The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-23
IN PRAISE OF THE FIST.
MAETERLINCK'S DEFENCE OF BOXING AS MEANS OF ATTACK.

Peace and GentIeness-Man and In-
 sect.
 In this holiday season 1t is well that we should occupy ourselves with the aptitudes of our body, once more re- stored to nature, and in particular with the exercise that most increase its strength, it's agility, and the qualities which it possesses as the body of a fine, healthy formidable animal, ready to face all life's exigencies.
 I remember in this connection that lately, when writing of the sword, al- lowed myself to be carried away by my subject and that was guilty of a cer- tain injustice toward the only specific weapon with which nature has endowed us; mean the fist. This injustice am anxious to repair.
 The sword and the fist form each others complement, and If it be not un- gracious thus to express oneself, are on good terms together; but the sword is or should be only an exceptional weapon, a sort of ultima ct sacra ratio We should not have recourse to it save with solemn precautions and cers- monial equivalent to that with which we surround those criminal trials when many end in sentence of death.
 The fist, on the contrary, is preemi- nently the everyday, the human wea- pon, the only weapon organically adapt ed to the sensibility, the resistance, the off ,oJ 1oPa sty pp our body.
 The fact is that if we examine our selves well we must rank ourselves, without vanity, among the most unpro- tected, the most naked, the most fragile the most brittle and faccid beings in creation. Compare US, for instance, with the insect, so formidably equipped for attack and so fantastically arnor cased! Contemplate among oth~ CTS The ant, upon which you may heap ten or twenty thousand times the weight of it's body without apparently inconveniencing it. Consider the cock chafer, the least robust of the beetles, and weigh what it is able to carry be- fore the rings of its abdomen craclS nr the castings of it's foreWings yield. As for the resistance of the stag beetle, it is, so to speak, unlimited.
 In comparison, therefore, we and the majority of mammals are unsolidi1ed beings, still in the gelatinous state and very near to the primitive protoplasm. Our skeleton alone, which is, as it were, the rough sketch of our definitive form, In ieto 11,1+ wretched is this skeleton, which one would think constructed by a child! Look at our spine, the basis of our whole system, whose i'll set vertebrae hold together only Toy miracle, and our thoracic cage, which presents only series of diagonals which We hardly dare touch with the finger tips.
 Now, 1t is against this slack and in- coherent machine. which resembles an Abortive effort of nature, against this pitiful organism, from which life tends to escape on every side, that we have contrived weapons capable of annihllat- ing us even if we possessed the fabu- lous armor case, the prodigius strength and the incredible vitality of the most irdestructible insects.
 We have here, it must be agreed, a very curious and very disconcerting aIbberratlon, an initial folly peculiar to the human race, that goes on increasing daily. Tn order to return to the natural logic followed by all other living things though we be permitted to use extraordinal weapons against our enc mics of different order, we ought among ourselves, among men to employ only the means of attack and defence provided by our own bodies. Were mankind to conform strictly to the evil dent will of nature, the fist-which is 10 man what its horns are to the bull and its claws and teeth to the lion the fist should suffice for all our needs of protection. justice and re- venge. A wiser race would forbid any other mode of combat as an irremisslble crime against the essential laws of the species At the end of few genera tions we should thus succeed In spread ing and putting into force sort of panic-stricken respect of human life.
 How prompt, how exactly in accord arce with natures wishes would be the selection brought about by the inten- sive practice of pugilism in which all the hopes of military glory would be centred. Now selection is after all. the only really important thing that claims our preoccupation; 1t Is the first, the greatest and the most eternal of our duties toward the race
 Meanwhile the study of boxing gives us excellent lessons in humility and throws a somewhat alarming lightupon the forfeiture of some of our most valu- able instincts. We soon perceive that, in all that concerns the use of our limbs agility, dexterlty, muscular strength, resistance to pain-we have sunk to the lowest rank of the mammals or bat rachians. From this point of view in 8 we'll conceived hierrachy, we should be entitled to a modest place between the frog and the sheep, The kick of the horse, the butt of the bull, the bite of the dog, are mechanically and ana tomicaly perfect. It would be impOssi- ble to improve by the most learned lessons their instinctive manner of us ing their natural weapons, But we, the hominians, the proudest of the pri- mates, do not know how to strike with our fist. We do not even know which exactly Is the weapon of our kind.
 Look at two draymen, two peasants, who come to blows; nothing could be more pitable. After a copious and dila- 5-s1 E,