The Pillars on Which Life Is Built

Speakers — whether their subject be science, politics, or economics — are accustomed to point, in the course of their talk, to the noble virtues, and to call upon their hearers to acquire praiseworthy qualities such as resolution, honesty, and self-reliance, as being the pillars upon which the good life is built: the life of the individual and the life of the community.

And if these speakers enlarge upon their theme, they commend the sciences and learning, and place them in the second rank, alongside nobility of nature and honor of purpose.

Then, if they go further still, they point to health, and count it the third pillar in the making of the active, upright individual and the active, upright nation.

This ordering may not concern us, and may not concern others either, so long as it is established in principle that virtue, knowledge, and health are the fundamental factors in the renaissances of peoples and in their ascent to the summits of eminence and glory.

But there is no doubt that ignorance is not the root of all ills, and that it is not the cause that brought the Eastern nations, for example, to their present condition. The ignorance of the Westerners in the Middle Ages was no less than the ignorance of the Easterners in those days; and yet the state of our lands in those ages did not differ greatly from our state today. The superiority of the nations that swept over the Near East and raised their flags upon these shores of the Mediterranean is to be attributed, rather, to a solid character whose most evident marks were solidarity, mutual support, and true resolve.

The truth is that nations are their sound morals; and beyond that, they are sound minds and sound bodies. And there are in human society no institutions greater in importance or truer in benefit than the three establishments that refine the soul, elevate the mind, and strengthen the body: the temple, the school, and the athletic club.

Nations are their nerves, too, even before nations are their morals, and before nations are their brains. History offers clear proofs that the peoples weakened by epidemics and diseases are the abject peoples who stretch out their necks for the yoke of others, so that their lives and their goods are laid open to plunder; while the peoples made strong by the kinds of physical exercise to which they resort, and by their observance of the conditions of clean, healthful living, are the venturesome peoples who march on the blessings of their resolve to the east of the earth and to its west, consolidating the pillars of their influence and spreading the ways of their civilization in the regions where they alight.

If, then, our country has become famous for the abundance of its temples and the abundance of its schools, its fame must be no less in the works that safeguard public health from calamities and dangers; and among these important works that must be undertaken is the practice of bodily and mental exercise.

Our Arab forefathers were, in all periods of history, devotees of bodily exercise: they rode horses and raced one another upon them; they bore swords and dueled with them; and they excelled in this exercise, and in the desert today they remain the very byword for horsemanship and daring. The Westerners, for their part, have gone a long way in the field of physical exercise, and have made it a means of training soul and body together.

The Easterners have bestirred themselves to attend to this important kind of education, and have begun to establish playing fields and athletic clubs. Our sister Egypt has begun to represent her country in the world Olympic Games, and most of our schools have come to give physical exercise a special importance in their programs — the reason for which needs no explanation. Suffice it for me to say that the nations which practice athletic games are the nations in which activity, order, fellowship, and concord shine forth; indeed, they are the nations able to overcome the blows of fortune and the calamities of life. This being so, our young men and young women must be drawn to take a greater interest in physical exercise, and clubs for it must be established in greater numbers, for such a club is the best place a person can frequent after the toil of the day's work. Nor is there any doubt that bodily exercise is a kind of spiritual and mental exercise as well: it refines the soul, disciplines the mind, and makes a person more capable of attending to his work and performing his duties.