Part 3 (1/2)

Of all the methods advocated, possibly one of the most universally recognized is joyousness,--a hopeful att.i.tude toward life, a cheerful, kindly relations.h.i.+p with one's kind.

According to Galen, aesculapius wrote comic songs to promote circulation in his patients.

”A physician,” says Hippocrates, ”should have a certain ready wit, for sadness hinders both the well and the sick.”

We know, too, that Apollo was not only the G.o.d of music and poetry but also of medicine. The poet, John Armstrong, has explained this:

”Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels disease, softens every pain; And hence the wise of Ancient days adored One power of physic, melody and song.”

Sir Charles Clark, one of the greatest physicians of modern times, exercised a most exhilarating influence over his patients by his cheerfulness and jollity. It was probably one of the chief means of his wonderful success.

”Cheerfulness,” says Sir John Byles, ”is eminently conducive to health both in body and mind.”

A recent writer says of Professor Charles Eliot Norton that he was ”not of a rugged const.i.tution, yet he did an enormous amount of work and lived to a beautiful old age.” This is attributed to the fact that he was never ”blue.” The cheerful kindliness of his face, his genial smile and kind words were sources of great inspiration to me when a teacher at Harvard, and to all who met him.

The more we investigate the theories of long life the more do we become impressed with a universal longing for a length of days. We find a deep, underlying instinct ”that men do not live out half their days.”

Everywhere, too, we find a certain expectation of ”finding the fountain of youth,” a hope in some way to conquer sickness and death.

This desire is normal and natural. It may, sometime in future history, be realized.

As we examine these theories we find, however wild they may seem at first, certain common sense views at the heart of all of them. No one need make a hobby of any one of them. Temperance, regularity, repose, patience, and above all, cheerfulness, do not exclude each other, they rather imply one another. In many instances one can hardly be practiced without some of the others. The practice of one would unconsciously bring up the others.

If we study carefully these theories, and especially if we study the lives of those who have not only professed theories but have faithfully practiced their principles and attained great health and age, we always find a combination of various methods.

There is no doubt, for example, that Cornaro completely reformed his life.

The character of Socrates was the secret of his good health. Temperance to the Greek did not mean total abstinence. It meant lack of extravagance; it meant what we mean by patience, by an unruffled temper,--it meant the right use of all the faculties and powers.

What new hobby, you may ask, is the theme of this book? Nothing that will interfere with the fundamental elements of the best ideas of all ages. First of all it is advocated that we go down deeper into all theories. Temperance should not be applied merely to food and drink but must cover self-control, repose of life, purity and depth of thought, and a harmonious development of human nature. The book tries to draw attention to many important things which are usually overlooked or not considered necessary to health and life.

The study of expression, to choose only one example, reveals to us, the necessity of a right poise of the body. One of the leading teachers of science in this country, after fighting tuberculosis for three years, changing climates and using all the help that science has provided, determined at last to go back to his work and to do his best even though he lost his life.

Making a constant and careful study of himself he again began his life as a teacher. He met with one with great knowledge of the human body, one who had studied it from many points of view. He was surprised when that expert said to him:--”Your dieting will not do you much good, that is not your trouble. You do not sit right nor stand right, your chest is too low, it not only cramps your breathing but what is still more important, it cramps your stomach and all the other vital organs.” The scientist eagerly asked what he could do to recover his strength, and he received a few valuable suggestions, which he followed, and in six months he was stronger than ever.

As a student and teacher of human expression for nearly forty years, I have found most important connections between man's mind, body and voice. The right use of the voice is next to impossible unless a man stands properly. There are certain inter-relations between the simple conditions and actions of the body, and the conditions and the true use of the voice are determined by the way a man thinks and feels.

A man must not only have right feeling but must express it. He cannot get right expression without right thinking. Health, itself, is one of man's mental and emotional conditions.

This book is an endeavor to study human unfoldment from an all-sided observation of the whole nature of man. Man is a unity, and an endeavor to establish health from a mere material point of view has always failed. Expression is a study from a higher point of view. The organism is studied from the point of view of its mental function. Expression implies the subordination of the body to the actions of the mind. This gives a truer point of view for an all-sided human development.

It also implies a study of the especial significance and use of certain primary acts of our lives:--such as the way we wake up in the morning and certain movements which are taken at that time by animals and normal beings. The stretches, yawnings and breathings, peculiar to that moment, are never lost by animals, but human beings, with their higher possibilities but greater power of perversion, lose the significance and helpfulness of this primarily instinctive movement.

The study of expression also reveals to us that certain emotions are normal or positive and develop health and strength, while certain other emotions are negative and destructive of vitality as well as of manhood.

We also find that the emotions we choose to express become our own and, therefore, we should choose normal conditions of mind and emotions, and express these consciously and deliberately, especially at the most negative time in the morning, when we first wake up.

Expression is one of the necessary elements of human development. We control emotions and control their expression. We welcome n.o.ble thoughts or n.o.ble feelings, and that which we welcome we become.

This book shows the smile, laughter, the taking of breath and the simple stretch as most important exercises which are to be regularly taken. It also implies a deeper study into human co-ordinations; it tries to show a universal necessity of rhythm and is an endeavor to establish the higher principles of training in a way that makes them applicable to the most simple of human actions.