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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
In 'Keeping Fit' by Orison Swett Marden, the author delves into the importance of physical health and overall well-being. Marden explores various exercises, diets, and habits that contribute to a healthy lifestyle, emphasizing the connection between physical vitality and mental acuity. Written in a clear and straightforward style, this book serves as a practical guide for readers seeking to improve their health through simple yet effective means. 'Keeping Fit' reflects the late 19th-century interest in health and wellness, blending scientific knowledge with Marden's own observations and experiences. Orison Swett Marden, a pioneer in the self-help genre, drew inspiration for 'Keeping Fit' from his own struggles with health issues and his dedication to personal growth. As a successful writer and orator, Marden's expertise and passion for self-improvement shine through in this work, offering readers valuable insights and motivation to prioritize their health. I highly recommend 'Keeping Fit' to readers interested in enhancing their physical and mental well-being. Marden's timeless advice and practical tips make this book a valuable resource for anyone looking to cultivate a healthier and more fulfilling life.
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KEEPING FIT
Published by
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Table of Contents
Chapter I. Keeping Fit
Health is the vital principle of life.—Thomson.
Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours
Should not be numbered by years, days, and hours,
—G. deS. DuBaktas.
Nor love nor honor, wealth nor power,
Can give the heart a cheerful hour
When health is lost. Be timely wise;
With health all taste of pleasure flies.
—John Gay.
The thousand little hints which may save or lengthen life, may repel or abate disease, or the simple laws which regulate our bodily vigor, should be so familiar that we may be quick to apply them in an emergency. The preservation of health is easier than the cure of disease.—J. Dorman Steele.
Nature demands that man be ever at the top of his condition. He who violates her laws must pay the penalty though he sit on a throne.
Physical vigor is a tremendous success as well as happiness asset.
The reserve of readiness is the secret of all achievement. The grandest work a human being can do is to keep himself fit for the greatest thing he is capable of doing, the highest service he is capable of rendering; always up to the level of his greatest efficiency.
To keep fit is to maintain perfect health; and perfect health depends upon a perfect balance of mind and body, unimpaired physical vigor and absolute inner harmony, and a calm, mental poise which nothing can disturb.
Every normal human being can, if he will, raise himself to this condition. He can live in such a simple yet scientific manner that he will not only have great disease-resisting power but will also be at the maximum of his creative ability.
When the body is in superb physical condition, it stimulates the mind and develops its maximum of the force that creates, that accomplishes. When the body is down the mind is down, all life’s standards are down, and the whole nature is demoralized. No one can be healthy or harmonious with a morbid or pessimistic outlook on life, for this produces physical and mental depression, the forerunner of ill health.
Not only disease catches him whose vitality, physical resiliency and resisting power are low, but mediocrity marks him also, because all his mental standards are down, too.
I criticized a carpenter working for me recently for using dull tools. He excused himself by saying that he had been too busy to sharpen them. He had been working for weeks with a dull saw, and with a plane which had notches in it, leaving ugly ridges on the boards he was planing. He had probably wasted more time in working with dull tools than would have been required to sharpen them several times, to say nothing of the inferior work he was turning out.
Many people go through life doing their work with dull tools just as this carpenter did. The edge is off their energy; their ambition is dull; their initiative lags; their enthusiasm is exhausted; their will-power is weak; their intelligence is blunted; all their powers are at the minimum instead of the maximum of their efficiency, because they have neglected their health or in some other way reduced their efficiency by failing to keep fit.
The most precious capital a man has are his deposits of life force, of vitality and of reserve power, in his physical bank; and there is nothing which will lead to bankruptcy of a man’s life quicker than neglect or abuse of his health capital. A man too busy to take care of his health is like the workman too busy to sharpen his tools. Anything that produces, should be kept in a condition to produce the largest possible output.
