Finally with regard to training and practice for certain games, there are two fallacies, commonly considered truisms, which are worth commenting on. The first is that mere practice is conducive to excellence, than which astounding statement there was never anything less proven. It is dreadful to think of the amount of time which real enthusiasts give to lone and solitary practice without ever dreaming that what they are doing is probably merely emphasizing and making more radical an already existing fault. Such an enthusiast (and the professors of his game encourage him in it) will take half a dozen golf balls on to a lonely upland, or half a dozen racquet balls into a lonely court, and there continue with unabated zest to do things wrong. Such practice is merely pernicious. A second fallacy, connected with this point, is that style is unattainable. For what is style? Apparent ease to the man who knows little about it: real ease to the man who does know. And this ease is--with certain exceptions, as in a _tour de force_ necessary to get out of difficulties--certainly acquirable. Awkwardness and effort are, as a rule, the effect of bad teaching or no teaching. For it must be remembered that while a ball an inch above the net at tennis, a back bracket at skating, a slog over the pavilion at Lord’s, to repeat instances already used, are natural, in the sense that they are compassable without misuse of the human frame, yet they imply accurate and complex movements, which no one person would guess for himself. We say “guess” advisedly, for all games are empirical. And thus having to a certain extent cleared the ground we will pass to construction. CHAPTER III. EXERCISE AND EXERCISES. It will not in this chapter be necessary to go at all deeply into the physiological effects and changes wrought in the body by exercise, but at the same time for those interested in the subject it will be well to sketch in the merest outline the general effect of exercise, and give the reasons why (a rule so universal as to be considered as practically without exception) those who take exercise, especially when they take it in air, where there is a sufficiency of oxygen, are in better health than those who do not. Now every organ in the body is either in itself a muscle or a system of muscles, or is controlled by muscles. That is to say, none of the infinite processes incidental not only to any movement, but to even perfectly passive life, are independent of muscular action, automatic it may be, and unconscious or sub-conscious, but still muscular.