The Healthy Life Part 6

The pursuit of health, considered from the negative standpoint, is the flight from pain.

And pain is the great mystery of life.

James Hinton, himself a well-known physician of his time, attempted to solve the mystery of pain by showing that it is the accompaniment of imperfection. That what is now experienced as pain might be exquisite pleasure given a higher stage of human development.

But this, after all, only shifts the mystery one step farther. Instead of the mystery of pain we have the mystery of imperfection. Yet to image perfection is always to image something incapable of growth or further development.

Take, for example, a perfect circle. So long as it remains unbroken, flawless, the line (or infinite number of lines) composing it cannot be continued or extended. But given a break in the line and it may be continued round and round, up and up (or down and down) into an infinitely ascending spiral. This possibility of extension depends on a break, on an imperfection.

It does not follow, of course, that every flaw in human nature is always the starting-point of new growth, every failure a stepping-stone to greater knowledge, but the possibility is there. It is for men to see that they do not neglect their opportunities.--[EDS.]

IMAGINATION IN PLAY.

_Regular readers will recognise in this wonderfully simple and suggestive article a continuation of the series previously ent.i.tled "Healthy Brains." The author of "The Children All Day Long" is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness._--[EDS.]

The fruit of imagination ripens into deeds actually done in the service of man: its flower brightens the whole of life and makes it fragrant, from the budding-time of children's play and laughter to the developed blossoms of the creative imagination which we call painting or poetry or music.

Play and art have this in common, that they are activities pursued for the sake of the activity itself, not as a means to any other object, not aiming at any material usefulness. Actually, of course, there is nothing more useful, on every scale of usefulness, than the development of the individual in art or play, but these would never be really themselves while an ulterior purpose formed a background to them in consciousness.

Physical exercises devised for the sake of health are a more or less pleasant form of work; they do not take the place of play. Our ordinary work is usually more or less one-sided and unbalanced in the demands it makes upon us; we therefore try to find what other set of movements will undo this unbalancement and give us back unbiased bodies. When that is done, and not till then, we get freedom, and it is at that moment that real "play" begins--the use of the freed muscles according to our own will and pleasure.

The same thing is perhaps true in connection with our minds. We all see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in your own line of work."

We have come to see that this kind of effort leads often to nervous breakdown and early death; always to a certain narrowing of sympathy and hardening of method even in the career itself. So we conscientiously "take up" a hobby or a sport and set aside some hour or day for indulgence in it. We make it a duty to lay aside for the time being all idea of duties; part of our work is to learn to rest.

So far so good. But does all this go far enough?

Work imposed by any set of outer needs puts the whole being under a certain strain. The aim of remedial exercises, prescribed rest-times and legal holidays is to undo this strain, to unwind us from our coil by twisting us the other way.

When this has been satisfactorily done, too often the person responsible thinks that this is enough. But it is really and truly at this moment that one is beginning one's real life.

When the body is freed from strain and weariness is the time to leap and dance and sing and wrestle.

When the mind is free from prejudice and weariness is the time for its original activity to begin; new thoughts spring up unbidden and the creative imagination lives and grows.

(In the sphere of will, many great sages have said that an a.n.a.logous sequence holds good. When the whole emotional and moral nature has thrown itself in a particular direction, and then an unwinding has taken place, the moment of completed renunciation has been said to be the dawn of some great new spiritual light.)

Who does not know the peaceful activity of a Sunday evening, the fruitful quiet of a long railway journey or sea-voyage _at the end_ of a holiday? Two friends walk slowly home together after an exciting expedition or debate; two girls give each other their confidence while brushing their hair after a dance.

Why is this so? Nowadays people are very ready to answer the question by refusing the fact. It is waste of time not to be _doing_ something strenuously. Rest is almost as strenuous as everything else; it is to be thorough while it is the duty on hand and is to fit exactly on to the work time, without overlapping but without inters.p.a.ce.

In this way too often the imagination, the really individual part of the mind, is starved and atrophied. Especially in childhood there ought to be a s.p.a.ce left between useful work and ordered play for the individually invented games, the pursuits that are not for any definite end, for dreams and lived-out tales, when the child may make what he likes, do what he likes, and in imagination be what he likes.

If we scrupulously respected this growing-time we should soon have a race of st.u.r.dier mettle altogether. Just now this particular want is probably most nearly supplied among elementary school children than among those who have more "educational advantages"; they "go out to play" in the streets for hours every day, and one cannot help thinking that it is the vitality thus evolved that keeps most of them healthy and happy in spite of many hardships.

In later life, if we really want to make something of our lives, we shall do well to insist an keeping such a margin of free time to ourselves. It need not be long. Five minutes, if one really sails away in the ship of imagination, will take us to fairyland and back again.

