On Intellectual and Physical Life
Shall we for ever be adding so much to the bulk — so little to the stock?
In moments of quiet desperation, one is given to wonder whether one’s life might better have been executed in lifting heavy objects instead of studying the tongues and customs of the world. Envy of the unlearned, as all momentary locuras, does not leave the mind but that it leaves its trace of doubt upon it. There are marked similarities between the sculptor of the body and the sculptor of the mind, that essential truth of repetitio est mater studiorum being found in both disciplines. I know of no better method of learning than that of rote repetition which has fallen out of favour, and the Bodybuilder employs the same principle to his craft, lifting increasingly heavy objects as you or I would read increasingly heavy books.
But while the Thinker, having built his store of knowledge, must then proceed to create great works upon its basis, the Bodybuilder is content to retire to the changing room and count his muscles in the mirror, taking this to be the fruit of his labour and not merely its seedling.
But what is that which protrudes from our eyes, Thinkers, if not a log? Do we not shovel heaps and heaps upon the bulk of our knowledge while neglecting the stock? A man who writes more than he reads is one thing, but a man who reads, and reads, and reads, without producing anything himself that might be read is nothing more than a bulbous brain.
Let us take two examples to illustrate our case: Horatio and Geraldo. Horatio spends his day in intellectual pursuits, memorising intermediate French dialogues through which he will assimilate the grammatical structure of the language. He includes some supplementary study time memorising individual words. At night he dines of a cheese platter and drinks a bottle of Bordeux in order to align his physical composition with that of a Frenchman. This is where his mental exercise ends, and he finishes the day in this agitated and unrealised state.
Geraldo passes the day in the gymnasium lifting weights, one after another. He lifts one weight to exercise his right arm, another to exercise his left, and then another to exercise his left leg — and so on until he has exercised every muscle of his body, besides the brain. He puts himself to no useful application before the setting of the sun.
These two men go to bed — separately and in two different homes — and each is punished by his own uselessness. Geraldo is unable to stop his limbs from flailing about, prepared as they are for some useful exercise which he has failed to bring them too. He suffers somnambulism. While his mind is locked in a night-terror, his body betrays him, seizing hammers and polyfiller, nails and paint from the store-cupboard, and he awakes the next morning to find that he has attempted to redecorate the kitchen.
Horatio’s mind, meanwhile, is assailed by intermediate French dialogues —
Quel est le nom de la station où on change de ligne ?
Ça fait combien ?
Que font les Parisiens quand ils veulent voyager rapidement ?
— and when he awakes, he is unable to speak anything but these three phrases, and his mother is in his bed.
The moral of this tale should be clear enough to the reader.
nerd
This entire article was basically just one giant slippery slope argument. Since you clearly can’t think, maybe you should hit the gym and try to make at least something of yourself