Sound in body, mind, and morals – Sunday, May 01, 1960
As to the balance we need for fullest effectiveness, we would recall today some sentences on physical and mental and moral fitness, on wholeness in the living of life. It is, of course, possible to work, to serve, to accomplish many things without being well balanced, without peace and health and happiness, without the full and well-rounded living of life. Even a man with an unquiet conscience can account for some accomplishment. But how much more accomplishment could he account for if he had the poise that comes with peace, with an awareness of sound mental and moral and physical foundations.
One of the barriers to fitness is imbalance, excesses, the failure of what is sometimes called common sense. In the really healthy and happy man, there is a kind of wholeness—wholesome, we sometimes call it. Wholesome is a meaningful word which the dictionary defines as “spiritual or mental health or well-being . . . beneficial to character . . . sound in body, mind, and morals.” It is the opposite of dissipation, of extremes and excesses; the opposite of immorality, of a brooding spirit, of a clouded mind, of a cluttered conscience; the opposite of harmful habits. “Wholesome” is an awareness that “wickedness never was happiness,”1 nor was anything else that upsets the harmonious working of mind and spirit and physical functioning. The sounder we are physically, mentally, morally, the safer we are, and the more effective and happier we are in the pursuit of life’s great and wonderful purposes.
To cite again some lines from John Locke” A sound mind in a sound body is a short, but full description of a happy state in this world. . .. The great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this: that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations. . .. though the appetite leans the other way. . ..”2 With wholesomeness come wisdom and knowledge and the peace of a quiet conscience.
1Book of Mormon: Alma 41:10
2John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KSL and the CBS Radio Network, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, May 1, 1960, 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. Copyright 1960
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May 01, 1960
Broadcast Number 1,602