heet of their
physical assets and liabilities,--physicians will study the whole man
and not the fraction of a man in which they happen to be specializing
or about which the patient worries. By removing the mystery of bodily
ailments and by familiarizing ourselves with the essentials to healthy
living, we find protection against charlatans, quacks, faddists, and
experimenters. By taking a periodic inventory of our physical resources
we discharge a sacred obligation of citizenship.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] See _Dangerous Trades_, compiled by Thomas Oliver; also list of
reports by the United States Bureau of Labor.

CHAPTER XXII

HABITS OF HEALTH PROMOTE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY

Education's highest aim is to train us to do the right thing at the
right moment without having to think. The technic of musician,
stenographer, artist, electrician, surgeon, orator, is gained only from
patient training of the body's reflex muscles to do brain work.[12] The
lower nerve centers are storehouses for the brain energy, just as
central power houses are used for storing electric energy to be spent
upon demand. From habit, not from mental effort, we turn to the right,
say "I beg pardon" when we step on another's foot, give our seats to
ladies or to elderly persons, use acceptable table manners. No person
seems "to the manner born" who has to think out each act necessary to
"company manners." How numerous are the mental and physical processes
essential to good manners no one ever recognizes but the very bashful
or the uncouth person trying to cultivate habits of unconsciousness in
polite society. The habit of living ethically enables us to go through
life without being tempted to steal or lie or do physical violence. No
person's morals can be relied upon who is tempted constantly to do
immoral acts; ethical training seeks to incapacitate us for committing
unethical deeds and to habituate us to ethical acts alone.

Eight different elements of industrial efficiency are concerned with
the individual's health habits,--the industrial worker, his industrial
product, his employer, his employer's profit, his trade or profession,
its product, his nation, national product. Obviously few men have so
little to do that they have time to think out in detail how this act or
that indulgence will affect each of these eight factors of industrial
efficiency. Once convinced, however, that all of these elements are
either helped or injured by the individu