In tracing the history of animal progress, we find that it coincides with and has consisted in the emergence of the psychical and its predominance over the physical. The history of progress is the history of the evolving nervous system. Muscles are the servants of the nervous system. In man progress has reached its highest phase in that the nervous system, which at first was merely a servant of the body, has become the essential thing, so that the brain is the man. The old asceticism was at least right in regarding the soul as all-important, though it was utterly wrong in considering the interests of soul and body to be entirely antagonistic, and in teaching that for the elevation of the soul we must outrage, mutilate, and deny the body. The new asceticism accepts the first principle of the old, but bases its practice on a truer conception of the relations between mind and body. The greater part of the body is composed of muscles, and it is with muscles that physical training is concerned. On our principles, then, any system of physical training worth a straw must have primary reference to the brain, since the body, including the muscles, is only the servant of the ego or self which resides in the brain. For this reason, if for no other, the development of muscle as an end in itself is beneath human dignity; the value of a muscle lies not in its size or strength, but in its capacity to be a useful and skilful agent of the brain. The exceptions to this rule are furnished by precisely those muscles which the usual forms of physical training and gymnastics ignore and subordinate to the development of the muscles of the limbs. It does matter very much that man or woman shall have the heart, which is the most important muscle in the body, and the muscles of respiration in good order. These muscles are directly necessary for life, and are therefore servants of the brain, even though they are not in any appreciable degree the direct agents of its purposes. Any kind of physical exercise then which, while developing the muscles of the arm, for instance, throws undue strain upon the heart or involves the fixation of the chest for a considerable period--as occurs in various feats of strength, whether with weights or upon bars or the like--is _ipso facto_ to be condemned. It is now recognized that in the training of soldiers much harm is often done in this way to the essential muscles, while others, more conspicuous but of relatively no importance, are being developed.