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case is so old that the very mention of it is almost
a breach of etiquette. Wars have been waged, empires
overturned, and the colour of the map changed a hundred
times by so trifling a litigation. There appears one
day among men a hairy prophet, coming down out of the
mountains, a hermit, an ascetic, preaching righteousness
and the paramountcy of the spirit. Against the gay,
the worldly, the happy, the thoughtless, the free, untrammelled
children of the earth, this bleak foreboder of ill launches
his rattling exhortations. In his cosmos there have
never been any cakes and ale, and his strenuous mind
is bent on contorting the visible world to his own lofty
but narrow pattern. Again and [Page 212] again
the chosen people of history were called on to listen
to such a man, until it happen they have given us the
most considerable and remarkable body of prophecy in
the world, and have impressed their idea of goodness
permanently on our race. And the story of all nations
is similar to theirs, revelations of righteousness relapses
to license — puritan and pagan at ceaseless war
in the long struggle for ultimate perfection. In England,
for only one example, how the court and the commonwealth
strove together in a futile deadly clutch for mastery!
Not a politcal struggle merely, but a moral one even
more. Our friend Corpus, the dashing child of pleasure,
horsed and ringleted, cheering after instinct down the
delicious flowery roads of earth; and our old friend
Animus, severe and noble, imbued terribly with the weight
and serious consequences of life.
You
may side as you will; and probably you will side first
with one and then with the other many times through
a long youth before [Page 213] you
discover the uselessness of partisan quarrels. But then
at last some day, most likely in your golden thirties,
when the false logic of extremes has dawned upon you,
there will come the thought that light cannot exist
without darkness, nor right without wrong, that the
only thing that can exist without its opposite is non-existence
itself. And then your heart will not be torn asunder
any more within you over the immemorial litigation in
the case of Corpus versus Animus. You will
perceive with wonder how eminently right they both are;
you will cease giving your undivided allegiance to one
or the other; you will content yourself with sharing
the joys and sorrows of both alike; and you will heave
an enormous sigh of contentment that one more stormy
cape of experience is past.
Tolerance,
tolerance, tolerance! Be not vexed at all if the roisterer
is noisy in the tavern where you must eat a modest meal;
neither vaunt yourself as virtuous because cold water
is your only drink. For Corpus [Page 214] has
his virtues,too, — good, strong, generous, faithful,
and inescapable Corpus! And never think for a moment
that your high asceticism is better than his inane muscularity.
He is but training himself according to his kind, that
he may serve you the better according to your wisdom.
And it behooves you to temper and control yourself with
all learning, so that you can rightly use that loyal
and willing servitor.
Is
it not true that for the most part we have been willing
to correct the excesses and ignorances of the body by
a shameful disaffection and neglect? Noble and sincere
as was the ascetic ideal, did it not sinfully maltreat
an innocent, childish creature, when it heaped indignity
and emaciation on this fair figure of humanity? Was
the result not quite as bad as the sorry ravages of
debauchery and animalism? But one may say, surely, that
better thought is coming to prevail; that the ancient
fancied antagonism between physical and spiritual is
seen to be radically absurd; [Page 215] that
no advantage can accrue permanently to either except
through the good-will of both. All this is indeed commonplace
to the last jot, yet it is the sober, wholesome truth
by which we need to stand, and to stand courageously,
until we realize for every one the Roman criterion —
the sane mind in the sound body. Let us believe that
never yet has that perfect poise of forces been reached.
There have been scholars and there have been fighters;
but seldom has the normal man walked the earth in utter
health of body and spirit. We are too often warped by
a wrong thought; the one ideal or the other deludes
us; we enrol ourselves under Corpus or Animus, and take
sides in that time-worn dispute, to our own lasting
injury. Let us have done with it at once and for ever,
and recognize an equal culture of the physical and the
intellectual as the only training for perfection. It
is so necessary to have a true ideal, to know the better
way. And a very small experience should teach us the
truth in this [Page 216] case. I could
wish that Whitman’s prophecies were heeded more
generally, and his sturdy, beautiful aspirations more
gladly accepted. I could wish that men and women would
treat themselves more rationally, with greater care
for the balance of their forces. It is true, perhaps,
that we shall develop a civilization in time where might
will not be the only right; but we shall do so to our
own destruction, if we do not take greater and greater
care of our physical selves. We shall never be as happy
as angels until we are healthy as animals. [Page
217]
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