that time much about
physiology, wrote a paper proving that the benefit came from the fresh
air that circulated through his brain. And of course in one sense he was
right. He related the incident of this thesis many years after in a
lecture, to show the result of right action and wrong reasoning.

The doctors had advised Kant he must quit study, but when he took up his
breathing fad, he renounced the doctors, and later denounced them. If he
were going to die, he would die without the benefit of either the clergy
or the physicians.

He denied that he was sick, and at night would roll himself in his
blankets and repeat half-aloud, "How comfortable I am, how comfortable I
am," until he fell asleep.

Near his house ran a narrow street, just a half-mile long. He walked
this street up and back, with closed mouth, breathing deeply, waving a
rattan cane to ward away talkative neighbors, and to keep up the
circulation in his arms. Once and back--in a month he had increased this
to twice and back. In a year he had come to the conclusion that to walk
the length of that street eight times was the right and proper
thing--that is to say, four miles in all. In other words, he had found
out how much exercise he required--not too much or too little. At
exactly half-past three he came out of his lodging, wearing his cocked
hat and long, snuff-colored coat, and walked. The neighbors used to set
their clocks by him. He walked and breathed with closed mouth, and no
one dare accost him or walk with him. The hour was sacred and must not
be broken in upon: it was his holy time--his time of breathing.

The little street is there now--one of the sights of Konigsberg, and the
cab-drivers point it out as the Philosopher's Walk. And Kant walked that
little street eight times every afternoon from the day he was twenty to
within a year of his death, when eighty years old.

This walking and breathing habit physiologists now recognize as
eminently scientific, and there is no sensible physician but will
endorse Kant's wisdom in renouncing doctors and adopting a regimen of
his own. The thing you believe in will probably benefit you--faith is
hygienic.

The persistency of the little man's character is shown in the breathing
habit--he believed in himself, relied on himself, and that which
experience commended, he did.

This firmness in following his own ideas saved his life. When we think
of one born in obscurity, living in poverty, handicapped by