Bernarr Macfadden

“ They have been handicapped by a lack of the energy that comes with physical development. They need to be stirred by the regular use of the physical powers of the body. When the body is complete in all of its various parts it is truly a marvelous organism. Throbbing vitality stirs the imagination, gives one courage and capacity, thrills one with the possibilities of life, fires the ambitions. The efforts involved in one's daily duties, be they ever so important, then become mere play. To such a man inactivity is impossible. ”

“ It is one of Nature's unfailing laws that the best of her species shall possess the greatest powers of transmitting their kind; and who can for one instant question the conclusion that vigorous sexual powers, temperately and legitimately used, actually brighten and strengthen a man's every faculty, elevate and inspire his every ambition, giving him greater influence and capacity for anything he may attempt in life? But few men by their own efforts have ever accomplished anything of value in life who were not gifted also with a strong sexual instinct. ”

“ The civilization of Greece and Moorish Spain sprang from barbarism like water from the rock in the desert of Sinai, while physical indolence is the torpor that precedes the collapse of moribund nations, and heralds a moral night that knows no morning. ”

“ Why hate anybody? Why waste your nervous energies by trying to "get even" with a fancied enemy? A tremendous amount of human energy is wasted in this manner. You may be impressed with the idea that someone has wronged you. You lie awake at night forming plans for "getting even." Every mental effort spent in this direction is not only destructive to body, mind and character, but it represents a waste of nervous energy. One's life should be so filled with useful activities that no time will be left for a waste of this sort. ”

“ You surely cannot expect to breathe day-air after sunset; your only choice is between the life-giving, health-restoring night-air of the outdoor world and the vitiated, sickening night-air of your sweltering dormitories. ”

“ It is a sound and healthy instinct that leads the tired business man or the tired laborer to seek for mirth-provoking recreations. Professional "funny men" like John Bunny and Charles Chaplin undoubtedly add to the health of the human race, and they add to the vitality of those in whom they stimulate laughter. I feel sorry for anyone who has lost the power to laugh freely and heartily. When a man has brooded so much over the sorrows and miseries of life that he can no longer laugh, his condition is indeed serious. ”

“ The more I study the question of nutrition in disease at the bedside of acute illness the more am I unable to comprehend the logic of giving the sick, and especially the very sick, a form of food that even in the most vigorous health cannot be borne, even for a single day, without a lowering of vital power; nay, that where even one meal of it cannot be put into the stomach of hunger without a clearly perceptible loss of power. ”

“ You, too, can feel these throbbing vital forces stirring your every nerve, thrilling your very soul. Go to work, in an intelligent manner, realizing that fundamentally the attainment of these great rewards comes from the development of the highest degree of physical excellence. You must have strength of body. You cannot have too much strength. The more nearly you feel like a strong man the more you can achieve in the desired direction. ”

“ Nor can drugs compensate the lack of Nature's specific. In the language of our instincts every feeling of discomfort suggests its own remedy. If the proximity of a glowing stove begins to roast your shins, the alarmed nerves cry out—not for patent ointments, not for anti-caustic liniments and "pain-killers," but for a lower temperature. Nothing else will permanently appease them. Millions of prisoners, school-children and factory-slaves, pine for lung-food as a starving man yearns for bread, and that hunger cannot be stilled with cough-pills, but only with fresh air. ”

“ Why add to the bitterness of your daily life by dragging up the lamentable past? Why pass along to your friends and acquaintances pain, sorrow and gloom? Each human entity is a radiating power. You have the capacity of passing around pain or happiness. ”

“ Climbing trees is an exercise that brings in action nearly every muscle of the human body, and, like the mal de monte, the shudder that seizes the traveler at the brink of Alpine precipices, the dizziness that takes away the breath returns it with interest and is a mechanical asthma-cure. ”

“ But why not consider the body in the same light as any other machine that is of value to you. Your body is the thing that keeps you alive. If it is a poor instrument, then it is more important that you should get a better one than that you should buy a new engine or new printing-press or new sewing-machine. The only difference is, that it is within your power to get a better body machine by building up the one that you have. You can repair it, you can add to its vitality, you can strengthen the functional system, you can make it more perfect and efficient. ”

“ A strong heart, therefore, is if anything even more important than a strong stomach. But you must remember that the strength of the heart to a large extent depends upon the cooperation of a strong stomach, or at least upon the proper digestion of food. For the muscles and tissues of the heart, like those of all other organs of the body, are fed by the blood, which depends for its life-giving and life- sustaining qualities upon the food, which is first acted upon by the stomach and thus made available for use by the cell structures in all parts of the body. ”

“ When the dinner-hour came there was an added relish that was a new experience, and I left the table with a stomach so supplied that there was no need of apprehension as to an attack of faintness during the afternoon. There is no natural hunger in the morning after a night of restful sleep, because there has been no such degree of cell destruction as to create a demand for food at the ordinary hour of the American breakfast. Sleep is not a hunger-causing process. ”

