Euthenics, the science of controllable environment. Ellen H. Richards

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СКАЧАТЬ mental conditions of communities, endeavoring to get behind the causes of poverty and consequent suffering to the reasons for fatal indifference to dirt.

      It is well recognized that in severe sicknesses of many kinds the will to get well is more powerful than drugs, that something which we call nerve force acting upon the physical machine sends a vital current through the arteries, coerces the heart to renewed pumping action, and life comes again to the blanched cheek and glazing eye. This more often happens by a mental stimulus than by any medicine. In like manner the improvement of the body’s shell, the home, like that of the soul’s shell, the body, comes more often from an inward impulse than from outward coercion.

      Appeal to the loving but listless parent will reach the heart quickest through love for the child. Therefore stress should be laid on the child, its habits, its surroundings, its ideals. By ideals is meant the very real stimulus to action coming from within. Action must come through the material things which ideals control and through which they express themselves.

      Certain notions which have crept into popular currency need to be corrected before the individual can free himself from bondage sufficiently to attempt constructive advance and improvement.

      Only a small percentage of adults obtain the full efficiency from the human machine—the only means they have of living, working, enjoying. They permit themselves to stand and walk badly, they breathe with only a portion of their lungs, and so fail to furnish the blood stream with oxygen. They dress unhygienically. They eat wrongly. They exercise little. In short, they subject their bodies to abusive treatment which would ruin any machine. Because retribution does not instantly follow infraction of Nature’s laws, they become callous and unbelieving. Economy and efficiency in human time and strength is one of the lessons to be taught the young people, so that they may not waste their patrimony.

      The youth feels as rich in his fifty years to come as he does with a legacy of $50,000 in the bank. The years, however, can yield only small variations from the established rate of interest. The human machine can manufacture only a limited amount of energy. It remains to utilize that quantity to the best advantage. This can be done only by having a purpose in life strong enough to resist alluring temptations to fritter away both time and strength.

      One of the world’s busy workers found that the distractions of urban life were breaking in upon his working time and making inroads upon his physical vitality. He recognized that work for the body and work for the mind must be balanced, and he evolved an acrostic to be followed as a rule of life, the fulfillment of which has meant prolonged years of efficient work and has kept the freshness of middle life with the advancing years. Taking the six days of the week as a unit, the acrostic is as follows:

The Feast of Life
F	Food	One-tenth the time
E	Exercise	One-tenth the time
A	Amusement	One-tenth the time
S	Sleep	Three-tenths the time
T	Task	Four-tenths the time

      The first and last are nearly fixed quantities, the other three may vary within certain limits as to amount of time given and intensity of effort. Amusement and exercise may be taken together; exercise and sleep may be somewhat interchangeable.

      The task, or daily work, is a necessity for mental and physical health. It should be accepted as a part of human life and the will and energy should be directed to doing it well. It may be a pure delight, the most entertaining thing that happens; it should be interesting. It is astonishing how interesting a dull piece of work may become if one sets one’s self to doing it well. That which one subconsciously knows one is doing badly is drudgery. The real pleasure in life comes not from so-called amusements—things done by other people to make one laugh; to “take one’s mind off”—but from seeing the work of one’s own hand and brain prosper. The work of creation, of transformation to desirable result, is the purest joy the human mind can experience. Fourteen hours a day is not too much for this kind of task. The difficulty is to gain skill of hand and eye, or training of mind, to this end. A fallacy, a canker at the heart of our social fabric today, is that the daily task is something to be rid of.

      The psychology of doing is clearly illustrated in the character of Fool Billy, as drawn by the author of “Priscilla of the Good Intent.”

      “Is there nought ye like better than idleness?” asked the blacksmith. “Think now, Billy—just ponder over it.”

      “Well, now,” answered the other, after a silence, “there’s playing—what ye might call playing at a right good game. Could ye think of some likely pastime, David?”

      “Ay, could I; blowing bellows is the grandest frolic ever I came across.” …

      “I doubt ’tis work, David. … I shouldn’t like to be trapped into work. ’Twould scare me when I woke o’ nights and thought of it.”

      “See ye then, Billy”—blowing the bellows gently—“is it work to make yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive ’em?”

      “Te-he, ’tis just a bit o’ sport—I hadn’t thought of it in that light.” And soon he was blowing steadily.

      Later, when David the smith was going to America and wished to leave his forge with the half-witted Billy, he proposed the smith’s work as play.

      “Te-he,” laughed Billy, “am I to play wi’ all your fine tools, David?”

      “Ay, just that. I’ve taught ye the way o’ them and Dan Foster’s lad from Brow Farm shall come and blow the bellows for you.”

      “Will that be work for Dan Foster’s lad, or play?”

      “Hard work, Billy—grievous hard work, while you are just playing at making horseshoes, fence railings, and what not.”

      “And I’m to play at making horseshoes,” went on Fool Billy, “while Dan Foster’s lad’s sweating hard at bellows-blowing.”

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      Community effort is needed to make better conditions for all, in streets and public places, for water and milk supply, hospitals, markets, housing problems, etc. Restraint for sake of neighbors.

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