What should we think of a man who had an enormous gold-mine, but carelessly cut down its possible output seventy-five per cent? Yet, most of us cut down the possible output of our brains, our energies, even more than seventy-five per cent, by our carelessness, strangling or crippling our sources of power. We should think it pretty bad economy for an engineer, who had a power plant capable of producing a hundred thousand horse power, to utilize only ten per cent, of it. Yet that is precisely what most of us do with our physical powers.
Now, health squandered can never be compensated for by the mere acquisition of money. It is simply lack of intelligence that causes any one to barter health for wealth. A well-balanced man would find the way to have both with detriment to neither.
The lowering of physical vitality by unscientific living, by vicious practices, or by dissipation, correspondingly lowers our general efficiency, mentality, and will-power.
Some of the largest employers in the country tell me that many employees come to their work in the morning so completely used up, their faculties jaded, their spirits low, that they are incapable of accuracy or satisfactory efficiency. They have no enthusiasm for their work; their minds wander; they make all sorts of mistakes and blunders, and their vitality is so depleted that they are in no condition to focus their powers upon their work. The superintendent of one of the largest concerns in New York tells me that it is really pitiable to watch some of the employees when they come to work mornings, especially after holidays. He says they look as if they had already been through a hard, trying day’s work, and were utterly exhausted and ready to quit work instead of just starting it for the day. He says that it often takes half a day or more for them to get into condition to do even passable work; that they are indifferent, without energy or enthusiasm all the forenoon; and that, in fact, often many of them do not get into the true swing of their work during the entire day.
These workers probably think they are having a good time in thus dissipating their energy by turning night into day, robbing themselves of sleep, and going to all sorts of amusements and questionable places. They call this excitement, this dissipation, “enjoying life,” but they little realize what they pay for it.
I know young men and women workers who tell me that it is a rare thing for them to retire before midnight, and often not till one, two, or three o’clock in the morning. Of course they must do very inferior work during the following day. Yet on every hand employees are complaining that they are not treated fairly, that they don’t have a fair chance, and that they are discriminated against.
It is not the vitality we utilize that dwarfs our power and whittles away and shortens life; it is what we foolishly throw away. Millions of people have made failures in life by letting their health, their most precious asset, which might have made them successful, slip away from them in foolish living and silly dissipation.
Keeping ourselves fit, up to our highest physical and mental standards, so that we are always ready to do the most superb thing possible to us, is not an easy task. Few are willing to pay the price for it in self-denial and sacrifice of what others call “having a good time.” But it is the only price for masterfulness, and he who is not willing to pay it, who is not ambitious to make his life successful, to make it count, must be content to be catalogued with the mediocrities; he must be satisfied to be classed with the nobodies, those who would like to be somebodies and do something in the world but are not willing to plod the path of self-restraint which alone leads to excellence.
The desire is not enough; it must be backed by vigorous resolution—determination which knows no retreat.
He who would get the most out of life, who would reach the highest expression in his work, and yet would retain his freshness, vigor, and enthusiasm to the last, must lead a regular life. He must conform to the rules of health; he must become acquainted with his own body and give it all its needs, no more, no less, to keep it always at the top of its achievement-possibility.
The moment there is any letting down of standards, or decline in physical or mental force, deterioration expresses itself at once in everything one does.
The quality of the work cannot be up to high-water mark when any faculty or function, any of your ability is prejudicially affected by inferior physical or mental condition. You may be sure that your weakness, whatever its cause, will appear in your day’s work to dilute or cheapen its quality, whether it is making books or selling them, teaching school or studying, singing or painting, chiseling statues or digging trenches.
I know men with but one talent whose life habits are so healthful and regular; whose meal hours, time for recreation and sleep, exercise, and vacations are so well ordered; who take such superb care of themselves that they are constantly at the top of their physical and mental condition, and accomplish with ease much more than other men of five or ten talents who waste their energy and squander their power by abusing their human machines, so marvelously and wonderfully made.
