p. 221 | Health and Temperance by The Spectator

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 8, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 14.

Health and Temperance.

By The Spectator

Rest or Recreation.

WHAT men chiefly forget in their holiday-making is that, besides discontinuing their ordinary occupations, and substituting for them other occupations which awaken a different class of interests, they should find something for themselves to do which will awaken a new sense of power within them distinct from that which their ordinary vocation awakens. That is the truest new creation or recreation of self, which brings into exercise disused powers. The politician who recalls his delight in poetry, perhaps even his own poetic powers; the philanthropist who returns to his special scientific tastes to find them as keen as ever; the scientific man who fills himself with the world of beauty and art; the scholar who revives his theology; the theologian who rubs up his astronomy,—all these create themselves anew, so long as they do not undertake anything too fatiguing, in a sense far more genuine than those who simply amuse themselves during the whole time of their holidays. It is the revivification of dormant powers, wherever that is possible, which has most effect in refreshing the whole mind,—in restoring to it its vividness and force.

The practical world in which busy men and women live, is a very narrow one, which only stimulates half their powers. The true secret of recreation is to find, where that is possible, a stimulus for those powers which are not exerted in life's ordinary routine. And though this, of course, is more or less effected by every journey in which wonder is excited and the sense of beauty gratified, it is not effected half as systematically and effectually as it might be, if men would keep more steadily in view the half-submerged tastes and studies of their non-professional life. A man becomes a new man by recovering a submerged portion of himself, in a sense far more real than that in which mere rest and passive enjoyment can make him a new man.—The Spectator.