But you may be
sure that Bacon and Sydenham did not recommend it for nothing. One's
_hepar_, or, in vulgar language, liver,--a ponderous organ, weighing
some three or four pounds,--goes up and down like the dasher of a
churn in the midst of the other vital arrangements, at every step of
a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up like coppers in a
moneybox. Riding is good, for those that are born with a silver-mounted
bridle in their hand, and can ride as much and as often as they like,
without thinking all the time they hear that steady grinding sound as
the horse's jaws triturate with calm lateral movement the bank-bills and
promises to pay upon which it is notorious that the profligate animal in
question feeds day and night.
Instead, however, of considering these kinds of exercise in this
empirical way, I will devote a brief space to an examination of them in
a more scientific form.
The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely physical impression,
and secondly to a sense of power in action. The first source of pleasure
varies of course with our condition and the state of the surrounding
circumstances; the second with the amount and kind of power, and the
extent and kind of action. In all forms of active exercise there are
three powers simultaneously in action,--the will, the muscles, and the
intellect.
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