It is towards this removal of causes that predispose towards ill-health in the moral sphere, ill-health as shown by a lack of energy, promptitude, power of work and endurance in the mind, that the training of the body, as we have attempted to outline it, is largely and unceasingly devoted. Health, as we understand it, the condition, that is to say, not of the ordinary man who considers he is “well enough,” but that higher health which is the result of training the body to quickness, energy, and so to strength, which implies an obedience to the reason in matters of food and stimulants, directly benefits a man’s moral and mental life. The body “is in subjection”; it obeys with less struggle the dictates of the non-material part of man, and it obtains in itself a greater resistive power to temptations of laziness or lust, just as it obtains a greater resistive power to its own purely physical enemies of cold or fatigue. It is in this respect, therefore, (a far higher consideration than mere physical fitness), that we put forward a system of training that will be likely to ensure such results, and that consequently we regard the obedience to laws of bodily health, and means of physical fitness, as partaking of the nature of duty. And this further: it is clearly accepted as man’s duty that he should keep his mind and his morals in the highest and best possible state; but seeing how intimately both these are knit with his body so that none can act without the other, the soul sinning through the body, the mind dictating every movement, is it reasonable to suppose that a corresponding duty is not laid on man with regard to the health of his body? Is it not, in fact, directly his duty to keep his body, as well as his soul and mind, in its highest and best possible state? No doubt compromises have often to be made; a man, in order to do his work, may be obliged to disregard certain rules which the health of his body requires should be kept. But saving this, there seems to us to be a clear duty with regard to physical health, quite apart from the advantage which physical health will bring to his mind and morals. This wonderful machine is a servant, no doubt, of the mind, but shall the master keep it, so to speak, in an insanitary attic, and pay no regard to its health? The compromises also, which we have just spoken of, will be rarer if the body is well, since it will be more capable of bearing fatigue and unreasonable hours of work. _The simple, but unswerving principles on which morals are based, the highest development of the mind, the utmost health of the body_: these things, and nothing short of them, are the results of ideal training. CHAPTER IX. TRAINING FOR SPECIAL EVENTS.