Strength, and how to obtain it / by Eugen Sandow.

  • Sandow, Eugen, 1867-1925.
Date:
[1901]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Strength, and how to obtain it / by Eugen Sandow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    accomplishment. But that is not the aim of physical culture. Its ultimate object is to raise the average standard of the race as a whole. That is, no doubt, a stupendous task, and one which it may take many life- times to accomplish. But everything must have its beginning, and unless we set about improving the physique of the present generation, we cannot hope to benefit those who come after us. Healthier and more perfect men and women will beget children with better constitutions and more free from hereditary taint. They in their turn, if the principles and the duty of physical culture are early instilled into them, will grow up more perfect types of men and women than were their mothers and fathers. So the happy progression will go on, until, who knows, if in the days to come there will not be a race of mortals walking this earth of ours even surpassing those who, according to the old myth, were the offspring of the union of the sons of the gods with the daughters of men! That is, perhaps, an almost impossible ideal, but it is well to set one's ideals high. Surely what has been done for the horse and the dog cannot be impossible of accomplishment in the case of man. At all events, it is worth trying.” To wind up this chapter with a word of encourage- ment to those who come quite fresh to the subject; to those who in taking up Physical Culture are venturing into what is to them unexplored territory—“ Read, think, and work. Do not be disheartened because your progress at first seems slow; nothing worth having is to be won without labour. I can only tell you what to do, only point out to you the right road. The rest lies with yourself. I should be the sorriest humbug if I endeavoured to make you believe otherwise, and you would be the simplest of fools if you did believe me. There is no royal road to success, and a very bad thing would it be if there were. For your reward lies not so much in the accomplishment as in the effort an cl struggle, and all the good qualities which they bring out.”