‘DO YOUR OWN SWEATING.'

Evening Star, Issue 18057, 26 August 1922, Page 2

‘DO YOUR OWN SWEATING.'

This is the title of a tabloid article we came on recently. The writer suggests that in the beginning of things the order probably was toil, sweat, eat, sleep. Now many of us insist on reversing the order, transposing it into cat, spoil, and be sweated. Ho goes on to point out that these “spoils” have eventually to go to someone, to be boiled out or sweated out—the massage and the Turkish bath have to bo called in to get back to healthy conditions. But ho advises that it would be infinitely better for people to do their own sweating, even though the masseur and the bath men might lose their trade—or part of it. Ho docs not think that, except under medical advice, the average man should use a hot or steam room, csI pceially if the vitality is low. “At best, sweating caused by applied heat brings out little save water. There cannot bo the same elimination of waste as follows a contractive tissue development from allround exercise vigorous enough to produce a sweat.” All this may or may not bo in the special case. But the principle of doing your own sweating is right in general, and is capable of a more extensive application than this writer gives to it. Wo propose to suggest some extensions of it. # # We may begin with sport. What can bo more healthy than games that call muscle and brain into exorcise? What can bo more unhealthy than merely to watch others playing the games? It is all right once in a while to go to see exports play cricket or football, golf or hockey, or even to watch a horse race. But to take no active share in such games ourselves is an evil in every way. Of course, there arc those for whom ago or infirmity of some sort has made this impossible.' But when one looks at the crowds of young men and young women who assemble week by week, not to engage in the games themselves, but merely to watch,-cheer, bet, and puff cigarettes, -and chaff the contestants, and finish up probably at the pub—all this is a waste of precious time and the ruin of body and brain. Long ago everybody was an athlete. They did their own sweating. Nowadays it is only the few who do it; the rest look on, and the law takes-its course—cat, drink, spoil, and bo sweated. The same evils emerge in the disinclination of people to walk. There is every indication that, because of this, in the coming generations legs will have degenerated into spindleshanks, if they have not disappeared altogether. Motors, cycles, aeroplanes give us many advantages—they take crowds out of the cities into the fresh country air, and-the, joys of Nature; but their vice is they tend to keep us from doing our own sweating. And anything that does that must, in the long run, work injury to health and happiness. To bo sure, they get us here and there swiftly, but everything depends on who it is that gets hero and there. The higher a monkey climbs, and the faster, the more he shows his tail; and it thus those who abolish time by the automobile or the aeroplane are taking the sure road to become semi-invalids before life is half through, what is the gain? “Give me,” says Hazlcl-t, “ the dear 'blue sky over my head and the green turf beneath my feet,

a winding road before me, and a threehours’ march to dinner —and then to thinking. - . I laugh, I run, I sing for joy.” But that rapture of robust health can never bo Iris or hers who goes like this: Twomilesaminute, Geehowifly, Swiftasameteor Strcakiugthesky. Whatatlialblurr ? Oulytlielrcos; Lookattliowavc, Mywliatabrceze. * * * * “ And then to thinking,” says Hazlctt. That gives another sphere, in which it is good 1 to do our own -sweating. There is such a thing as menial -athletics, and they are even more necessary than bodily ones. For wo are and do as we think. One of the most clamant evils is lazy mentality. We lake our thought from others instead of making our own. This is to deny the growth of our individuality. No two of us are alike. Tho Creator is amazingly fertile in producing diversities. He never intends one man to be the exact copy of another. He gives him something that marks him off definitely from the mass, that stamps him as a distinct and unique personality. It is true that wo have to take for granted in a large degree what others have won for us. No man has a right to ignore what ten thousand have found to be true. He is the heir of the ages. But he is to take what the ages bring him, pass it through the alembic of Ills mind, and make it his own. In trying to do so ho may be led to see things differently from others. He must weigh that difference well, and, if it seems to him to be tire truth, he must follow it whither it leads him. But tho trouble is so few do this. For tho most part They eat and drink and scheme and plod, They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs Grundy. « o> * * And tho same evils, only with more disastrous results, flow from this mental inactivity as from lack of bodily exercise. Tho great end of education is not to get facts into tho mind, but to get the mind out of itself—to getthopupiltoclo his own thinking. Till this is gained nothing is gained—nothing that is worth while. Aud that is the end of life also. But most of us are at the mercy of tho mass. “Shout with the crowd,” says one of Dickens's notable characters, “But suppose there are two crowds? Then shout with the biggest.” It is true that there are folks who, for ono motive or another, are always in the minority—often- in the minority of one, and that ono themselves. They are sometimes a bit of a nuisance these people, who, like the Scotch elder, ayo object. But if they are following the light given to them they deserve respect; and even at the worst, when they are critics merely for the sake of being odd, they have their uses for other people. “They keep the kettle of things stirred up which otherwise would settle and spoil. They supply ginger for political campaigns. Without them religion would harden into a cruel superstition, falsehood would be crystallised in power, and Ancient Fraud fivo for ever. They harass mankind into being honest.” What does not orthodoxy in any sphere—art, science, politics, or religion—owe to its doubters and objectors? Somebody has written a book on the sceptics of the Bible. It is a right good subject. What a debt we are under to tho Jobs -and the Thomases and the unknown writers of many of tho Psalms, who, like that “white soul” Socrates, “doubted men’s doubts away ”! In these days there is a loud demand for self-expression, selfdetermination. It may go to absurd, oven disastrous, extremes, as tho world is learning to its cost. But it is a question whether self-repression, mouta-l indolence, lazy thinking, or no thinking at all are not the greater evils. Madame .Melba, of whom Australasia is proud, made a noteworthy confession as to how she has attained her pre-eminence (she was referring to the number of brilliant voices that she came across in Australia): “I could find a hundred good voices at the Conservatorium in Melbourne as easily as I could find ten in London.” And then she told how she had gained the position which she holds in tho world of song today. It is the old story concerning work ; “Before that work, after that work, then more hard work, more and more hard work till you die—or you stop singing. If I hadn’t the constitution of a horse I couldn’t have stood) it. Not one in a hundred has the strength and determination to go through it all and come out on top.” Wo here, as well as tho youths of Australia, would do well to learn auew from this latest witness that there is no royal road to success. As Longfellow Jong ago sang: Tire heighte by -great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they while their companions slept Were toiling upwards in the night. In the mental and spiritual domain, as in every other, a man, if he is to be worth anything, must do his own sweating, ffi «■ » « Montesquieu quotes a tra veller who had seen many lands, and who, on being asked what seemed man’s chief object in life, said he “ found everywhere a general tendency to laziness.” It is a good while since Montesquieu recorded this, but it might have been said to-day with equal truth. The effort everywhere is to regard work, whether mental or physical, as a state to be escaped from as soon as possible. Many do escape from it, with disastrous consequences both to themselves and the world. “ What’s the matter, Bobby?” eaid a lady, the hostess, to a little boy whom she found alone in lire dining room crying, when all the other

