When these things are fully appreciated, the whole system of education will be revolutionized.  To build the brain we must build the body.  We must not sacrifice nerve tissue and nerve power in physical training, as there is danger of doing if gymnastics are not guided by professional men.  But the proper training of the body should produce the highest intellectual results.

Certain parts of the body bear certain relations to one another.  The office of the stomach is to supply the body with nourishment.  The office of the heart is to pump this nourishment over the body.  The office of the lungs is to feed the heart and stomach with pure blood.  All support one another, and all are dependent on each other.  If a boy sits in a cramped position in school, that interferes with the circulation of the blood, and that with the nourishment of the brain.  You could in this way trace the cause of many a schoolboy’s headache.  Speaking roughly, we might say that one-half of the school children have a hollow at the bottom of the breast-bone from sitting in such positions, and this depression interferes with digestion.  And the moment the stomach gives out, that affects the whole physical and mental condition.  When nutrition is imperfect, the action of the heart and the distribution of the blood are interfered with.

The only way to remedy these evils is by popular education.  It is of no use to attempt to bring about at once; any regular or prescribed system of exercise, requiring such exercises to be carried out in school, because our schools, like our theaters, are what the public make them.  There is many a master who knows he is pursuing the wrong course, but he is kept to it by the anxious solicitations of parents who wish their children kept up to a certain rank.  They are forced to follow the present system by the inordinate demands of parents.  The parents must be educated.  The father and mother must be converted to the necessity, the absolute necessity for success in life, of physical culture.  There are plenty of men who stand as political and financial leaders who are not highly educated men.  A man who has the rudiments of education—­reading, writing, arithmetic—­with a good physique, good health, a well-balanced and organized frame, brought into contact with the world, stands a better chance of success than the one who goes through school and takes a high rank at the expense of his physique.

Let a gifted but weakly lawyer go into a court-room and meet some bull-headed opponent with not half the keen insight or knowledge of the law, but one who has tenacity, ability to hold on, and nine times out ten the abler man of the two—­mentally—­goes home wearied and defeated, and the other man wins the case.  Who are the men prominent in the pulpit?  Are they weak, puny men, or men of physique?  Who are the leaders in the Churches?  They are not leaders on account of their intellectual brilliancy, but by their wholeness as men.  They find sympathy with the people because they are good specimens of manhood.  There might be many more such had they been better trained.