Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Suggestions for Gymnastic Exercises for Schools
Before the adjustment of any truth to a balance is reached, popular opinions are subject to extreme oscillations; and thus it has been common for the scholar to despise brute force, and for the athlete to regard with contempt the mere student. But we now recognize the fact that mind and body are comple mentary to each other, and that, as co-ordinate parts of a whole, their development should be simultaneous. It is not intended to question the fact that the body should be subservient to the mind, but it is evidently a great loss of power if the mind, in the exercise of its faculties, must fight against the body or drag it reluctantly along.
Mind is pre-eminent. Even beauty and grace are chie?y delightful to the cultivated observer as embodiments or earnests of mental attributes: but that which is higher must exist upon a basis of what is lower, and that which is interior must be ex pressed in something exterior. It is, therefore, important that the mind should have good physical conditions under which it may manifest itself.
The brain is our sole physical organ of thought, and the work which it does is immediately dependent upon the quality and amount of blood which is sent to it by the circulatory sys tem. Since the condition of the blood, moreover, is largely de pendent upon its unrestricted ?ow to all parts of. The body and upon its free oxidization, physical exercise becomes an impor tant factor in mental training and is a legitimate and useful part of school work.
It is not possible in this little manual to enter into the physi ology or philosophy of movements, but merely to suggest a few approved exercises to teachers who are desirous of making a beginning with their pupils in systematized exercise.
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