A Plea for Athletics.

The following article is of interest in showing the Greek idea of athletics. It was written for the Perkins Institute by a Greek, Mr. Anagnos:-

"Body and spirit are indivisible-both are essential parts of man. The former was given to the latter as a necessary instrument without which it cannot act. They are two halves of the same being, and their harmonious development s conducive to human perfection. For the term of their earthly pilgrimage they are more inseparable and more independent than the horse and its rider. Hence we must improve. strengthen, enrich and harmonize the powers of the physical organism before we can reasonably expect to see aptitude, energy, talent and learning grow on the tree of life. That alone is a good education which gives to the body and the soul all the perfection and beauty of which they are susceptible.

"Of all the nations of antiquity, the Greeks were the first to conceive the idea of perfect unity in dualism and to reason it out to its fullest extent. They recognized the truth that physical soundness is the basis of mental and moral excellence. They saw in a person's gait a key to his character, and strove to realize that beautiful symmetry of shape, which for us exists only in the ideal, or in the forms of Divinity, which they sculptured from figures of such perfect proportions.' Early in the history of their civilization we find that they bestowed great care upon the culture of the physical organism, for they knew that if the soil were not well tilled, ploughed and regenerated by fertilizers it could not produce the golden ear and the luxuriant sheaf. Both Homer and Pindar manifested great enthusiasm in singing the praises of bodily strength and skill. The laws of Lycurgus provided free training-schools for the thorough physical education of both sexes. Four different localities were consecrated to the Panhellenic games,' at which the athletes of all the Hellenic tribes met for trials of strength at intervals varying from six months to four years. The disgrace of being defeated in the presence of an assembled nation was as bitter as the honor of being crowned was great. Besides the drill-grounds and the public gymnasia-of which every town had one or two, and where the complete apparatus for all public sports was often combined with free baths and lecture halls-the larger cities had associations for the promotion of special favorite exercises. Wrestling, javelin-throwing, running, leaping, pitching the quoit, riding, driving, climbing ropes, shooting the arrow, were all practiced by amateur clubs, each one devoted to its special form of games. The dominant passion with the Greeks was a love of beauty and harmony, to which they joined a joyous sense of well-being. It was under the inspiring sky of that country, and in the midst of living models formed by the games of the palaestra and the exercises of the gymnasium and the stadium that the art of sculpture, full of the divine thought, begot the Apollo of Belvidere. The Greek idea, that body and mind work together and that it cannot be well with the one if it be ill with the other, might seem an axiom whose self-evidence could be questioned only in a fit of insane infatuation. Yet for ages the truth was lost sight of, and indeed was supplanted by the antagonistic error, namely, that if we would cultivate and develop the soul, we must oppress and dishonor the tabernacle in which it dwells. To consider the dilapidation of the casket as indispensable to the increase of the brilliancy of the gem, is an unnatural paradox, to say the least. As a consequence of this strange logic the body was disparaged, vilified, cursed, macerated and mutilated by a set of theologians, scholastic and mystical, who had wedded a religion divorced from science. The Olympic games were suppressed by an imperial decree. Manly exercises, the festivals of the seasons, mirthful pastimes and health-giving sports were discouraged as unworthy of a holy person. The crusade against the body, which consisted in wreaking all sorts of cruelties and degradations on the wondrous physical constitution, to the end of freeing the spirit from the pressure of its material fetters, reached later on a painful degree of madness, of which the case of Archbishop Becket gives a most disgusting illustration. When the corpse of this prelate was stripped, the whole body down to the knees was found to be encased in hair cloth. This cover was so fastened together as to admit of being readily taken off for his daily scourgings, of which the portion inflicted on the day previous to his death was still apparent in the stripes on his skin. These marvelous proofs of austerity were increased by the sight of innumerable vermin with which the haircloth abounded-boiling over with them, as Dean Stanley describes it, like water in a simmering caldron.