I recall a slipshod, slovenly farmer,who never seemed to have anything just right on his farm. His fences needed mending; his barns were not painted; his harness was usually tied up with a string or piece of rope; there was always something out of gear in his carriages and carts. His farm buildings were dilapidated, windows broken, and old hats used in the place of glass. The yard was filled with worn-out sleds, broken pieces of machinery, and bits of junk of all sorts. Shiftlessness and lack of system was everywhere in evidence. The whole farm was covered over with the earmarks of his sloppy, slovenly methods. He himself was always “just getting along” with things until he could get time. He would say to his farm hands, “Just make it go now; do it anyhow so we can get along. When we have a rainy day we can fix it in good shape.” But the things were never fixed “in good shape.” Whenever I asked him how he was getting along, he would tell me about his “hard luck,” how things were always going against him. But his neighbor, now—he always seemed to be “lucky.” His harvests were always good, and he did not have half so much trouble with his help as the other had. This was true, but as a matter of fact the difference in luck was that the neighbor was naturally orderly and systematic. He cultivated the same sort of soil, but with a difference. Everything about his place had a snug, neat appearance. Buildings were painted and in good repair; yards were clean; wagons, carts, and farm machinery were in good order. Work was always done in season, and in the right way.
It was just the difference in the methods of these farmers that made one “lucky” and well-to-do, the other “unlucky” and head over heels in debt, with a mortgage on his farm. They are good types of the people who keep fit and those who do not.
A great many people go through life just like the sloppy, slovenly farmer. They never have things up to the mark. There is always something the matter with their life machinery; it is out of order, and they go on from year to year sowing faulty seed and reaping scant harvests.
Distinctive achievement of any kind is costly. It is not half as easy as sliding along the line of least resistance and having a good time, not bothering one’s head about system; but there is a wide difference in the results.
There is nothing like keeping fit, keeping things up to the standard; nothing like regularity in one’s life habits, order and system, both in life and in work. It will make all the difference in the world, in results, whether you go to your work every day in prime condition, with all your faculties up to their standards; whether you go at the top notch of your efficiency; whether you go an entire man, so that you can fling your whole life into your task, or only part of one. He who wins in this day of sharp competition must bring the whole of himself to his task; he must keep himself fit in every respect.
Most people take only a small part of themselves to their tasks. They cripple much of their ability by irregular living, bad habits, lack of sleep, and eating injurious food. They do not go to their tasks every morning whole men; a part of themselves, often a large part, is somewhere else. They have been trying to have a good time. They carry weakness instead of power, indifference and dullness instead of enthusiasm and alertness, to the performance of the most important duties of their lives.
There are, on the other hand, many men and women who cut down their fitness and ultimate efficiency by continually overdoing and never allowing themselves a good time. They go to the other extreme.
I know self-made men who formed such iron habits of work when they started as poor boys, when their success depended upon working a great many hours every day, that they have become slaves to the habit. No matter whether they feel like it or not, they compel themselves to remain in their offices or factories just so many hours a day, when, perhaps, three-fourths of the time they are merely mechanically forcing their brains to do very ordinary work. They could accomplish more and better work in less than half the time with fresh, vigorous brains and minds elastic and spontaneous. They do not realize that a mind that is habitually held to its task by will-power for long hours after a time becomes permanently injured by losing its spring or resilience, just as a bow would lose its power to rebound if it were always strung.
These men know this principle very well, and they can see that their friends who are doing the same thing are making a great mistake in straining so, in not going away now and then to get freshened up or renewed, with a new view of things and a fresh outlook on life and business. They plainly see their neighbors’ mistake in not putting themselves in the way of that rejuvenation which comes from an entire change of environment.
Business men often give as an excuse for always grinding at their work and for too seldom taking vacations that they haven’t time, but when they do have a little leisure they will surely take “a day or two off.”
Is there any shorter-sighted policy than for one to overwork and strain, to plod away for months and years with dull mental tools, and to plead as an excuse that he can’t afford to take time to sharpen them, thus putting himself in a state of physical and mental fitness?
