ophetic power to realize his own possibilities. We
can hardly imagine an exercise independent of the conscious sense of the
highest and best attainments, of thereby making ourselves stronger and
in some way better.

This ideal is instinctive, even on the part of animals, in fact, the
animal instinctively regards its own preservation, its own unfoldment
and the reaching of its ideal type.

A tree will cover up its wound and reach out its branches freely,
spontaneously in the direction of the light and toward the attainment of
its own type.

With man the ideal is a matter of higher realization. We have the lower
instincts in common with the animals but we have also something higher.
There is inborn in us a conception that man transcends all present
conditions.

An exercise is a step towards the attainment of a chosen end.

Accordingly we have high exercises and low exercises; exercises on a
mental and on a physical plane; exercises that may train men down to an
abnormal type; exercises also that are intellectual, imaginative and
spiritual.

Everywhere in nature there is a low and a high. In animals of a high
order of unfoldment there is specific functioning of every part but in
those of a low order the functions are confused. The organs are not so
well differentiated.

Even in human beings, in the process of degeneracy a man loses a greater
variety of his powers, and his very voice and body lose some of those
characteristics which belong to the ideal member of the race.

A true exercise always brings sound and specific parts into action. Part
is differentiated from part. All parts are made more flexible and more
capable of discharging a function distinct from all other parts of the
body. A true action of the hand cannot be performed by the foot nor can
a foot become a hand except by a process of degeneracy.

An exercise implies a struggle upward over against a drift downwards.

An exercise is an aspiration.

An exercise is a demonstration, it reveals a man's best to himself. It
is a process of translating his dreams into reality. It is the only
proof of himself, his intuitive language.

An exercise is not physical but mental.

Never regard your exercises as merely physical. The expression "physical
training" is a misnomer. All training is the action of mind. It may
manifest itself in a physical direction, but training itself,--the
putting forth,--is mental. It is the emotion we feel more than the
movement