It is really curious that physical fitness should have become an ideal only after it had ceased to be the indispensable requirement of our environment. Piano-moving is perhaps the sole occupation to-day where strength is the only qualification, and intelligence of no account whatsoever; yet few of us aspire to become piano-movers! The body is a most delicate machine and only in exceptional cases can it be kept through life in perfect condition, without an immense expenditure of time and trouble. Now, a perfect body should only be considered desirable, if it enables us to rise to greater heights of achievement. Countless people, however, regard health and vigor not merely as the means but as the goal itself. They tend and exercise their bodies at the expense of every other form of activity. The disproportionate amount of time, energy and aspiration that is wasted in attempting to perfect and preserve that which is inevitably doomed to destruction is incredible. A child building a castle on the sand is engaged in a more durable occupation. For the child, while erecting its tunnelled and turreted fortress, is at least attempting to realize some haunting dream of the heights, the depths, the mystery and magnificence of life. What matter the tide?—the vision is indestructible. The Greeks regarded a beautiful body as an end in itself, because their civilization, by permitting its unveiling, allowed it to act as an inspiration to others. The nude, however, has no recognized place among us, and although it still serves to create beauty, it does so under restricted and abnormal conditions. To be a model is not a title to fame, nor the ideal of our most enlightened contemporaries. I hope that I have proved conclusively that a splendid body is no longer a necessary means of enabling us to rise to the greatest heights either of ambition or of service. Why, therefore, should we so morbidly covet physical perfection? VII THE PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED PHILOSOPHERS Τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώσαντα τὸν πάθει μάθος θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν. —_Aeschylus, Agememnon, line 186._ Among the British philosophers who were physical sufferers we find the great Francis Bacon, who from childhood was always weak and delicate.