What a strange thing that a long-headed, shrewd business man cannot see the deteriorated product of his exhausted mind; cannot see that the everlasting grinding of work out of tired brains and dull, jaded faculties is very poor business!
One of the greatest dangers in our strenuous American life is the temptation to overstrain under high pressure. Men are continually overdrawing their physical bank accounts by using up their reserve capital, and before they realize it they become physically bankrupt.
As a very noted medical authority said recently: “While we do know a great deal more about hygiene and have been able to conquer many diseases, especially infectious diseases, which formerly, through our ignorance, carried away vast multitudes of human beings every year, yet the increased cost of living, the greater struggle for existence, our more exciting, more strenuous, nerve-racking life have increased our vitality tension, nerve tension, and brain tension. As a consequence, our worries, anxieties, and cares are greatly augmented. The wear and tear of life is greater than formerly because we are living a more complex life and are getting farther and farther away from the simple things of other days.”
Anything which tends to lower our vitality or sap our energy cuts down, by so much, our efficiency and possibilities.
Perfect health is a great discoverer of ability. It brings out resourcefulness, inventiveness, and initiative, which would be covered up and buried by poor health. Physical and mental fitness means new hope, new life, new power. There is a vast amount of ability lost to the world through poor health, through not keeping in condition to give out the best that is enfolded in us.
There are many people of a high order of ability who do very ordinary work in life and whose careers are most disappointing, simply because they do not keep themselves in physical and mental condition to do their best.
I know men in middle life who are just where they were when they left school or college. They have not advanced a particle; some have even retrograded, and they cannot understand why they do not get on, why they are not more successful. But every one who knows them sees the great handicaps of indifference to their health, neglect of their physical needs, dissipation, irregular living, slipshod, slovenly habits, and other unfortunate things which are keeping them down—handicaps with which even intellectual giants could not drag along and make much progress.
In every walk of life we see people plodding along in mediocrity, capable of great things, but doing little things, because they have not vitality enough to push their way and overcome the obstacles in their path. They have not kept themselves fit.
Most of us are our own worst enemies. We expect a great deal of ourselves, yet we do not put ourselves in a condition to achieve. We are either too indulgent to our bodies, or we are not indulgent enough. We pamper them or we neglect them, and it would be hard to tell which mode of treatment produces the worst results.
How humiliating to feel ambition throbbing within us to do a great thing, to feel conscious of ability to accomplish it, yet to be prevented by lack of physical stamina, staying power, vitality! What a deplorable thing to come within sight of one’s goal and suffer the pangs of thwarted ambition because of poor health!
There are tens of thousands of people who are almost successful, who have almost done the things they started out to do, but who cannot get any farther because their health has broken down; or, it may be, because of some physical weakness or diseased organs, due often to eating wrong things through ignorance, when scientific food and scientific living would not only have carried them to the goal, but would also have brought them there in superb condition.
It is no less sad to see people reach their goals in an exhausted, played-out condition, with health ruined; so that, although they have achieved their ambition, the power of enjoyment is gone.
No one can amount to much in this world until he has had an understanding with himself that he is going to stand for something, that he is going to make a man of himself; until he resolves not to be satisfied with a half-life or a cheap success, for he is going to play the part of a man, going to make good, no matter what the cost in effort, no matter what the sacrifice of ease and pleasure. But he must never forget that the basis of all achievement is health; that, even if he reaches the goal of his ambition and leaves his health on the way, he is not a real success.
The first requisite of success and happiness for every human being is to be a first-class animal. One can accomplish wonderful things with no other capital than robust health and determination to make something of oneself; but, no matter how much ambition one has, if he ruins his health by neglect, or by vicious habits; if he devitalizes himself by an abnormal or irregular life, he should know that his only chance of accomplishing anything very important will soon be gone. Unless one keeps himself at the top of his condition, the best that is in him will not respond to his efforts. He must be satisfied with even second or third best results if his physical condition is run down, if his vitality is lowered by violating the laws of existence or by irregularities of living.
