PART I

CHAPTER I

HEALTH AND HEALTH TEACHING.

THERE never has been a time in modern development when interest in the welfare of the body has been so noticeable and so general. Athletic contests have given a high degree of prominence to the possibilities of the body in the way of skill, strength, and endurance; the devastations of tuberculosis and all the various forms of contagious and infectious diseases have called forth the most earnest and devoted efforts of physicians and philanthropists to stay their ravages; public campaigns for better medical training, for the proper care of babies, for careful sanitation, for pure food, for wide-reaching campaigns of instruction and enlightenment in regard to the prevention as well as the cure of disease-all these things are forecasting the time when the body shall truly come into its own. In some respects this is an age of the body rather than of the mind. At all events, we are beginning to see as never before the value of the body in the struggle for success and happiness. And this insight reveals proper care of the whole body as farther reaching in its effects than attempts at the unusual development or skill of some one of its parts. The ways in which questions of health and bodily vigor are affecting efficiency and morality are now recognized as among the most important economic and social issues of the day. They underlie the welfare of organized society in the community and in the state as well as in the family. While individual excellence will always remain the culminating point of any interest in physical development, the true test of progress in care of health is to be found in the broader results of a lower death-rate, in the stamping out of contagion, in increased longevity, and in an enhanced vigor

of all the muscles and nerves. Upon this vigor of the body more than anything else is dependence to be placed for the highest success. For we now know not only that physical vigor is the best of all agencies in warding off disease, but also that it is fundamental to success under the strenuous demands of our modern life.

Nowhere are the benefits of consideration of the welfare of the body more apparent than in school work. The great recreation movement, which is receiving so much consideration everywhere, is an important phase of the many-sided problem of public health.* Recreation, we are learning, is not only a natural need that dare not be ignored, but, under proper conditions, it does more than anything else to develop and safeguard the body. But recreation is only one phase of the problem, and the friends of education have need to widen the boundaries of their vision and to reorganize their efforts for enlightenment and training to include all the problems of health. Text-book instruction in physiology and hygiene has not yielded the results so hopefully expected. Much of this instruction has been faulty, full of contradictions, and pointless. Far too little of it has found its way into the life of the pupil. Moreover, it is quite clear that valuable time is lost by waiting till school age to begin the care for the body. Many of the most serious physical dangers and defects menace the body in its earliest years. Later efforts can usually only mitigate, but not eradicate, the baleful effects of early ignorance and neglect. Hence, educators are interested in the child before it comes to school. And, as the real measure of educational success, after all, is to be found in the tests outside the class-room rather than in it, we are also deeply interested in adult life in all of its relations to the body. Questions of public health have therefore a large place in the field of education, and it is extremely significant, as well as extremely favorable, that the public should regard with such intense interest every new movement and every new discovery that looks toward the safety and betterment of the body. And no friend of education can afford to be less interested in the entire subject than is the general public.

* See Current Educational Activities, pp. 23 to 96.

The Mind and the Body.

Many of the theories and much of the practice of the past have assumed that the mind is an airy, intangible thing which is entirely superior to and independent of the body. For centuries these ideas formed the groundwork for all philosophies and all educational practices. Although there has been a decided rejection of this thought, and in many instances a damaging trend in the opposite direction, it still remains true that much of our practice ignores the welfare, value, and influence of the body. Efforts to ignore and mortify the body, in its insistent demands for recognition, that were so common in monastic days, find their counterpart in the man or woman unduly absorbed in business or pleasure, or in those who build upon the kind of idealism that holds the Supreme Mind to be the only reality and all else as but phenomena in the workings of this true entity. To such, questions of the care of the body can be of but little interest. But to all who accept the reality of the physical world and who regard the mind as in some way a real manifestation or agent of the individual's existence, the subject of health is of supreme importance. To such the mind is as real as the body-a matter of substance or entity which in some way forms a part of the organized existence which each of us realizes as the ego or self. If we accept this belief, we are confronted by two radically different ideas,-one, that the mind is but a product of the body and entirely subservient to it; the other, that the mind and body are separate entitites which in some way interact or parallel each other. The first view makes of us mere automata, and is as radical in sweeping out of existence the mind as is extreme idealism in sweeping out of existence the body. Neither of these views seems justified by our present knowledge. As early as 1879 Professor James predicted that, if the “ automaton theory" should ever prove to be true, it would be in a modified form in which our common-sense belief in the power of the mind in determinative activity would be recognized as essentially correct. In point of fact, the trend of thought seems now decidedly in favor of attributing a superior influence to the mind in the struggle between mind and matter, but without in the

