_Ut sit mens sana in corpore sano._
JUV. _Sat._ x. ver. 356.
A healthy body and a mind at ease.
Bodily labour is of two kinds, either that which a man submits to for his
livelihood, or that which he undergoes for his pleasure. The latter of
them generally changes the name of labour for that of exercise, but
differs only from ordinary labour as it rises from another motive.
A country life abounds in both these kinds of labour, and for that reason
gives a man a greater stock of health, and consequently a more perfect
enjoyment of himself, than any other way of life. I consider the body as
a system of tubes and glands, or to use a more rustic phrase, a bundle of
pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner as
to make a proper engine for the soul to work with. This description does
not only comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves, and
arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which is a composition of
fibres, that are so many imperceptible tubes or pipes interwoven on all
sides with invisible glands or strainers.
This general idea of a human body, without considering it in its niceties
of anatomy, lets us see how absolutely necessary labour is for the right
preservation of it. There must be frequent motions and agitations, to
mix, digest, and separate the juices contained in it, as well as to clear
and cleanse that infinitude of pipes and strainers of which it is
composed, and to give their solid parts a more firm and lasting tone.
Labour or exercise ferments the humours, casts them into their proper
channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret
distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigour, nor
the soul act with cheerfulness.
I might here mention the effects which this has upon all the faculties of
the mind, by keeping the understanding clear, the imagination untroubled,
and refining those spirits that are necessary for the proper exertion of
our intellectual faculties, during the present laws of union between soul
and body. It is to a neglect in this particular[98], that we must ascribe
the spleen[99], which is so frequent in men of studious and sedentary
tempers, as well as the vapours[99] to which those of the other sex are
so often subject.
Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well-being, nature
would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity
to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part as necessarily produce
these compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other
kinds of motions that are necessary for the preservation of such a system
of tubes and glands as has been before mentioned. And that we might not
want inducements to engage us in such an exercise of the body as is
proper for its welfare, it is so ordered that nothing valuable can be
procured without it. Not to mention riches and honour, even food and
raiment are not to be come at without the toil of the hands and sweat of
the brows. Providence furnishes materials, but expects that we should
work them up ourselves. The earth must be laboured before it gives its
increase, and when it is forced into its several products, how many hands
must they pass through before they are fit for use? Manufactures, trade,
and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen parts of the species
in twenty; and as for those who are not obliged to labour, by the
condition[100] in which they are born, they are more miserable than the
rest of mankind, unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary labour
which goes by the name of exercise.
My friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable man in business of this
kind, and has hung several parts of his house with the trophies of his
former labours. The walls of his great hall are covered with the horns of
several kinds of deer that he has killed in the chase, which he thinks
the most valuable furniture of his house, as they afford him frequent
topics of discourse, and show that he has not been idle. At the lower end
of the hall is a large otter's skin stuffed with hay, which his mother
ordered to be hung up in that manner, and the Knight looks upon it with
great satisfaction, because it seems he was but nine years old when his
dog killed him. A little room adjoining to the hall is a kind of arsenal
filled with guns of several sizes and inventions, with which the Knight
has made great havoc in the woods, and destroyed many thousands of
pheasants, partridges and woodcocks. His stable doors are patched[101]
with noses that belonged to foxes of the Knight's own hunting down. Sir
Roger showed me one of them, that for distinction sake has a brass nail
struck through it, which cost him about fifteen hours' riding, carried
him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of geldings, and
lost above half his dogs. This the Knight looks upon as one of the
greatest exploits of his life. The perverse widow, whom I have given some
account of, was the death of several foxes; for Sir Roger has told me
that in the course of his amours[102] he patched the western door of his
stable. Whenever the widow was cruel, the foxes were sure to pay for it.
In proportion as his passion for the widow abated and old age came on, he
left off fox-hunting; but a hare is not yet safe that sits within ten
miles of his house.
There is no kind of exercise which I would so recommend to my readers of
both sexes as this of riding, as there is none which so much conduces to
health, and is every way accommodated to the body, according to the
_idea_ which I have given of it. Doctor Sydenham is very lavish in its
praises; and if the English reader will see the mechanical effects of it
described at length, he may find them in a book published not many years
since, under the title of _Medicina Gymnastica_. For my own part, when I
am in town, for want of these opportunities, I exercise myself an hour
every morning upon a dumb bell that is placed in a corner of my room, and
pleases me the more because it does everything I require of it in the
most profound silence. My landlady and her daughters are so well
acquainted with my hours of exercise, that they never come into my room
to disturb me whilst I am ringing.
When I was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ
myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin
treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition: it is there
called the [Greek: skiomachia], or the fighting with a man's own shadow,
and consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand,
and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest,
exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing, without
the blows. I could wish that several learned men would lay out that time
which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this
method of fighting with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to
evaporate the spleen, which makes them uneasy[103] to the public as well
as to themselves.
To conclude, as I am a compound of soul and body, I consider myself as
obliged to a double scheme of duties; and think I have not fulfilled the
business of the day when I do not thus employ the one in labour and
exercise, as well as the other in study and contemplation.