Cleanliness and Competence

Here are some thoughts from David Starr Jordan on health and habits and cleanliness and competence, recalled for their forthright frankness: “The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe,” he said “is the brain of man… The sober man is the one who protects his brain from all that would do it hard… The Twentieth Century above all others will be strenuous, complex… [and] will ask for men of instant decision, men whose mental equipment is all in order,… No one can afford to look downward for his enjoyments. …The pleasures of vice are mere illusions, tricks of the nervous system, and each time these tricks are played it is more and more difficult for the mind to tell the truth. Such deceptions come through drunkenness and narcoticism. In greater or less degree all nerve-affecting drugs produce it; alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opium, cocaine, and all the rest, strong or weak. Habitual use of any of these is a physical vice. A physical vice becomes a moral vice, and all vice leaves its record on the nervous system. To cultivate vice is to render the actual machinery of our mind incapable of normal action… It is the brain’s business to know, to think… and to act… One and all these various drugs tend to give the impression of a power or a pleasure, or an activity, which we do not possess. One and all their function is to force the nervous system to lie. One and all the result of their habitual use is to render the nervous system incapable of ever telling the truth. …Indulgence… destroys wisdom and virtue; it destroys faith and hope and love… Whatever you do,… count all the cost… Thus spoke the eminent educator, Dr. Jordan, builder of character, of minds, and of men. And this also he added: “To be clean is to be strong… To say no at the right time, and then stand by it, is the first element of success… He is the wise man who, for all his life, can keep mind and soul and body clean.”¹