Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)Alger, Horatio, Jr.
General
Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Forrest, Edwin, 1806-1872
The one fault in the constitution of Forrest was the gouty diathesis he
inherited from his grandfather on the maternal side. This rheumatic
inflammability—a contracted and congested state of some part of the
capillary circulation and the associated sensory nerves accumulating
force to be discharged in hot explosions of twinging agony—might have
been cured by an æsthetic gymnastic adapted to free and harmonize all
the circulations,—the breath, the blood, the nerve-force. But,
unfortunately, his heavy and violent gymnastic was fitted to produce
rigidity rather than suppleness, and thus to cause breaks in the nervous
flow instead of an equable uniformity. This was the secret of his
painful attacks and of his otherwise unexpectedly early death. There are
three natures in man, the vital nature, the mental nature, the moral
nature. These natures express and reveal themselves in three kinds or
directions of movement. The vital nature betrays or asserts itself in
eccentric movement, movement from a centre; the mental, in acentric
movement, movement towards a centre; the moral, in concentric movement,
movement around a centre. Outward lines of motion express vital
activity, inward lines express mental activity, curved lines, which are
a blending of the two other, express moral or affectional activity. This
physiological philosophy is the basis of all sound and safe gymnastic.
The essential evil and danger of the heavy and violent gymnastic of the
circus and the ring is that it consists so largely of the outward and
inward lines which express the individual will or vital energy and
mental purpose. Each of these tends exclusively to strengthen the nature
which it exercises. Straight hitting, pushing, lifting, jumping, in
their two directions of exertion, tend to expand and to contract. That
is vital, and this is mental. Both are expensive in their drain on the
volition, but one tends to enlarge the physical organism, the other to
shrink it and to produce strictures at every weak point. The former
gives a heavy, obese development; the latter an irritable, irregular, at
once bulgy and constricted development. The vice of the vital nature
dominating unchecked is gluttony, and its end, idiocy. The vice of the
mental nature is avarice, both corporal and spiritual, and its end,
madness. The vice of the moral nature, when it becomes diseased, is
fanaticism; and its subject becomes, if the vital element in it
controls, an ecstatic devotee; if the mental element controls, a
reckless proselyter. Now, a true system of gymnastic will perfect all
the three natures of man by not allowing the vital or the mental to
domineer or its special motions to preponderate, but blending them in
those rotatory elliptical or spiral movements which combine the generous
expansion of the vital organs and the selfish concentration of the
mental faculties in just proportion and thereby constitute the language
of the moral nature. Rigid outward movements enlarge the bulk and
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