least detracting from the weight of material matters in most of the stages and situations of life. Such a view changes the point of emphasis and makes the statement The body has a mind read The mind has a body-a real physical basis or substratum with which in some way it is intimately associated.

The causal relation existing between mind and body should be as clearly grasped as possible if, as promoters of educational interests, we would fully realize the importance and far-reaching influence of questions of health and physical vigor. Three fundamental theories have been advanced to explain this relation.

1. The first, the argument for automatism, has been defined by Doctor Strong, of Columbia University, as viewing the brain-process as the physical basis or condition of consciousness. In other words, that there can be no consciousness which is not in some way called forth and controlled by physical conditions; nor can any form of activity result from this consciousness excepting along the lines suggested by the physical present or the physically recorded past. The arguments in favor of the doctrine that mental states are in all cases the effects of brain-events and which, being merely mental states, cannot therefore ever themselves become causes, are stated by Doctor Strong to be:

(a) The argument advanced by Professor Huxley, that, "if it is proper to speak of the movement which is brought about by stimulating a motor nerve as a function of muscle, it must be proper to speak of the sensation which arises when the current travels in the opposite direction as a function of the nerves.' The fact that the one event is physical, while the other is mental, suggests no doubt to his mind as to the exactness of the analogy. Professor Huxley uses as an illustration of his theory changes in the brain giving rise to the feeling or consciousness of the redness of a red object, and declares that we have as much reason for regarding the mode of motion of the nervous system as the cause of the state of consciousness of redness as we have for regarding any event as the cause of another.

(b) Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's arguments for the complete dependence of the mental state upon the physical conditions: (1) Science demands a cause or real condition

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ing" for all phenomena, and, therefore, any claim of concomitance or mere simultaneity between the mental state and the physical sensation does not meet scientific requirements; to establish such simultaneity demands that at least we shall prove there is no absolute dependence between the physical and the mental condition; (2) on the contrary, there is absolute dependence of the mental state upon the physical sensation, for in the absence of sensation there is no neural process; while we can cause the cessation of a mental state by putting a stop to the accompanying stimulation or brain-event, we cannot cause the cessation of a brain-event by putting a stop to the accompanying mental state.

(c) Such other arguments as "the relations of consciousness to nutrition and blood-supply, as exemplified by the effects of drugs or the necessity for food and air; the results of circumscribed cortical lesions in depriving us of special groups of memories; the unconsciousness that results from serious brain-injury; finally, the discontinuity and fragmentariness of the mental states as compared with the continuity and completeness of the physical."

While all of these ideas emphasize the supreme importance of caring for the body, both in the nature and trend of its activities and in developing it in health and vigor, they naturally minimize interest in the so-called spiritual side of our nature and make the problem of education entirely a physical one. If man is pure body alone, then all of his training must come along the purely physical lines even in such matters as the higher emotions which deal with the beautiful, the true, and the good. This leads us to inquire whether there are not other explanations of the relations existing between mind and body which rest upon equally good arguments.

2. There are two such explanations,-interaction and parallelism. The doctrine of interaction assumes the coequal reality of mind and matter, and maintains that, while the body unquestionably acts upon the mind through sensation, the mind, through consciousness and volition, undoubtedly acts and reacts upon the body and the bodily sensations. Doctor Strong calls this the doctrine of common sense, and maintains his claim by saying: (a) We do