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Show 4 W W't ??? w f4" v'uji o Srn't- - 0t iWWh wfcA j I- - ,.r. m ,,m iJ .-c- si ( (inial m can ? GRACE ANIMALS it Ape the Monkey if You Would Overcome Inertia, Says Count Max Thun, Noted Viennese Physician, as He Advocates Also Study of the Horse as Means to Acquire the Poetry of Motion Vienna. galloping on all fours. It is not enough PE the ape if yon would be grace- - to attend one of his conferences in the fuL Thu U the latest dictum of Kunstlerhaus or at the somewhat exotic Worlds University" In Vienna. One European atudenta of the poetry of momust get a living Impression of the tion, who eeelc in the natural moveHis limbs hang ments of animals the secret of agility. Counts personality. Count Max Thun, Viennese physician, loosely; his movements are perfectly keeps a small Javanese monkey under free and perfectly naturaL It sounds a little bit 'awkward if we bservation in his gymnasium, regardman galloping ing it with affectionate veneration as say that a tis teacher in gymnastics. The monkey on all fours makes an eminently natural" impression. Nevertheless, accompanies the Count whenever he lectures on his new theory of movement, everybody will affirm this fact who has die chief theme of which is that one once seen the Count performing his fourmust learn to gallop on all fours before legged exercises. And most of them will even feel' a strong impulse to imitate ine can walk, spring, run or dance him. Children will in the rarest cases The small simian it named Max, after resist this impulse. In one of the gymnastic lessons he Us master, and the attendants in the pymnasium imitate both Maxes as well is they can. Sluggishness of the human raca is to blame for its lack of mobility of We have tmba, the Count asserts. much to learn from the movements of monkeys as they leap among the trees, tr from horses as they gallop on the This inertia of the average pound. tuman can be amended, however, if we tut observe and imitate our animal A the natural system of movements only." Count Thun rejects everything labeled Swedish as gymnastics, German gymnastics and the like. His ideas (but not his exercises) are most closely related to those of the Dane, T. P. Muller. He describes his method as a "normal training." All "special training" must be based on a normal training. Only such a training is able to give harmony to the human body, damaged by modern specialization. The starting point of normal training is going on all fours. This is the first The step to use ones Umbs rightly. natural sense of movement is awakened Mothers. 'THE Count first presented his ideas to the public about two years ago, but eith him they date back thirty-fiv- e years, when he was a child. He Was 6 years old when he was tret taught to ride by his father, Count Hax Thun, who was a cavalry officer tnd sportsman and one of the most prominent aristocrats of the old Haps-ur- g These aristocrats, to empire. whom only certain exclusive cavalry regiments were possible as a career, had 10 learn .horseback-ridin- g at an tender age. The first riding lesion often consisted , in nothing mors than lifting such a tiny Count or Prince tr Baron on a horse, in the expects-fio- n that his atavistic cavalier would awake and teach him the seeessary thing. The idea that the offering of such a noble race had not the was relapadty to rideinhis-Woo- d tarded as absurd. But Count Max Thun, the chief master of the hunt, did not content him-to- lf with such a summary method. He laught hie son riding in completely lew and personal manner which the htter calls now, looking back on It, a Itroka of genius. He pretends that the trst germ of his theory lay In those Anyhow, he became an , riding lessons. ixcellent horseman in his father's school, sot only a reckless dragoonier m the war, not only a successful steer:echer, hut one of those few persons who seemed to understand the soul of the horse. His success as a Ltrse trainer is amazing. ' Ha virtually renounces all kinds of compulsion. With nothing but a small stick ind a hoop, he can bring an untrained horse fresh from the pasture in half an hour so far that the fcor-- e will mount the steep steps of the Karlskirche in Vienna without hesitation. He explains his successes by the fact that he has complete understanding of a horse's movements. He has thousands of snapshots of horses pacing, trotting and galloping, and his mind is like a movie lamera in which each movement of his torses has been photographed. Count Max can reproduce these movements in ,his own body. How does a horse gallop? Count Max was 6 years eld when he first asked himself this piestion, and be did not cease wondering tntil he had found out. He found the elution by stripping himself completely tnd galloping on all fours on the floor if his room. First slowly, then faster tnd faster, he succeeded in reproducing lie real horse gallop, its rhythm and mechanism. Nobody can fully understand the horses gallop without imitating it, or at least without seeing Count Max Thun la his flat in Vienna or in one of the ywoma of a yienna aristocratic family demonstrated, in a more than systematic way usual, all the principal stages through which the evolution of man goes. Count Thun believes in Darwinism, in the theory of the origin of species and, above all, in the teaching that man as the highest among animsl races has passed through all forms of movement to be found among animals in the course of his evolution. Changes in the surroundings of our ancestor have also influenced their he moving apparatus, says. But all new forms of movement are grafted on the old ones which are not altogether abandoned. Our erect attitude con- tains not only reminiscences of the ct attitudes of monkeys but also reminiscences of what our still older ancestors who were going on all fours were doing. The newly acquired element which 1 call- - second- ary supplanted the original ones; now it is necessary to regain original We hate much to learn from the move powers through gymnasmen Is of monkeys as they leap among tics. "The end of gymnastics the trees" is, of epurse, to recover our lost mobility. The old gymnastic by this method. One has to perform