Dancing, beauty and games

To try and write about Physical Culture without linking it on to Mental and Moral Culture would be of little use or interest, as these three cannot be divided and good come from them, any more than a tree can be separated from its bark and leaves and live. It is true that many have realised the great and undeniable truth that Physical Culture properly used is also mental culture, but it is also true that the masses are absolutely ignorant of this fact, and merely think that the person who believes so is a harmless lunatic. That it is within the means of the majority to have a powerful weapon to combat sins and vice that at present go rampantly on their way, I do most sincerely believe, and that weapon is a right understanding of the effect which Physical Culture has on the mind and body; and that ignorance of this weapon is almost universal amongst the masses is due to the fact that those who are at the head of things do not understand and will not listen to those who do, or take the time and trouble to find out the root of the evils which exist to such an enormous extent, especially throughout towns.

That this subject has been handled before by far more skilled writers than myself I know well, but in most of the articles on Physical Culture there is a great dislike to tackling the serious side of the question, and my excuse for doing so is that I have spent all my life or rather all my thinking life in enquiring into and trying to understand the effect Physical Culture has on the mind, and that this effect is tremendous no one who knows anything about the subject can doubt. The more artificial life becomes, the more necessary it is to fight the evils which arise from this artificial condition, and personally I am all for fighting artificiality with nature. Nature, if understood, seldom fails us. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent annually on hospitals, homes for the feeble-minded, &c.; if only a few of those thousands were expended in our schools, and in the proper teaching of the young, surely in a couple of generations a great many of the former institutions would be empty. And until it is understood that to help the human race towards real health, and the happiness that marches hand in hand with that health, it is necessary to attack and demolish the amazing system of wicked ignorance which has our young in its grip—both rich and poor—these institutions will be needed.

For long it has been the cry, give every one a fair chance, and I do most sincerely believe that it is possible to give that chance by turning out into the world self-respecting men and women mentally and physically developed in the manner that I believe God meant us all to be; and not maimed body and soul by the course of instruction we have been put through before we are thrown out on our own resources to struggle blindly through our lives as best we may in a semi-developed condition, mentally and physically: some of us perhaps to learn what a fine thing we could have made of life if only we had known and understood sooner. That moral feebleness allied to real vice is tremendously on the increase in large towns, cannot be denied; also that a great deal of it has its beginning in school-life is well known, just as it is realised by thinking people that very little effort is made either to enquire into the cause of it or find a remedy. It seems to be taken for granted that if a young boy or girl shows moral feebleness there is nothing much to be done except to hope that they will not be found out and disgraced. I know well that to cure immorality in the young once it has established itself, is difficult, though not by any means hopeless. Cures always are difficult and take time; therefore prevention is so much simpler: and certainly a great deal, if not all, of this immorality could be prevented if Physical Culture and its true effects on body and mind were understood, and the teaching of a right system was insisted on in all places where the young gather together.

Let me try and explain what I mean by a right system. It is not just a different way of exercising the arms, legs, and body. There are many most admirable methods of Physical Culture, composed and propounded by men who thoroughly understand the human body and its needs. But what I think is wanting in our teaching of the young when we teach them at all, is the giving of any reason as to why they should exercise regularly; beyond the rather feeble fact that they will most likely feel better if they do. Give children a true reason for doing anything and they will hold on to it throughout life, and the true reason for Physical Culture surely is that God has given you a body and a brain to develop to the best of your ability, and that when the time comes to render them back again to your Maker you will be able to do so with no sense of shame. Instil this into the young and it is wonderful how they understand and reverence the thought. To merely tell children that it is jolly to have big muscles and be stronger than their neighbours, will certainly urge them on for the moment, but these reasons have little strength or help in them if there is a temptation to be overcome, and to continue to use them is but building upon sand.

Children are born idealists, and surely it ought to be the duty of all to make those ideals higher and of a strength that will last through life. The only ideal that the average child has nowadays is ‘how to get on,’ and in the getting on if the other fellow goes to the wall no matter; the ideal of Physical and Mental culture ought to be of the highest and the greatest purity, and it is only possible to instil this into the very young. All chance of pure thinking as regards the body is generally entirely shattered by nurses and parents before a child reaches four or five years of age: its body is made a shameful thing to hide as much as possible and never to be referred to. If you want to feel real shame, and understand the impure manner in which the body is regarded, watch small children in any well-to-do nursery being washed by their nurses; instead of being taught that their body is a beautiful and sacred thing and one of God’s greatest works, they are made to believe it is a shameful thing. Little harmless questions that all children ask and which ought to get straight, sensible answers, are greeted with giggles or winks, and the child is told not to ask naughty questions. Thus at the beginning of their lives is planted the little, creeping, insidious, dirty growth. All children will think about their bodies, it is right and natural that they should do so; only those thoughts must be guided into pure, sensible channels, not left in black ignorance, except for the unclean hints dropped by many who, to our shame be it said, have children in their charge.

To instil pure-mindedness, a child from the moment it can understand must be taught to take a proper pride in its body, then when come to man or woman’s full growth, a clean-minded, healthy, happy, human being will be the result, and during the always more or less difficult age before full growth is reached there need be little fear of the dangers and temptations which as a rule beset the young.

