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.
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