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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely physical
impression, and secondly to a sense of power in action. The first
source of pleasure varies of course with our condition and the
state of the surrounding circumstances; the second with the amount
and kind of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all forms
of active exercise there are three powers simultaneously in action,
- the will, the muscles, and the intellect. Each of these
predominates in different kinds of exercise. In walking, the will
and muscles are so accustomed to work together and perform their
task with so little expenditure of force, that the intellect is
left comparatively free. The mental pleasure in walking, as such,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