If from early youth it was explained and impressed on the young of both sexes, that it was a real sin against God to allow their minds to become a mass of sensuality, and that the mind becoming like this means that the body has been neglected, and the only right remedy for body and mind is proper exercise and a proper understanding of what to eat and what to avoid in eating and drinking, what a help it would be to them. As a rule this is never explained to the young, and surely its great importance ought to be understood at least by those who have children in their charge. The ordinary man or woman fighting the temptations which arise from the artificial conditions of life, are as helpless from their ignorance and neglect of the human body as a man naked fighting against one fully armed.

There are a certain number of men and women who are strong-minded enough to be able to take up physical exercises late in life and get a considerable amount of good from them, but with the majority unless the exercises are a habit from early youth, they find them a bore after the novelty has worn off, and they are eventually dropped altogether. It is a very great effort for a man or woman who has neglected any regular exercise all their lives, to get up in the morning and perform a certain set amount. But if a child is trained almost from infancy to do this, and made to understand that it is quite as dirty to neglect the body or to put dirty (otherwise unwholesome) food into it, as it is to walk about with unwashed teeth, they no more think of neglecting the care of the one than they do of the other. Therefore, personally, I always train my own children to exercise ten minutes every morning before their baths; not that it is a real necessity when living an open-air life, but that I feel the habit will go with them through life; also that the time may come when having to be in town it may prove of incalculable value. At present they would no more think of missing their exercises than they would their baths.

Again, I think great help against the bad and harmful habits of drinking and smoking can be given, if a child is taught that his body is a beautiful and precious trust, and that to soil and harm it by the accumulation of bad and artificial habits is to commit a real sin, and also shows a considerable lack of intelligence if commenced with open eyes and understanding. Also, if the explanation is given of how these habits grow and take hold, if once started, and how a liking for them becomes quickly ingrained, I am quite sure that boys and girls would no more make a habit of these harmful things than they would cheat at cards—as in one case you are behaving dishonourably to your fellow-men, in the other you are betraying a trust given into your hands by God; surely the latter ought to be made of as much importance as the former. It is all very well to say that smoking and drinking in moderation harm no one; perhaps not, but the difficulty of keeping them in moderation is very great, particularly when troubles come along, which even if they be molehills in reality, to the young are always mountains, and it seems somewhat foolish to learn and encourage an artificial habit which may at any time prove a most dangerous enemy, and is certainly not missed if never begun.

I also feel most strongly that it will be an impossibility to make Physical Culture what it ought to be until a radical change is made in present-day clothing for both sexes.

Revolutionise the clothing of children and all would be well, as if sanely clad during their growing years, they certainly would not submit in later life to the absurd garments worn by their parents.

I do not suggest that every one should go about in Greek tunics, as this garment is not very suitable to our grey climate; but there is a far cry between a Greek tunic and an Eton suit, for instance. That the garments children often have to wear are responsible for a great deal of immorality I am certain, and they are on the whole most insanitary, great carriers of germs, and intensely uncomfortable as well. There has certainly been a slight move for the better amongst some who have stopped their children wearing hats; thus giving them a chance to grow up without chronic headaches, and to have beautiful hair. Also a few now give their children a shoe that does not deform their feet as in the past, but even now it is very rarely that one sees a child over ten years of age with toes that are not crooked; for it does not seem to be realised the tremendous pace a child’s foot grows between the ages of two and fifteen; therefore if only sandals were used for growing children such a lot of pain and expense might be saved; a sandal showing at once if it is too small, and also is much cheaper to replace than shoes, or those still greater iniquities, boots, which cramp the muscles of the legs and stop the ankle muscles from gaining growth and strength.

I know that many people will contend that the mental impurity I have spoken of is the exception and not the rule. I can but ask these people to spend an afternoon in the sculpture room at a museum or in a picture gallery, and watch the majority of those who come through and see the nudes in either marble or on canvas. Apart from a few serious art students there are generally two types, the one who passes by with averted head and downcast eyes, getting slightly red in doing so; these are generally men or women very religious from the world’s point of view, and with sad, contracted minds. They pray, but at the same time they have made up their minds that one of God’s most splendid works is a shameful thing to be covered up, neglected and forgotten as much as possible.

The other type is the man or woman who comes to stare and giggle, and nudge with coarse innuendo and joke. These are more awful than the others to watch, as they are alive with a horrible wakefulness coming from minds that are merely cesspools.

And with both types the same cause is at work in different ways. They cannot see a naked figure either in life, painting, or sculpture without bringing in the sex question. They can see no beauty, as it is obscured by the grime of their minds.

Surely a state of things to make one stand aghast with bent and shamed head.

I do not think I ever realised fully the extreme impurity that is rife through the minds particularly of those who live in towns until I went on to the stage, and took up classical dancing seriously. Then there used to pour in upon me a stream of letters of such a terrible kind that one wondered it were possible for any living being who had a soul to write such things, and in those days came to me a great and sincere wish to help on in any way possible the work of trying to establish a system of Physical and Mental Culture that should give the children their fair chance in life; for rich and poor there ought to be but one system, and that instilled in a manner to give to them a knowledge and reverent love of all that is God’s work, to bring within the reach of all the chance to keep the body beautiful outwardly and clean inwardly, and to fill the mind with high ideals and a fine knowledge of men and books. May we all try and make it more possible and easier for the little children to walk with firm and unfaltering footsteps the path that ours have tottered so painfully along.