With the regaining of normal health
the unruly impulses usually become quieter, sympathy flows more freely,
the man becomes kinder, more tolerant, and morally sane. Professor
Chittenden of Yale is quoted as saying that "lack of proper physical
condition is responsible for more moral ... ills than any other
factor." Certain temptations, at least, bear more hardly upon the man
of weak and unstrung nerves; in Rousseau's well known words, "The
weaker the body, the more it commands." And in general, abnormal
organic conditions involve a warping of the judgment, a twisted or
unbalanced view of life (e.g. Wordsworth's "Spontaneous reason breathed
by health"), which leads away from the path of virtue. All honor, then,
to the men who have kept clean and true and cheerful through years
of bodily depression; such conquest over evil conditions is one of
the finest things in life. But nobility of character is hard enough
to attain without adding the obstacle of a reluctant body; and although
some virtues are easier to the invalid, and some temptations removed
from his circumscribed field of activity, it remains true in general
that health is the great first aid to morality.
Can we attain to greater health and efficiency? If health is, then,
so important to the individual and society, its pursuit is not a selfish
or a trivial matter; it is rather a serious and unavoidable duty. The
gospel of health is sorely needed in our modern world.
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