Now it will be granted, in the first place, that by physical training--whether in the form of gymnastics or games or what not--we desire to produce a healthier and more perfectly developed body. Some will add a stronger body, but as this term has two meanings constantly confused, it really contains the crux of the question. Stronger may mean stronger in the sense of resistance to disease or fatigue or strain of any kind, or it may mean stronger in the sense of the capacity to perform feats of strength. It being commonly assumed that vitality and muscularity are identical, this distinction is, on that assumption, merely academic and trivial. But as muscularity and vitality are not identical, and have indeed very little to do with each other, and as muscularity may even in certain conditions prejudice vitality, the distinction is not academic but all-important. I freely assert that it is substantially ignored by those who concern themselves with physical training, whether of boys or girls or recruits, all the world over. Though a woman is naturally less muscular than a man, her vitality is higher. This seems to be a general truth of all female organisms. The evidence is of many orders. Thus, to begin with, women live longer, on the average, than men do. In the light of our modern knowledge of alcohol, however, we cannot regard this fact by itself as conclusive, since the average age attained by men is undoubtedly considerably lowered by alcohol, and of course to a much greater extent than obtains in the case of women. But women recover better from poisoning, such as occurs in infectious disease, and they are far more tolerant of loss of blood, as indeed they have to be. The same applies to loss of sleep or food, and to injurious influences generally. These indisputable proofs of superior vitality co-exist with much inferior muscularity, and are conclusive on the point. If men would make observations among themselves and think for a moment, they would soon perceive how foolish they are in crediting the assumptions of the strong men who so successfully persuade the public that the great thing is for a man to have big muscles. Men, muscular by nature, and still more so by nurture, are often in point of fact really weak compared with much less muscular men who, though they cannot put forth so much mechanical energy at a given moment, can yet endure fifty times the fatigue or stress or poisoning of any order. From the point of view of any sound physiology there is no comparison at all between the absurd strong man and the slight Marathon runner of small muscles but splendid vitality. If we are to test vitality in muscular terms at all--that in itself being a quite indefensible assumption--we must do so in terms of endurance, and not in terms of horse power or ass power, at any given moment.