Indeed, there is something involved in the matter far beyond any merely physical necessity.  All our natures need something more than mere bodily exertion; they need bodily enjoyment.  There is, or ought to be, in all of us a touch of untamed gypsy nature, which should be trained, not crushed.  We need, in the very midst of civilization, something which gives a little of the zest of savage life; and athletic exercises furnish the means.  The young man who is caught down the bay in a sudden storm, alone in his boat, with wind and tide against him, has all the sensations of a Norway sea-king,—­sensations thoroughly uncomfortable, if you please, but for the thrill and glow they bring.  Swim out after a storm at Dove Harbor, topping the low crests, diving through the high ones, and you feel yourself as veritable a South-Sea Islander as if you were to dine that day on missionary instead of mutton.  Tramp, for a whole day, across hill, marsh, and pasture, with gun, rod, or whatever the excuse may be, and camp where you find yourself at evening, and you are as essentially an Indian on the Blue Hills as among the Rocky Mountains.  Less depends upon circumstances than we fancy, and more upon our personal temperament and will.  All the enjoyments of Browning’s “Saul,” those “wild joys of living” which make us happy with their freshness as we read of them, are within the reach of all, and make us happier still when enacted.  Every one, in proportion as he develops his own physical resources, puts himself in harmony with the universe, and contributes something to it; even as Mr. Pecksniff, exulting in his digestive machinery, felt a pious delight after dinner in the thought that this wonderful apparatus was wound up and going.

A young person can no more have too much love of adventure than a mill can have too much water-power; only it needs to be worked, not wasted.  Physical exercises give to energy and daring a legitimate channel, supply the place of war, gambling, licentiousness, highway-robbery, and office-seeking.  De Quincey, in like manner, says that Wordsworth made pedestrianism a substitute for wine and spirits; and Emerson thinks the force of rude periods “can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.”  The animal energy cannot and ought not to be suppressed; if debarred from its natural channel, it will force for itself unnatural ones.  A vigorous life of the senses not only does not tend to sensuality in the objectionable sense, but it helps to avert it.  Health finds joy in mere existence; daily breath and daily bread suffice.  This innocent enjoyment lost, the normal desires seek abnormal satisfactions.  The most brutal prize-fighter is compelled to recognize the connection between purity and vigor, and becomes virtuous when he goes into training, as the heroes of old observed chastity, in hopes of conquering at the Olympic Games.  The very word ascetic comes from a Greek word signifying the preparatory exercises of an athlete.  There are spiritual diseases which coil poisonously among distorted instincts and disordered nerves, and one would be generally safer in standing sponsor for the soul of the gymnast than of the dyspeptic.