of wise and systematic eating and drinking and an intelligent choice of food which shall contain all the elements, in proper proportion, requisite to build up and maintain the different organs and tissues of the body,—food which will produce vigor, food which has stored up in it the forces of nature which produce energy, brain power, vigor of thought, grasp of intellect.
In the work of keeping fit our thought-food is, next to our physical food, the great mind and body builder.
If you would keep fit, never picture yourself as anything different from what you would actually be, the man or woman you long to become. Whenever you think of yourself, form a mental image of a perfect, healthy, beautiful, noble being, not lacking in anything, but possessing every desirable quality. Insist upon seeing only the truth of your being, the man or woman God had in mind when He made you.
There is every evidence in the human plan that He intended man to express completeness, wholeness,—not a half or other fraction of himself; a hundred, not twenty-five or fifty per cent, of his possibilities; to express excellence, not mediocrity, and that the half lives and quarter lives which we see everywhere are abnormal.
One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in keeping fit is that we build our bodies by our thoughts as much as by our material food. It is a literal fact that man does not live by bread alone; our bodies are discordant or harmonious, diseased or healthy, in accordance with our habitual thought. There are those who, having learned this lesson, have had their countenances so altered in a single year by persistent right-thinking that one would scarcely know them. ' They have changed faces that were lined with doubt, disfigured with fear and anxiety, and scarred by worry or vice, to reflectors of hope, cheer, and joy.
Saint Paul was scientific when he said: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds;” that is, by changing, ennobling, purifying and freshening one’s thoughts.
Keeping fit means that the mind shall be as clean, pure, and healthy as the body. It is every one’s sacred duty to keep himself fit, up to the highest possible standard, physically and mentally; otherwise he cannot deliver his divine message, in its entirety, to the world. It is every one’s sacred duty to keep himself in a condition to do the biggest thing possible to him.
Chapter II.
The Miracle of Food
Here is bread, which strengthens man’s heart, and therefore is called the staff of life.
—Matthew Henry.
O hour of all hours, the most blessed upon earth,
The blessed hour of our dinners!
—Owen Meredith.
Cheese and bread make the cheeks red.
—German Proverb.
Behold a crust of bread and a jug of water let down into Bunyan’s cell, which a little later appear in the greatest allegory that was ever written by man!
Watch that crust of bread as it is cut, crushed, ground, driven by muscles, dissolved by acids and alkalies; absorbed and hurled into the mysterious red river of the man’s life blood! Scores of little factories along this wonderful river, waiting for this crust, transmute it as it passes, as if by magic, here into a bone cell, there into gastric juice, here into bile, there into a nerve cell, yonder into a brain cell. We cannot trace the process by which it arrives at the muscle and acts, arrives at the brain and thinks. We cannot see the manipulating hand which throws back and forth the shuttle which weaves Bunyan’s destinies, nor can we trace the subtle alchemy which transforms this prison crust into “Pilgrim’s Progress.” But we do know that, unless we supply food when the stomach begs and clamors, brain and muscle cannot continue to act; and we also know that, unless the food is properly chosen, unless we eat it properly, unless we maintain good digestion by exercise of mind and body, it will not produce the allegories of a Bunyan, the energy and achievements of a Roosevelt, the inventions of a Marconi, an Edison, or the successes of a great constructive man of business.
The age of miracles past! Why, there is a miracle performed at every meal which is more mysterious than the raising of the dead to life! You take a piece of bread, a piece of meat, a few vegetables into your mouth, and in a few hours they become man; they begin to think, they begin to act; that food takes on all the characteristics of your personality. Your ancestors relive and act in it. What was a few hours ago food is now making laws in Congress, is passing decisions upon the bench, is farming, is running machinery, is doing all sorts of things. Is the quality, the quantity, the manner of partaking of the nourishing material which is to perform the miracles of the world of any great consequence? Is it worth much concern?
Part of your efficiency, your health, your mental vigor, your future welfare, lives in that meal of which you are about to partake. Can you afford to take in material which is going to give you deteriorated blood? Can you afford to take in that which will give you a second-class brain and can only manufacture mental processes in keeping with its own inferior quality?
Your food can give off, when assimilated in the body, only the force which Nature has stored up in its cells.
You may say it does not matter much what you eat,—so long as it satisfies your hunger. Do you realize that the cells in that stale vegetable and soft, spongy fruit, which has already begun to decay, and the poor meat you are eating, are much deteriorated; that they have lost their recuperative, renewing, refreshing force? Do you realize that while you may satisfy hunger, you are manufacturing second-class blood, a second-class brain, a second-class nerve tissue, a second-class man? And you want to be a first-class man, do you not? As a man eateth, so is he. As he eats, so will he live, so will his strength be.
You have wondered, no doubt, many times, why you lack power to concentrate your mind, to hold your mental grip upon the thing you are doing. You perhaps have not realized that the quality of your intellectual grasp, of your focusing power, lies in your food. The quality of your vitality, of your brain power, the quality of your courage, of your initiative, of your productive power, will be in exact ratio to the quality of the material from which these are manufactured. The quality of the manufactured product cannot excel the quality of the raw material.
The fire and force, the vim for achievement, are put into our food by the power of the sun and the chemistry of the soil. The strength for which we long, the force which does things, the stamina, the grit, the brawn, and what we call “gray matter,” Nature produces in her laboratory, where she performs her wonderful miracles.
The roots of our spiritual life run through the material body into the food stuffs, into the soil, and outward to the source of all physical power, the sun. We are bound up together; we are of the earth, earthy. We come from Nature; we return to Nature. All vital energy is generated in the sun; Nature’s alchemy takes the vital energy and recreates it in food products which we receive from her and assimilate, and from which comes the abundance of our achievements, our spiritual life.
The brain gets a great deal of credit for what justly belongs to good health, to a strong physique. “Intense, rapid, sustained,” is the motto of effective mentality. It is not a question of will-power so much as of vitality and strength. Robust health produces a positive intellectuality, and this is the force that does things in the world; whereas, in proportion to failing health, to lowered vitality, the mind becomes negative.
The man who accomplishes things is noted for his ability to decide matters vigorously and finally;