A stream cannot rise higher than its fountain head. If one’s physical condition is low, if he is devitalized, his ambition suffers, his ideals are lowered, his energies lag, and his work is poor. As a general rule, our physical condition is reflected in everything we do. If the mind is cloudy or suffering or affected by weakness or disease, the condition is reflected in the work. Everything in a man corresponds with his physical condition. All of his defects or weaknesses of this kind will reappear in whatever he does, and his mental condition will always harmonize with his physical state.
Yet how often we see young people starting out in life with great ambitions to make places for themselves in the world and to do things worth while, but all the time really ruining their possibilities of great accomplishment by ignoring the laws of health, in all sorts of ways lowering their physical status, enfeebling themselves so that they do not have sufficient power to attain their ideals. The very thing that they are most dependent upon for attaining their object, strong and vigorous vitality, they sacrifice.
Keeping fit for our work is the most superb thing that we can do, because upon it depends our efficiency, happiness, and usefulness. Few people fully realize this. They do not appreciate the tremendous influence of health upon ambition. When you are strong and vigorous, and have a robust appetite, you feel equal to almost any undertaking. Obstacles do not seem very forbidding; your courage is as vigorous as your health. But when your vitality drops, your courage drops with it. Things which did not worry you a little while ago, when you were strong and vigorous, now look formidable. They loom up like mountains of difficulty.
There is a vast difference between going to your work in the morning in superb condition, so that you are full of enthusiasm, buoyancy of spirit, eagerness, and zest, approaching it with a great love for your work, with your heart in it, ambitious to excel in it and to make every minute count, and going to it with low vitality, with the brain weary, jaded from bad habits and lack of sleep, with the brain badly nourished with improper food, or with the digestion entirely upset by overeating or eating rich and indigestible foods.
The great thing in life is efficiency. If you would be efficient you must keep fit by cutting away all of your health-sappers, getting rid of everything which hampers you and holds you back, everything which wastes your vitality and cuts down your working capital.
Most people do not realize how many little leaks are constantly draining off their life forces and cutting down by so much their power to keep fit.
Thousands use up more of their brain power and nervous energy in impatience, in hurrying and in worrying, than they expend in actual work.
Victims of the hurry habit, of the hurry thought, are ineffective, never fit, never at their best, because they cannot concentrate their minds on the present: they are always “living in the next minute.” Their thoughts and acts are always rushing and pushing ahead. The result is, their work is very superficial because they do not concentrate upon the thing in hand. They are always in a hurry and yet they accomplish very little, because they never give the whole of themselves to their tasks.
Indecision is also a great waster of power. People who are always weighing, balancing, and reconsidering little dream that they are thus squandering a lot of precious health capital. How many, too, burn up in fierce gusts of passion, or dribble away in nagging, bickering, or needless faultfinding, a large amount of brain power and physical vitality that might be used not only to great advantage in bettering their condition but also the condition of those whose lives they touch.
A morbid idea, such as hatred, envy, or jealousy long harbored in the mind acts like a poison-leaven and works its way through the entire system, injuring the whole life. The majority of people have very little conception of the fearful destructiveness of thoughts of hatred or revenge. They are like great festering sore centers, distributing their poisons to every part of the body, while their evil influence on the mind cannot be estimated. We should always be on the watch to stamp out such thoughts; also other morbid, gloomy ideas which so frequently attack us. We all know how religious morbidities unbalance the mind. It doesn’t matter how sacred the subject which possesses us; if we allow ourselves to become morbid over it, it unbalances us just the same; the tendency of morbidity is always to unsettle the mind.
It is now well known that extreme selfishness, envy, and jealousy will produce neuralgic headaches and other mental and physical disturbances. But perhaps the most destructive of all these vitality leaks, in its effects on the physical and mental system, is a violent, uncontrolled temper. If people only knew what tremendous havoc a fit of anger works in the delicate nervous system, and the really dangerous results of an unchecked storm of passion, they never again could be tempted to yield to it.