“ Mind-The Master-force for Health or Disease
We hear of many miraculous achievements in the building of health and the cure of disease through mental influence. The mind is unquestionably a master-force. I will not go so far as to say it is limitless, for certainly a hungry man cannot imagine he is eating a dinner and secure the same benefits that he would from the meal itself. Nor can a man who is passing away into the other world, through a definite vital defect, bring back life through mental force. ”

“ Now you are to abolish your breakfast, and not to presume to eat again without keen hunger; this hunger you may have if you wait for it, even while sitting in an arm chair, or lying in bed, and it will be for food as nourishing as the axman requires. What shall be eaten at each meal will be a law for self to determine. No food is good or healthful, and therefore typical, without a special demand for it. Keen hunger, the most relishing of foods, thoroughly masticated, a recreative state of mind during digestion, these are the easily acquired conditions behind sustained health. ”

“ There is a limit to the development of the physical force, but health is attainable by the majority. So long as there is life you should be possessed of sufficient vitality to attain a normal degree of health. It really takes more power to run a defective machine than it does to operate one in which all parts are working in harmony, and the same can be said of the body and its parts or organs. Therefore, if you have vitality enough to continue to live even though diseased, rest assured that you have enough to acquire health if you conform to Nature's enactments. ”

“ Nature's protest against the incipience of a health-destroying habit. Nor does instinct yield to the first disregard of its appeals: Nausea, gripes, nervous headaches and gastric spasms warn the novice again and again. But we repeat the dose, and Nature, true to her highest law of preserving existence at any price, and realizing the hopelessness of the life-endangering struggle, finally chooses the alternative of palliating an evil for which she has no remedy, and adapts herself to the abnormal condition. ”

“ Individuality is crushed out. Now the child is not so much like clay to be molded into any form, as it is like a precious crystal, that must be shaped with regard to its original nature. Each human soul is an uncut diamond. ”

“ THE ONE MEAL PLAN.
The progress of culture often resembles the undulating rise of the tide, rather than the steady advance of a river current; the rippling waves surge in capricious eddies and for a time may even seem to recede. Scientific tenets familiar to the philosophers of pagan antiquity were lost sight of during the night of the Middle Ages, and in the dawn of modern civilization are apt to be viewed with doubt or accepted as novel discoveries. ”

“ We must admit, however, that many cannot maintain their weight and keep their full allowance of energy on a vegetarian diet. Where you find a vegetarian whose skin is white, whose lips are colorless, who is thin and seemingly in need of nourishment, you can rest assured that the diet is not agreeing with him. Such persons in virtually every instance need animal food of some sort. It is therefore wise, if you are searching for a diet that is capable of developing in you the greatest degree of mental and physical efficiency, to make a careful study of your individual condition and requirements. ”

“ The idea of insisting on three daily meals of greasy, apopleptic, heat-aggravating viands is preposterous at a season that makes the struggle for existence a fight against a fever-heat atmosphere; nor is there any real need for "something warm" three times a day. We might as well aggravate the grievance of a blizzard with artificial refrigerants, or swallow opiates while imploring heaven for strength to watch and pray. ”

“ One great drawback to American sports is the tendency to take them too seriously. There is too much of strained effort involved in the desire to win the game at any price. Keep yourself in a state of mind where you "see the fun." Though "playing to win" may be commended, the real purpose of any game is the fun and benefit that is secured therefrom whether you win or lose. There have been cases when members of a boat crew or a football team have actually cried over a lost game. Imagine the nerve strain involved in taking athletics so seriously! ”

“ A bicyclist may work his pedals till his spine is twisted by cramps and his fingers threaten to relax their grip; his lungs may heave and gasp without betraying any other symptoms of distress, a pedestrian may trudge along till his knee-joints stagger and sleep tries to enforce its rights in the middle of the track, but no trace of asthma, while a shouldered weight of perhaps less than a hundred pounds suddenly "cuts the breath," as if the valves of the respiratory apparatus had closed with a snap. ”

“ It is only when you are thus thrilled with the eternal force of life that you reach the highest pinnacle of attainable capacities and powers. Hidden forces, sometimes marvelous and mysterious, lie within nearly every human soul. ”

“ But what the self-torturers are really afraid of is a "draught;" in other words, air in motion. Perceptible currents of air, no matter how pure, no matter how passionately welcomed by the miasma-clogged lungs, they dread as messengers of death. Their fear of night-air is founded chiefly on the circumstance that the cooling of the atmosphere generates air-currents within a few hours after the sunset even of the sultriest day. So they close their bedroom windows or nail them down; they invent double window-sashes and "weather-strips," to exclude the slightest breath of life-air. ”