Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 205

Practical success in life depends more upon physical health than is generally imagined. Hodson, of Hodson’s Horse, writing home to a friend in England, said, “I believe, if I get on well in India, it will be owing, physically speaking, to a sound digestion.” The capacity for continuous working in any calling must necessarily depend in a great measure upon this; and hence the necessity for attending to health, even as a means of intellectual labour. It is perhaps to the neglect of physical exercise that we find amongst students so frequent a tendency towards discontent, unhappiness, inaction, and reverie,—displaying itself in contempt for real life and disgust at the beaten tracks of men,—a tendency which in England has been called Byronism, and in Germany Wertherism. Dr. Channing noted the same growth in America, which led him to make the remark, that “too many of our young men grow up in a school of despair.” The only remedy for this green-sickness in youth is physical exercise—action, work, and bodily occupation.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 205 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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