In an instant the nerves surrounding the blood vessels are paralyzed by the mental shock of a sudden burst of anger and the blood rushes into the brain with such terrific force that sometimes a blood vessel is ruptured and death is almost instantaneous. Dr. John Hunter, one of the greatest surgeons that ever lived, died in the board-room of St. George’s Hospital, London, in a fit of anger. One of his colleagues intimated that something he, Dr. Hunter, had said was untrue. The insinuation aroused a temper storm that precipitated an acute attack of angina pectoris, from which he was suffering, and almost in an instant he fell dead.
A noted Paris physician reports a case of a young man who, in a violent quarrel with his relatives, worked himself up into such a fearful passion that he became suddenly deaf. It is not an unusual thing for a severe attack of jaundice to follow a violent fit of anger. People little realize how their very lives are endangered, how their health is often seriously impaired, and how many habitually suffer from semi-invalidism, because they are constantly giving way to these anger fits.
We are just beginning to find that what we always regarded as minor things, such as our fits of temper, our frettings, our anxieties, our fears, our petty jealousies, or our revengeful thoughts, are in reality very formidable foes,—enemies of our mental poise and balance, enemies of our fitness, which is power. These are the things which keep us unfit.
The worry leaks, the fear leaks, the anxiety leaks, the hot-temper leaks, the dissipation leaks, the leaks from sleeplessness and lack of system, the jealousy leaks are all draining away precious power and reducing our mental and physical fitness for the important tasks of life. They are all the time cutting down our vitality and our initiative, weakening our confidence and courage. Under their influence every faculty deteriorates in power, in forcefulness.
How many of us go through life wondering why we do not get on faster, wondering what it is that holds us down when we try so hard to get on! We are always looking over and blaming some fundamental thing that is blocking our progress, handicapping our career, when in reality it is often a multitude of these little enemies of which we take no note, and think of very seldom, which are neutralizing our advantages. In the first place, all those things seriously affect our health. Whatever disturbs us, or destroys mental harmony, does corresponding harm in the body. Whatever exercises a malign influence on the health, will do the same thing to the mind, and vice versa. It is now well known that thought is not confined to the brain, for we think all over the entire nervous system; in fact, every cell in the body participates in our thinking.
All these enemies must be eradicated, routed out of the nature before we can be at the top of our condition, be perfectly fit, healthy, harmonious, and effective. We must cut out all disease-bearing morbidities; rout out of life’s garden all disease weeds or other rank growths, physical or mental, which are poisoning everything that is beautiful and fruitful.
Perfect health, which is perfect fitness, means also perfect morals. A person cannot be perfectly healthy and yet be morally bad. If we practice dishonesty, if we are envious or revengeful, we cannot be perfectly healthy, because perfect health means physical and mental harmony.
The physical functions are very largely dependent upon both the mental and the moral condition. A person, for example, who is suffering the pangs of remorse for some wicked deed, cannot be thoroughly healthy. Sometimes, it is true, we see vicious characters who are physically strong, robust; but that is not enough for the man God made. The spiritual nature must match the physical. Perfect health means perfect wholeness, and no one is whole, complete, who is not happy; and no one is happy whose conscience is all the time torturing him. A very wicked person may have good digestion and appear physically to be well, but he is not whole and such a person does not, as a rule, attain a ripe old age. Moreover, he does not attain the purpose of life. Instead of being of use to society, which is the duty of every human being, he is a curse to himself and to the world.
Keeping fit is the result of healthful habits,—right habits of living, right habits of thinking. It is the product of regularity of life, regular sleep, in full sufficiency, regular recreation, and plenty of it, regular exercise in the open air, habits of neatness and cleanliness and orderliness, habits which contribute to self-respect and make us think more of ourselves; and, above all else, these should be combined with a habit of wise and systematic eating and drinking and an intelligent choice of food which shall contain all the elements, in proper proportion, requisite to build up and maintain the different organs and tissues of the body,—food which will produce vigor, food which has stored up in it the forces of nature which produce energy, brain power, vigor of thought, grasp of intellect.
