PSYCHE AND SOMA

The following is an excerpt from John Little's forthcoming book Max Contraction: The Scientifically Proven Program For Building Muscle Mass In Minimum Time.

It was the ancient Greeks who first posited the idea of a strong body’s direct relationship to sound mental health; the Greeks glorified the building of the body and mind simultaneously, and were the first to combine their academic institutions with their gymnasiums for the express purpose of cultivating “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” It was athletics, more than anything else, which served to frame the constitution of the Greek character. As historian Will Durant points out:

Religion failed to unify Greece, but athletics – periodically – succeeded. Men went to Olympia, Delphi, Corinth, and Nemea not so much to honor the gods – for these could be honored anywhere – as to witness the heroic contests of chosen athletes, and the ecumenical assemblage of varied Greeks. Alexander, who could see Greece from without, considered Olympia the capital of the Greek world. Here under the rubric of athletics we find the real religion of the Greeks – the worship of health, beauty, and strength….We must not think of the average Greek as a student and lover of Aeschylus or Plato; rather, like the typical Briton or American, he was interested in sport, and his favored athletes were his earthly gods….To the Greek the best life [was] the fullest one, rich in health, strength, beauty, passion, means, adventure, and thought. Virtue is arete, manly … excellence…precisely what the Romans called vir-tus, man-liness. The Athenian ideal man is the kalokagathos, who combines beauty and justice in a gracious art of living that frankly values ability, fame, wealth, and friends as well as virtue and humanity; as with Goethe, self-development is everything. ¹

From the isle of Ceos the Greek poet Simonides (ca.556-468 B.C.) announced: “To be in health is the best thing for man; the next best, to be of form and nature beautiful; the third, to enjoy wealth gotten without fraud; and the fourth, to be in youth’s bloom among friends.” ² And the legendary Homer reminded the ancient Greeks in his Odyssey (which was virtually the “Bible” of the Greeks), “There is no greater glory for a man as long as he lives, than that which he wins by his own hands and feet.” ³

The era in which Simonides wrote is commonly referred to by historians as the “Golden Age” of our human heritage (Homer, who legend informs us first sang his songs in the ninth century B.C., also spoke of a “Golden Age” that reigned approximately one thousand years before the siege of Troy) and was truly ideal in many respects, giving us everything from democracy, literature, philosophy, science, schools, universities, gymnasiums and stadiums, to trial by jury, drama, along with engineering and medical science (to name but a few of their gifts). Although we “moderns” are inclined to think of the body has something separate from the mind, the ancient Greeks fully grasped the concept that the two were interrelated, and, indeed, that a well-developed body was a precondition to a well-developed mind. In fact, the Greek solider and historian Xenophon (430-354 B.C.) reported that the great philosopher Socrates was among the strongest advocates of this concept, as evidenced in the following exchange between the old philosopher and his young friend Epigenes:

Socrates: You’re out of training, Epigenes.

Epigenes: I don’t do physical training, Socrates.

Socrates: But you ought to….In the first place, those who keep themselves fit are healthy and strong; and this means that many of them come through the conflicts of war with honor, and escape from all its dangers; many help their friends and do service to their country, and so earn gratitude and win great glory and achieve the most splendid honors, and consequently live out their lives with greater pleasure and distinction, and leave behind them a better start in life for their children….You can take it from me that there is …no activity of any kind in which you will be at a disadvantage from having your body better prepared. The body is valuable for all human activities, and in all its uses it is very important that it should be as fit as possible. Even in the act of thinking, which is supposed to require least assistance from the body, everyone knows that serious mistakes often happen through physical ill-health. Many people’s minds are often so invaded by forgetfulness, despondency, irritability and insanity because of their poor physical condition that their knowledge is actually driven out of them. On the other hand, those who are in good physical condition have ample cause for confidence and run no risk of any such misfortune through debility. Their physical fitness is likely to contribute towards results that are contrary to those of unfitness – results which a sane man would surely endure any hardships to secure. Besides, it is a shame to let yourself grow old through neglect before seeing how you can develop the maximum beauty and strength of your body...⁴

It is a shame that the insights of many of these ancient Greek sages aren’t given much attention in our bodybuilding magazines these days, and the result is that bodybuilding is increasingly coming to be viewed as something merely cosmetic, rather than essential, to our daily life. The ancient ideal of a “healthy mind in a healthy body” is all but forgotten and certainly is no longer actively championed (save, perhaps, for the writings of the author and the late Mike Mentzer). However, as Durant pointed out, health and strength were necessary to the realization of the ideal of kalokagathos, being necessary and vital adjuncts to living a fuller, more rewarding life.

Many bodybuilding authorities are content to dismiss the “mind” as something ephemeral and separate from the body, and, therefore, when they speak of “total fitness” they confine themselves solely to issues of strength, flexibility and endurance, with little or no indication of the mental benefits or even the mental connection that attends physical training. The truth is that total health must, by definition, include both  “physical and mental;” i.e., the body and mind – and that the mind, rather than being something detached from the body, is actually a function of the brain -- which is just as much a physical part of the body as the biceps. The mind and body are interrelated -- after all, the muscles contract via impulses from the Central Nervous System, of which the mind (and personality) are a part – and both require exercise to grow stronger.

NOTES:

1. Durant, Will; The Life Of Greece; pp. 211, 298. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1939.
2. Symonds, J.A., p. 187, Studies of the Greek Poets. London, 1920. p. 187.
3. Homer, viii, 146; Odyssey. Text and tr. By A.T. Murray. 2v. Loeb Library.

Xenophon, Memoirs Of Socrates, 3.12.3; pps171-172, Xenophon, Conversations Of Socrates, Penguin Classics, Translated by Hugh Tredennick and Robin Waterfield, Penguin Books, New York.