Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and HygieneHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Adolescence; Children -- Health and hygiene; Educational psychology
Thus stage by stage we
reënact their lives. Once in the phylon many of these activities were
elaborated in the life and death struggle for existence. Now the
elements and combinations oldest in the muscle history of the race are
rerepresented earliest in the individual, and those later follow in
order. This is why the heart of youth goes out into play as into
nothing else, as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. This is why,
unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body, and also why it so
makes for unity of body and soul that the proverb "Man is whole only
when he plays" suggests that the purest plays are those that enlist
both alike. To address the body predominantly strengthens unduly the
fleshy elements, and to overemphasize the soul causes weakness and
automatisms. Thus understood, play is the ideal type of exercise for
the young, most favorable for growth, and most self-regulating in both
kind and amount. For its forms the pulse of adolescent enthusiasm
beats highest. It is unconstrained and free to follow any outer or
inner impulse. The zest of it vents and satisfies the strong passion
of youth for intense erethic and perhaps orgiastic states, gives an
exaltation of self-feeling so craved that with no vicarious outlet it
often impels to drink, and best of all realizes the watchword of the
Turners, _frisch, frei, fröhlich, fromm_ [Fresh, free, jovial,
pious.].
Ancient Greece, the history and literature of which owe their
perennial charm for all later ages to the fact that they represent the
eternal adolescence of the world, best illustrates what this
enthusiasm means for youth. Jäger and Guildersleeve, and yet better
Grasberger, would have us believe that the Panhellenic and especially
the Olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern prize
exhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, Derby day, a Wagner festival, a
meeting of the British Association, a country cattle show,
intercollegiate games, and medieval tournament; that they were the
"acme of festive life" and drew all who loved gold and glory, and that
night and death never seemed so black as by contrast with their
splendor. The deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to the
inspiration of the gods, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and in
doing them honor these discordant states found a bond of unity. The
victor was crowned with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied with
each other for the honor of having given him birth, their walls were
taken down for his entry and immediately rebuilt; sculptors, for whom
the five ancient games were schools of posture, competed in the
representation of his form; poets gave him a pedigree reaching back to
the gods, and Pindar, who sang that only he is great who is great with
his hands and feet, raised his victory to symbolize the eternal
prevalence of good over evil. The best body implied the best mind; and
even Plato, to whom tradition gives not only one of the fairest souls,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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