of the British Association, a country cattle show, intercollegiate games, and
medieval tournament; that they were the "acme of festive life" and drew all who
loved gold and glory, and that night and death never seemed so black as by
contrast with their splendor. The deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to the
inspiration of the gods, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and in doing them
honor these discordant states found a bond of unity. The victor was crowned
with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied with each other for the honor of having
given him birth, their walls were taken down for his entry and immediately
rebuilt; sculptors, for whom the five ancient games were schools of posture,
competed in the representation of his form; poets gave him a pedigree reaching
back to the gods, and Pindar, who sang that only he is great who is great with his
hands and feet, raised his victory to symbolize the eternal prevalence of good
over evil. The best body implied the best mind; and even Plato, to whom
tradition gives not only one of the fairest souls, but a body remarkable for both
strength and beauty, and for whom weakness was perilously near to wickedness,
and ugliness to sin, argues that education must be so conducted that the body can
be safely entrusted to the care of the soul and suggests, what later became a
slogan of a more degenerate gladiatorial athleticism, that to be well and strong is
to be a philosopher—valare est philosophari. The Greeks could hardly conceive
bodily apart from psychic education, and physical was for the sake of mental
training. A sane, whole mind could hardly reside in an unsound body upon the
integrity of which it was dependent. Knowledge for its own sake, from this
standpoint, is a dangerous superstition, for what frees the mind is disastrous if it
does not give self-control; better ignorance than knowledge that does not
develop a motor side. Body culture is ultimately only for the sake of the mind
and soul, for body is only its other ego. Not only is all muscle culture at the same
time brain-building, but a book-worm with soft hands, tender feet, and tough
rump from much sitting, or an anemic girl prodigy, "in the morning hectic, in the
evening electric," is a monster. Play at its best is only a school of ethics. It gives
not only strength but courage and confidence, tends to simplify life and habits,
gives energy, decision, and promptness to the will, brings consolation and peace
of mind in evil days, is a resource in trouble and brings out individuality.
How the ideals of physical preformed those of moral and mental training in the
land and day of Socrates is seen in the identification of knowledge and virtue,
"Kennen und Können." [To know and to have the power to do] Only an extreme
and one-sided intellectualism separates them and assumes that it is easy to know
and hard to do. From the ethical standpoint, philosophy, and indeed all
knowledge, is the art of being and doing good, conduct is the only real subject of