But the five minutes (or the day in the country, or the week of quiet, or whatever we take or can get) must really and truly be free; we must have the courage to seek for what we really want, and we shall have the inestimable reward of finding what we really are.

E.M. COBHAM.

HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT?[6]

[6] See July number.

For some years I lived according to the advice given by "M.D." with regard to the quant.i.ty of proteid that should be taken. But experience led me to believe that it was wrong. In recent years my diet has consisted of the following quant.i.ties per annum:--

Three to four bushels of wheat.

Seventy pounds of oats.

One bushel of nuts (measured in the sh.e.l.ls).

And with these foods rich in proteid, I have taken plenty of raw vegetables and fruit, and three to four gallons of olive oil.

I do not mention this as an ideal, in order to suggest another and better standard than that of "M.D." I do not think any such thing as a standard really exists or can exist. But I mention it to show how far I have travelled away from where I was.

I take it that all food reformers will agree that the main reason for food reform is to make the body a more harmonious instrument for the true life of man, and that carries with it the belief that there is some correspondence, if we cannot yet see absolute unity, between the physical and the spiritual. Now the law of life, according to Christ, is one of continual progress towards perfection and I do not see how this will harmonise with the teaching of a fixed law for the body. All my experience and observation point to a progressive law for the body, and I do not know of a single fact contrary to it.

My first point, then, is that there is no such thing as a standard of proteid needed by the body. All that can be said is this, that if you take a man who has been fed on a certain quant.i.ty for such and such a time and then feed him on a certain other quant.i.ty, alterations in the physical condition will appear. But who can say whether these changes are attributable merely to a deficiency or to a previous excess? If "M.D." and his patients take excessive food they naturally get trouble from stored poisons when they reduce the quant.i.ty. But why put all the trouble down to present deficiency instead of to previous excess? To this I can find no satisfactory answer.

If we have got our bodies into so hopeless a condition that we cannot use our G.o.d-given instincts, tastes and feelings in the first place, the wisdom of troubling much about the continuance of bodily life would be doubtful; and, in the second place, one would need most overwhelming signs of knowledge to subst.i.tute for them. But where are they? There is no agreement between those who have been taught physiology. On the one hand, "M.D." gives a proteid standard, now impossible to myself, and I believe to many others, for it would involve eating a nauseating quant.i.ty; and, on the other hand, another doctor, presumably acquainted with the same physiology, tells me I cannot eat too little, so long as I do not persistently violate true hunger and taste. Then another doctor gives quite a different standard, and a much lower one. If we discard our natural guides, which of the claimants to knowledge is to be followed, and is there any knowledge at all such as is claimed?

Imagine what a mockery it would have been to give such a standard as that of "M.D." to the agricultural labourer about the middle of last century, a typical one with a large family, and one who worked as men do not work to-day, and had to rear his family on a few shillings a week. How could such a one have provided more than a fraction of what "M.D." says is necessary, either for himself or his children?

The broad fact is, that all the hardest work of the world has always been done by those who get the least food. As one who has had some experience of labour, I doubt if the workers could have done so much if it had not been for a spare diet. Certain it is, that since they have more to eat, they are much less inclined to work.

My contention, then, is that there is no fixed standard of proteid needed by the body, but that the quant.i.ty depends on the development that is in progress and is only discoverable by the natural guides of appet.i.te and taste, ruled by reason and love of others. Moreover, I contend that even if there were such a standard as "M.D." says physiology has found, it obviously is not known.

I cannot help recognising in "M.D." one whom I gratefully love and respect. He helped me on the road, and now that I differ from him I do not forget it, and I ask his forgiveness if I seem to be arrogant. He thinks I cannot see what he sees because I am underfed, and I think he cannot see what I see because he is overfed. In a sense we are both right, and we form a beautiful ill.u.s.tration of the different states of mind that belong to different physical conditions. I urge the laymen like myself not to be afraid of that musty old ill-shaped monster called Science[7] when he is up against the eternal truths that belong to every simple untutored man. Shun the monster as you would a priest, to whom he has a great likeness, and unite with me in a long strong pull to get "M.D." out of the rut in which the monster holds him, so that we may have him with us on the road, for he carries much treasure and we cannot do without him.

A.A. VOYSEY.

[7] I do not wish to be misunderstood. No sane man despises real science, but when the mixture of science and ignorance, which usually stalks about in the name of science, wants to usurp our heaven-born instincts we cannot but notice his ugly and monstrous shape. It is the function of science, or a true knowledge of details, to fill in the mosaic of the temple of wisdom, but the mosaic can never be the structure itself and is only useful and good when it is subservient to that structure and harmonious with it.

CAMPING OUT.

FOOD QUESTIONS.

"We have to consider," I said, "the question of what food to take and how to cook it."