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PERSONAL DUTIES

[Part IV.

the reach of legal penalties ; the confiscation of his estate ispunishing the innocent for the offence of the guilty, and any in-dignities offered to his remains, will only render his relations,already made unhappy by his conduct, still more unhappy.When moral considerations have failed, legal penalties will beineffectual.

CHAPTER II.

IMPROVEMENT OF THE CORPOREAL FACULTIES.

Another personal duty consists in the preservation and im-provement of our corporeal faculties. On the importance ofphysical education, which chiefly consists in skilfully calling forththe corporeal powers, strengthening and maturing them by health-ful exercise and appropriate training, and bringing them to allattainable perfection, I have before briefly remarked.*

The personal qualities, and consequently the usefulness andhappiness of the man, depend, in no small degree, on the strength,vigor, elasticity, and general good constitution of the body, onthe flexibility and good proportional developement of the limbs,and on its ability to resist exposure, to sustain fatigue, and en-dure labor and privation of every kind. And such is the recip-rocal action of the body and the mind on each other, that what-ever affects the one, must in a greater or less degree affect theother. Moreover, a good constitution of body, and high im-provement of the corporeal powers, the result of a judicious andpersevering physical education, can be maintained only by acontinuance of the same salutary exercise and discipline. Aneminent Roman author well says,

“ Orandurn est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

Fortem posce animum ? et mortis terrore carentem,

Qui spatium vitae extremum inter munera ponatNaturae, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores,

Nesciat irasci, cupiat nihil, et potioresHerculis aerumnas credat, saevosque labores,

Et Venere, et ccenis, et plumd Sardanapali.” t

See above, pp. 149,150.

t Juvenal. Sat. X. 356 - 362.