INFLUENCE OF HEALTH ON CHARACTER.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2627, 9 June 1877, Page 4

INFLUENCE OF HEALTH ON CHARACTER.

Bad health and good health have obviously a strong influence on the formation of character, and yet it is always impossible to say a priori how either will act on. any given individual. Thus it seems easy for a large, eupeptic, and jolly-looking man /to have a good temper. The wind that beats the mountain blows more gently about his large curves. It visits with a sharper inquisition the meagre angles of a lean and physically ill-conditioned person, and it is not surprising if the former, is comfortable - and happy, while the latter is exasperated and peevish. A large man can endure more fatigue before his energy drops to that languid state in which all the wheels of being are slow, and the body and mind resent every sort of contact, everything that forces exertion on them. But the favoured of nature' in health are apt to degenerate in character by reason of a physical pride like the "intel-' lectual pride " which .preachers speak of, and which, according to one famous liberal theologian, is a purely. mythical and imaginary sin. Physical pride is only too real a failing, and causes only too much unhappiness in families. The healthy, member, who is a great eater of beef, has merged his imagination and his sympathies in a tyrannical robustness. Though he would be the first to blame the moral Pharisee who should declare that he never slipped "from righteousness, the physical Pharisee is eternally bragging that he never was wearied out. He may think that the hero talked too largely who declared that he.did not know what fear was like, but for himself he insists that he does not know what fatigue is like. Thus the result of his natural gifts is a certain hardness and cruelty. He opines that boys should " rough it," and is an advocate of fagging and bullying. The healthy tyrant is all for hardening everyone, and he revives the cold water torture of the theological past for the benefit of his more delicate children. The expression which he uses most frequently is " Nerves all nonsense ; look at me ; " aud then he bores his audience with the recital of some cruelty that he practised or endured in his youth.—Saturday Eeview.