children had gene out to play. Bobby, whining and digging his list into his oyo, , replied “I don’t know." “Won't you eat something more?” “I did 'eat more.” “Then put some apples and" candy in your pocket.” “I did; pocketsful,” “Then raaybo if you would go out and run around a little you could eat some more.” “Been out.” There are thousands of hoys and girls like that. And there are thousands more whose parents, if they could, would have them like that. Children aro not taught, as they should be, to do their own sweating. They get somebody else to do it for them. Sometimes it is parents, often it is servants, and occasionally it is both. Louis Philippe once said that one of the qualifications for being King of France was that of being able to black his own boots. It was a jesting reference to the instability of the French throne. But our kings and queens of to-day are not in Versailles or Buckingham Palace. We are all in a sense kings and queens, and the best preparation to make a success of our royalty is not, to look to have things done for us, but to be taught to do them ourselves. “Tho child who has formed the habit of picking up his scattered toys, cleaning his own floor, making his own bed, emptying his own, slops, washing his own plate, and polishing his own boots is already halfcured of tho original sin of tire race.” Undoubtedly. » « » * And the writer just quoted goes on to say that tho original sin of the race is the desire to rule, as tho original virtue is the wish and effort to serve. Or, as it might bo put in other words, the original sin of tho race is the effort to get somebody else to do your sweating for you. What is tho whole social question when pared down to tho quick but just this very effort? What is it that threatens States with anarchy to-day but just tho feeling on the part of the masses that tho classes have not been doing their own sweating? They have been getting tho workers to do it for them. There are two kinds of people that imperil a nation’s safety : the kind that do not need to work, and the kind that do not want to work and will not work—the lazy rich and the indolent loafer; and of the two the former' is the more dangerous, because of his position and influence. We must reconstruct our current opinions regarding tho respective dignity of ruling and serving. Hitherto it has been tho aim of the majority to gain a position of independence and live a life separate from tho community. Wo must come to believe that not to rule, but to serve, is tho true ambition of the kingly and conquering life. And the extent of this service is determined by what a man has and what lie o. The Creator dictates our duties by the gifts Ho bestows upon us. And until this is realised tho industrial problems of the State will never be solved. And it is tho same with the religions. Idle piety is spiritual suicide. It is tho dry rot of character. Churches become decrepit when their members are rich enough to buy themselves off from active service by a money subscription. Wesley in his old age declared: “I am sick of opinions. Give me ... a man laying himself out in the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labor of love. Let my soul be with those Christians, wheresoever they are and whatsoever opinions they aro of.” Tho ineptitude of the Churches arises from the fact that so few volunteer for active service compared with the total numbers that might. On the evo of tho first day of the Indian Mutiny an English officer was alone in his barracks. Almost all his command had deserted. He ordered the bugler to try tho effect once more of a call to arms. And out on the evening air there floated the insistent bugle note “ Come to the colors.” Only ono answered and saluted the Flag. It too often happens that it is like that in the Church. It is merely a small minority that carries on its work. A sleeping partner may bo useful sometimes in certain kinds of business, but ho is out of place in one for which its Founder was crucified. In the Church, as in every other sphere, the only fruitful law of life is that its members should do their own sweating, and not ask others to do it for them.