Athletics And Games Of The Ancient Greeks

FEW kinds of labor develop the body in a symmetrical manner. This is true even in an elementary division of labor. The carDenter and the blacksmith usually have strong, large shoulders and arms, but small and weak legs. The farmer, from escessive bending over his work, loses, in a greater or less degree, his elasticity of body, and often becomes stoop-shouldered. If such defects result from the more rimitive forms of labor. it is not at all strange that the laborers of the modern industrial world show bodily peculiarities and variations that correspond, in a marked degree, to their respective trades. A well-known teacher of gymnastics in, a New England college has declared himself able to designate the various occupations of laborers in a Boston Labor Day parade, without reference to any sign or banner, merely by inspecting their carriage and physical peculiarities. It may, therefore, be asserted that, while labor involving muscular exertion, if performed in healthful surroundings, supplies the conditions essential to good digestion and assimilation, to a more complete respiration, and to the maintenance of healthy nerves, yet, only rarely, if ever, does it tend to develop the ideal body. Physical culture differs from labor. Labor, having the design to produce a change in the world of matter outside the body, is not deliberately modified to suit the requirements of perfect physical development...