Part 21

The old physiology was really never able to explain how it was possible for the digestive apparatus to extract, from the amount of food consumed, the enormous amount of energy which the average person expends each day.

REST AND RE-CREATION

These terms are often confused. When one is engaged in some occupation or activity other than his regular vocation, it is commonly called "re-creation." This is a misconception, because it is merely a change in activity and must also be more or less destructive to other sets of nerves or muscular tissue. It is not in reality re-creation--it simply throws the life-power into a new channel, which is more responsive, and calls for less action from those parts of the mechanism which have been employed in the work from which one is seeking relief. It is for this reason that we find some pleasure in a new and different activity, though it, too, may be destructive to the human cell.

One may alternate from one kind of activity to another indefinitely, which would be better than no change, but the human mechanism would finally give way under such violation of fundamental law. The mental worker may change, however, to any manual labor requiring little thought, and the physical worker to some form of mental labor, with far better effect. But, in our present civilization, specialization has become so far advanced that the physical laborer is seldom qualified for mental work, and the mental worker has almost neglected manual training.

True rest and re-creation is found in mental tranquility and sleep.

SLEEP

From observation and study of the state we call sleep, we notice that as night approaches and the activities of the day wear upon us, both the nervous and the muscular organisms relax, so that it becomes more and more difficult to maintain a positive and an active attitude of mind. There is a tendency toward cessation and rest, which gradually brings upon us that passive condition called sleep.

In spite of the fatigue often experienced before we retire, we awake again on the morrow with renewed strength and power. From these and other reasons we are led to believe that during the hours of activity the body is constantly expending vital energy in both internal and external work, and that during the hours of sleep, through some unknown process, the body is charged with vital energy which is stored up and used gradually for carrying on the various functions and activities of the system.

Just what this energy is, just where it comes from, just how it is stored, just the manner in which it is delegated to the body, we cannot say. We can only observe its workings, or effects, and formulate therefrom a theory. We are led to believe, however, that this energy is stored in the nervous organism, perhaps most largely in the brain, as brain tissue is the last to break down or waste away in sickness, ill health, dis-ease, or starvation, often maintaining its full weight up to the point of death.

Even in sleep the expenditure of energy in the vital processes continues vigorously, depending upon conditions immediately preceding sleep, but usually in a much more passive degree than in the waking hours. These activities, however, are no more pronounced in their constructive action or repair, than in ordinary periods of rest during the waking hours.

SOME REASONS

The processes of nutrition, alone, demand the expenditure of much energy, and the degree of energy available from foods, even by perfect combustion, would yield but a fraction of the energy expended by the body.

The average laborer in shoveling coal, swinging an axe or a pick, expends energy far in excess of the amount that could possibly be obtained from his food. A day laborer may eat a piece of beefsteak, two or three potatoes, and a few slices of bread, and will shovel twenty tons of earth to a height of five feet; a Japanese soldier will carry a heavy load and walk all day, subsisting only on a handful of rice, and besides this, will do some thinking, which consumes energy.

We also have on record fasts, of from thirty to forty days, which, in some cases, show a slight gain in strength. There are also hundreds of students of natural living who adopted the "no breakfast plan" and again many, only one meal a day, limiting their consumption of food to comparatively small quantities of nuts, fruits, and vegetables, who have found thereby a remarkable increase in vitality, strength, and general physical and mental power.

Since the processes of nutrition, including digestion, circulation, assimilation and excretion consume energy, and notwithstanding this we are able to perform hundreds of foot-tons of labor a day besides; since we have found it possible to continue to live, and in some cases to even increase the amount of strength and work-power on a very limited diet; since it is a mathematical impossibility to produce as much energy from the food consumed as the body expends, we are forced to the conclusion that we do not obtain all our energy from food. Therefore, from a careful analysis of the phenomenon of sleep, we conclude that it is very closely connected with this mystery.

OXIDATION AND AIR

One of the most important of the vital functions is breathing. Physiologists, teachers, and lecturers continually remind us of the comparative time we could live without food or water, and the remarkably short time we could live if entirely deprived of air.

Oxygen is vitally necessary for the purpose of purifying the blood and supplying the various tissues and fluids in the body, of which oxygen forms an important constituent. However, oxygen is not the only necessary element which is utilized by the system in the process of breathing, as human beings die immediately upon being placed in a receptacle of undiluted oxygen. Just what this other factor is, science has not clearly defined, but that it is concerned with rest and sleep we have at least unconsciously recognized, as shown by our often referring to periods of rest as "breathing spells"; from the fact that we have found it of great importance to keep the air we are breathing moving constantly about us, especially while asleep. From all these facts we are forced to believe that sleep plays an important part in producing and maintaining body-energy, besides constantly recharging the system with oxygen.

LESSON XXII

A LESSON FOR BUSINESS MEN

That which tends to make a good business man, in the popular mind, is the establishment of great industries and enterprises, coupled with accumulation of money by the individual.

A careful review of the history of business men who have made a success along these lines shows that the majority of them sacrificed their health and their lives to their business. In the last and final analysis, therefore, these were not good business men.

The best musician is he who can bring more sounds into harmony. The best artist is he who can best harmonize colors and reproduce nature. Likewise, the best business man is he who can best harmonize or balance the affairs under his control.

Health being entirely under and within his control, if he disregards it--gives it no thought--violates the laws that govern it, and finally wrecks it, he is not a good business man, as all business depends upon the power of the individual, and the powers of the individual depend upon his health.

The man who, from a cheap tin store, founded "The Fair" in Chicago, and allowed the business to dethrone his reason, and to send him to his death before he was sixty, could hardly be considered a good business man. Measured on the same scale, Marshall Field, the merchant prince, was not a good business man. President Roberts, who arose from the ranks of a car-wheel molder, to the presidency of the Pennsylvania railroad, and died at the age of fifty, was not a good business man. J. P. Morgan, who accumulated many millions of dollars, and who died when he should have been in his prime, was not a good business man.

The accumulation of money and the founding of great industries is only one requisite of the business man, and by no means the most important one. What profiteth a man to make a great fortune; to put in motion a million spindles; to chain continents together with cables; to flash his silent voice over oceans and continents on currents of common air; to make the ocean's billowed bosom a commercial highway; to transform the oxcart into a palace, and set it on wheels and hitch it to the lightning; to build sky-scraping structures of stone and steel; to transfix human figures and faces on sensitized glass; to direct the methods of burrowing in the earth for coal and gold until his name is known around the world, and his fortune is a power in the land?--what boots it, I say, to know all these things and to glide blindly into the shambles of unrest and dis-ease, or to furnish a fashionable funeral at forty?

The religious fanatic who robes himself in sackcloth and eschews the razor; the food crank who cries out "back to nature," and takes to grass; the one-idea social reformer who preaches on the curb, and the business man who allows his business to become his absolute master and governor, are in reality all in the same class. The unfortunate thing is that the business man sits him down and weaves about himself the meshes of a prison. Every year puts in a new bar, every month a new bolt, and every day and hour a new stroke that rivets around him what he calls business, until he feels and really thinks he cannot escape.

A GOOD BUSINESS MAN