Its object is not the abnormal
development of muscle, but the production of a healthy, alert and well
balanced body. The military authorities in the last three years have
been confronted with the problem of restoring promptness of movement,
erectness of carriage, poise and flexibility to numbers of men whose
muscles have been given a one-sided development by the constant
performance of one kind of manual work, or have grown flabby by long
sitting at a desk, and the task would have been much less successfully
tackled without the aid of the Swedish methods. In schools these
exercises may be used with real benefit given two conditions, small
classes and a really skilled instructor. For the value a boy derives
from the exercises, to a very large extent depends upon himself, on
the concentration of his own will. It is almost impossible to make
sure in a large class that this concentration is given, and any kind
of exercise done without purpose or resolution rapidly degenerates
into the most useless gesticulations. But though we may use physical
exercises as an aid, I should be sorry to see them ever regarded as a
substitute for games. Even supposing that they were an adequate
substitute in the development of the body (which I doubt) they cannot
claim to have an effect at all comparable to that of games in the
development of character. Sometimes the most extravagant claims are
put forward on behalf of athletics as a school of character, almost as
extravagant as are the terms in which at other times the "brutal
athlete" is denounced.
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