In the work of keeping fit our thought-food is, next to our physical food, the great mind and body builder.
If you would keep fit, never picture yourself as anything different from what you would actually be, the man or woman you long to become. Whenever you think of yourself, form a mental image of a perfect, healthy, beautiful, noble being, not lacking in anything, but possessing every desirable quality. Insist upon seeing only the truth of your being, the man or woman God had in mind when He made you.
There is every evidence in the human plan that He intended man to express completeness, wholeness,—not a half or other fraction of himself; a hundred, not twenty-five or fifty per cent, of his possibilities; to express excellence, not mediocrity, and that the half lives and quarter lives which we see everywhere are abnormal.
One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in keeping fit is that we build our bodies by our thoughts as much as by our material food. It is a literal fact that man does not live by bread alone; our bodies are discordant or harmonious, diseased or healthy, in accordance with our habitual thought. There are those who, having learned this lesson, have had their countenances so altered in a single year by persistent right-thinking that one would scarcely know them. ' They have changed faces that were lined with doubt, disfigured with fear and anxiety, and scarred by worry or vice, to reflectors of hope, cheer, and joy.
Saint Paul was scientific when he said: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds;” that is, by changing, ennobling, purifying and freshening one’s thoughts.
Keeping fit means that the mind shall be as clean, pure, and healthy as the body. It is every one’s sacred duty to keep himself fit, up to the highest possible standard, physically and mentally; otherwise he cannot deliver his divine message, in its entirety, to the world. It is every one’s sacred duty to keep himself in a condition to do the biggest thing possible to him.
Chapter II. The Miracle of Food
Here is bread, which strengthens man’s heart, and therefore is called the staff of life.
—Matthew Henry.
O hour of all hours, the most blessed upon earth,
The blessed hour of our dinners!
—Owen Meredith.
Cheese and bread make the cheeks red.
—German Proverb.
Behold a crust of bread and a jug of water let down into Bunyan’s cell, which a little later appear in the greatest allegory that was ever written by man!
Watch that crust of bread as it is cut, crushed, ground, driven by muscles, dissolved by acids and alkalies; absorbed and hurled into the mysterious red river of the man’s life blood! Scores of little factories along this wonderful river, waiting for this crust, transmute it as it passes, as if by magic, here into a bone cell, there into gastric juice, here into bile, there into a nerve cell, yonder into a brain cell. We cannot trace the process by which it arrives at the muscle and acts, arrives at the brain and thinks. We cannot see the manipulating hand which throws back and forth the shuttle which weaves Bunyan’s destinies, nor can we trace the subtle alchemy which transforms this prison crust into “Pilgrim’s Progress.” But we do know that, unless we supply food when the stomach begs and clamors, brain and muscle cannot continue to act; and we also know that, unless the food is properly chosen, unless we eat it properly, unless we maintain good digestion by exercise of mind and body, it will not produce the allegories of a Bunyan, the energy and achievements of a Roosevelt, the inventions of a Marconi, an Edison, or the successes of a great constructive man of business.
The age of miracles past! Why, there is a miracle performed at every meal which is more mysterious than the raising of the dead to life! You take a piece of bread, a piece of meat, a few vegetables into your mouth, and in a few hours they become man; they begin to think, they begin to act; that food takes on all the characteristics of your personality. Your ancestors relive and act in it. What was a few hours ago food is now making laws in Congress, is passing decisions upon the bench, is farming, is running machinery, is doing all sorts of things. Is the quality, the quantity, the manner of partaking of the nourishing material which is to perform the miracles of the world of any great consequence? Is it worth much concern?