all systems for instance, those of the vertical movements" (walking) so that Greeks were excellent, but they are lost. they correspond to perfect animal moveI maintain that all which is called gym- - ments projected on a horizontal plane. nasties now is based on one part of Only such exercises are good. Count half-ere- -- One of Mme. Pavlowaa most beaotiful dance portrayals is that o( The Swan." She is shown here studying its graceful movements in the lake at London her home. Try-Hous- Thun believes further, as are enjoyed equally by those who perform and who witness them. Movements are estheti-call- y enjoyable if their horizontal projection is identical wtt natural movements. need not accept all these theories Count Thun In order to profit by his system. He is not only an excellent horse breeder and trainer but a trained orthopedist. He reached surprising results in curing flat feet, which he calls the disease of modern men, by letting his patients (for the most part women) wear heavy wooden alippers so that the tension muscles of the foot are developed. It U, however, wrong to develop the muscles only by training; almost all the strong men suffer, as be says, from hypertrophia of muscles. American methods of training are rejected by him. The average American, he says, has a body and moves fairly welL He owes that, however, not to bia trainers but to the primitive people living in his neighborhood. Indians and Negroes are nearer to animals than ws are, and therefore their movementa are more beautiful than ours. What reconciles Count Thun to Americans la the fact that they can dance. Ha consider the modern Ameri ONE K A r 1 , can dances as wonderful achievements, as a victory of the natural principles of movement, as a thing of which mankind can be proud. To the people who despair of the value of our civilization, who believe that the machine recklessly standardizes , the man of todqy and even his movements, to the he point Charleston. This dance, if carried out rightly, is a most natural movement for those who have a perfect command of their bodies. When his pupils htve had enough pacing, trotting and galloping on all fours they are allowed to stand up and dance the Charleston to the tune of a gramophone. Max, the monkey, is perched on a branch on such occasions, and inspires )he dancers by his presence. Thuns gymnastic methods require virtually no instruments at alL Tbs. best teacher of gymnastics, be says, is the mirror. Ohe needs, besides, some bells, two chairs and a door. The numerous instruments can be used rightly only by a teacher who also can do without them. The poorest soldier of a cavalry regiment understands more about bodily rhythm than the most learned professor of orthopedy because this soldier feels the movements of his noble animal, and this is the point. One must feel what it is to gallop and must know how to dance the Charleston. In selecting a monkey to accompany him on lectures the Count establishes no new precedent. Monkeys, more than any other naturally wild animals, have been the pets and companions of men. Solomon, according to the Bible, had many such pets. They formed part of the cargoes brought to him every three years, by his ships of Tarshlsh and were considered worthy of enumeration in the lifs with gold, silver and ivory. 4 The famous Emperor Charles V, who ruled most o'f Europe in the sixteenth century, was said to have bad as a pet a monkey of such intelligence that it could play chess with its royal master. Among artists, too, the monkey has been a great pet. Rembrandt made one celebrated portrait of a favorite monkey. One day, runs the tale, while he was painting a group- - ptettrreof the wife and children of the Burgomaster of Amsterdam, a servant Informed him that the monkey had died. Overwhelmed with j .. grief, the painter thrust his distinguished sitters from the studio and ordered that the monkeys body be brought in. Then he placed it among the cushions of a huge chair and transferred its likeness to canvas. As every one knows, there are many scientists who assert that the monkey, among animals, most nearly resembles man, and has developed from a common ancestral tree. In New York the Amer ican Museum of Natural History has developed a genealogical tree that ahows man branching out from his subhuman ancestral stock somewhere between 8,000,000 and 10,000,000 years ago. Tba tree makes the gorilla the nearest relative of man. Prof. W. K. Gregory, of Columbia University and the Museum, has said that it is an open question whether tba chimpanzee or gorilla is mans nearest relative. baa many similarities peculiar to man, h asserted, and nobody has yet summed up this evidence. Man, the gorilla and the cjdmpanxee resemble one another far more closely then any of them resembles any of tha other great apes. Thera was, it seems, originally a stock which split into three branches and traveled away iu three separata directions. The chimpanzee, clung to tha trees and developed a longer band with reduced thumbs, suited for arboreal Ufa. The gorilla took to running on all fours, adopted a fruit diet and developed a baboon-lik- e bead. In tha first place, sticking to tba forest, the gorilla and chimpanzee continued to Uve more or less solitary lives. Out on tba plains, man was forced to congregate in large groups. This produced a social Ufa. Then, on the plain, man did not have to me hi hands lot climbing trees. He was free to nse them lot other purposes. He pieked things up and studied them. Then the social needs of his txistene in largo group caused him to develop He endowed means of communication. sounds with a symbolic moaning. Thera must have bean a continuous development of hand, eye, tongue and ear, resulting in the gradual building up of the human brain. The plains life most have been one of sharp competition and severe selection. The epee in the forest, with abnndsnt supplies of fruit, had an easy, leisurely time. Kan, on the contrary, had hard struggle, and only tha best endowed could make -the grade." .AD of which would seem to indicate that it is no unnatural thing lot men to study the monkey in their efforts to obtain freedom and grace of movement. AnrtiM to MW liWe MUTACH ! i |