J. F. Campbell Collection > Address to the middle classes upon the subject of gymnastic exercises

24.
without their food altogether, who would gladly
give up the pleasure of eating, for an immunity
from the misery of digesting.'" Such is the torture
to which multitudes are condemned, in some cases
by their own laziness and luxury, in others by a
too exclusive cultivation of the intellectual faculties.
These sufferings may not be incompatible with
longevity, but they are incompatible with happi-
ness. We may plume ourselves on the statistics of
the bills of mortality, or the reduced premiums of
Insurance offices, but if the prolongation of life be
unaccompanied by its enjoyment, the grave may
be regarded less as a calamity than a refuge.
This is preeminently an age of intellectual activity
and physical sloth. We over-educate the mind;
we exhaust every process by which we can enlarge
or strengthen its powers; we store it with facts, we
exalt it by contemplation, we stimulate it with poe-
try, we enrich it with science, we invigorate it by
logic ; we wing it for ethereal flights, or nerve it
for the slow labour of patient investigation, but we
forget the demands of its humbler associate, the
body, which we suffer to become the victim of lan-
guor, or the prey of disease. Men spare no pains
to acquire or retain knowledge, but neglect all pre-
cautions to secure or preserve health. The mental
faculties are cultivated, nursed, pampered into pre-
ternatural development, while the bodily powers are
either never fostered into maturity, or are suffered
to irrow feeble from disuse. Yet these evils miarht be