is responsible for more moral ... ills than any other factor.”  Certain temptations, at least, bear more hardly upon the man of weak and unstrung nerves; in Rousseau’s well known words, “The weaker the body, the more it commands.”  And in general, abnormal organic conditions involve a warping of the judgment, a twisted or unbalanced view of life (e.g.  Wordsworth’s “Spontaneous reason breathed by health"), which leads away from the path of virtue.  All honor, then, to the men who have kept clean and true and cheerful through years of bodily depression; such conquest over evil conditions is one of the finest things in life.  But nobility of character is hard enough to attain without adding the obstacle of a reluctant body; and although some virtues are easier to the invalid, and some temptations removed from his circumscribed field of activity, it remains true in general that health is the great first aid to morality.

Can we attain to greater health and efficiency?  If health is, then, so important to the individual and society, its pursuit is not a selfish or a trivial matter; it is rather a serious and unavoidable duty.  The gospel of health is sorely needed in our modern world.  Young men and women use up their apparently limitless capital with heedless waste; those who start with a lesser inheritance neglect the means at their command for increasing their stock of strength and winning the power and exuberance of life that might be theirs.  There are, of course, many cases of undeserved ill health; we ill understand as yet the causes and enemies of bodily vigor, and many a gallant fight for health has gone unrewarded.  But in the great majority of cases a wise conduct of life would retain robust strength for the threescore or more years of our allotted course, increase it for those who start poorly equipped, and regain it for those who by mischance, blunder, or imprudence have lost their heritage.  Yet half the world hardly knows what real health is.  Our hospitals and sanitariums are crowded, our streets are full of half-sick people-hollow chests, sallow faces, dark-rimmed eyes, nervous, run-down, worn-out, brain-fagged, dragging on their existence, or dying before their time, robbed by stupidity and ignorance of their birthright of full-breathed rosy-cheeked health, and robbing the society that has reared them of the full quota of their service.  Health is not merely freedom from disease; we have a right to what Emerson called “plus health.”  And among the men who rightly awaken our enthusiasm are those who out of a frail childhood have built up for themselves by perseverance and will a manhood of physical power, endurance, and efficiency.