their splendor. The deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to the inspiration of the gods, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and in doing them honor these discordant states found a bond of unity.
1 Fresh, free, jovial, pious.
75 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE The victor was crowned with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied with each other for the honor of having given him birth, their walls were taken down for his entry and immediately rebuilt; sculptors, for whom the five ancient games were schools of posture, competed in the representation of his form; poets gave him a pedigree reaching back to the gods, and Pindar, who sang that only he is great who is great with his hands and feet, raised his victory to symbolize the eternal prevalence of good over evil. The best body implied the best mind; and even Plato, to whom tradition gives not only one of the fairest souls, but a body remarkable for both strength and beauty, and for whom weakness was peri- lously near to wickedness, and ugliness to sin, argues that education must be so conducted that the body can be safely entrusted to the care of the soul and suggests, what later became a slogan of a more degenerate gladi- atorial athleticism, that to be well and strong is to be a philosopher — valare est philosophari. The Greeks could hardly conceive bodily apart from psychic educa- tion, and physical was for the sake of mental training. A sane, whole mind could hardly reside in an unsound body upon the integrity of which it was dependent.
Knowledge for its own sake, from this standpoint, is a dangerous superstition, for what frees the mind is dis- astrous if it does not give self-control; better ignorance than knowledge that does not develop a motor side. Body culture is ultimately only for the sake of the mind and soul, for body is only its other ego. Not only is all muscle culture at the same time brain-building, but a book-worm with soft hands, tender feet, and tough rump from much sitting, or an anemic girl prodigy, * ' in the morning hectic, in the evening electric," is a mon- ster. Play at its best is only a school of ethics. It gives