If the mind absorbed and digested the true principles of ethics, so that the heart felt moved to use them, it might--it probably would--make a great change in the lives of the boys and girls who studied it--a change that would surprise and delight their parents and friends.
If the science of keeping rested were given in schools in the way that, in most cases, the science of ethics seems to be given now, the idea of rest would lie in an indigestible lump on the minds of the students, and instead of being absorbed, digested and carried out in their daily lives, would be evaporated little by little into the air, or vomited off the mind in various jokes about it, and other expressions that would prove the children knew nothing of what they were being taught.
But again, I am glad to repeat--if instruction, _practical_ instruction, were given every day in the schools on how to form the habit of keeping rested, it would have a wonderful effect upon the whole country, not to mention where in many individual cases it would actually prevent the breaking out of hereditary disease.
Nature always tends toward health; so strongly, so habitually does nature tend toward health that it seems at times as if the working of natural laws pushed some people into health in spite of chronic antagonism they seem to have against health--one might even say in spite of the wilful refusal of health.
When one's body is kept rested, nature is constantly throwing off germs of disease, constantly working, and working most actively, to protect the body from anything that would interfere with its perfect health.
When one's body is not rested, nature works just as hard, but the tired body--through its various forms of tension that impede the circulation, prevent the healthy absorption of food and oxygen, and clog the way so that impurities cannot be carried off--interferes with nature's work and thus makes it impossible for her to keep the machine well oiled.
When we are tired, the very fact of being tired makes us more tired, unless we rest properly.
A great deal--it seems to me more than one-half--of the fatigue in the world comes from the need of an intelligent understanding of how to keep rested.

The more that lack of intelligence is allowed to grow, the worse it is going to be for the health of the nation.

We have less of that plain common sense than our grandfathers and grandmothers.

They had less than their fathers and mothers.

We need more than our ancestors, because life is more complicated now, than it was then.