Part of your efficiency, your health, your mental vigor, your future welfare, lives in that meal of which you are about to partake. Can you afford to take in material which is going to give you deteriorated blood? Can you afford to take in that which will give you a second-class brain and can only manufacture mental processes in keeping with its own inferior quality?
Your food can give off, when assimilated in the body, only the force which Nature has stored up in its cells.
You may say it does not matter much what you eat,—so long as it satisfies your hunger. Do you realize that the cells in that stale vegetable and soft, spongy fruit, which has already begun to decay, and the poor meat you are eating, are much deteriorated; that they have lost their recuperative, renewing, refreshing force? Do you realize that while you may satisfy hunger, you are manufacturing second-class blood, a second-class brain, a second-class nerve tissue, a second-class man? And you want to be a first-class man, do you not? As a man eateth, so is he. As he eats, so will he live, so will his strength be.
You have wondered, no doubt, many times, why you lack power to concentrate your mind, to hold your mental grip upon the thing you are doing. You perhaps have not realized that the quality of your intellectual grasp, of your focusing power, lies in your food. The quality of your vitality, of your brain power, the quality of your courage, of your initiative, of your productive power, will be in exact ratio to the quality of the material from which these are manufactured. The quality of the manufactured product cannot excel the quality of the raw material.
The fire and force, the vim for achievement, are put into our food by the power of the sun and the chemistry of the soil. The strength for which we long, the force which does things, the stamina, the grit, the brawn, and what we call “gray matter,” Nature produces in her laboratory, where she performs her wonderful miracles.
The roots of our spiritual life run through the material body into the food stuffs, into the soil, and outward to the source of all physical power, the sun. We are bound up together; we are of the earth, earthy. We come from Nature; we return to Nature. All vital energy is generated in the sun; Nature’s alchemy takes the vital energy and recreates it in food products which we receive from her and assimilate, and from which comes the abundance of our achievements, our spiritual life.
The brain gets a great deal of credit for what justly belongs to good health, to a strong physique. “Intense, rapid, sustained,” is the motto of effective mentality. It is not a question of will-power so much as of vitality and strength. Robust health produces a positive intellectuality, and this is the force that does things in the world; whereas, in proportion to failing health, to lowered vitality, the mind becomes negative.
The man who accomplishes things is noted for his ability to decide matters vigorously and finally; while the vacillator is pained at the very thought that he must make a final decision, and is always reconsidering, weighing and balancing, recalling his letters, tearing open the seals to see whether he has really meant what he has written, whether it were wise to send the letter, after all, or whether he has left out something important. But the man of decision is the man who succeeds, and decision is the child of strong vitality, of a well nourished brain.
Is it not astonishing that, despite these facts, in our efforts to economize, we often lose tenfold by cutting off our nutrition, in going without lunches, or bolting inferior food at a cheap quick-lunch counter? By trying to save a few cents a day in this way we cut off ten dollars’ worth of vitality. We may reduce our business-getting ability by dulling the ambition, so that we may lose a hundred dollars’ worth of business.
When we skimp on food we do so at the cost of power and vitality. If the body is not completely nourished, the blood will be impoverished, or made impure; and vitiated blood means poor quality of thinking, than which nothing can be more extravagant.
The great thing is to keep oneself up to the highest point of efficiency at any cost or pains. Anything which reduces the fire and force in the brain, which lessens the ambition or the energy, weakens will-power, courage, self-confidence, inclination to work, initiative, and power of decision. In fact, the whole mental apparatus, the efficiency of the whole of life’s machinery, is affected. Such economies are criminal.
One might as well try to economize on the board of a horse about to enter a contest of speed, and expect him to win, as to economize on his own food and expect to remain in tiptop condition. Speed and staying power are what he is after for the horse, and these must come mostly from the food, the drink, and the general care.
Every ambitious man is in a perpetual race for supremacy of some kind. Can he afford to economize on that which produces brain force, that which produces health? Can he afford to economize on energy-producing material?
