indifference, and he insisted on the importance of physical culture as an essential part of education. It was probably due in some measure to his influence that F. L. Jahn and his followers in Germany, encouraged by the Prussian minister Stein, established the Turnplätze, or gymnastic schools, which played an important part during the War of Liberation, and in the political agitations which followed the establishment of the German confederation by the Congress of Vienna. The educational reformers Pestalozzi and Froebel emphasized the need for systematic physical training in any complete scheme of education.
The later development of the classical gymnasium (when it had become the school of intellectual culture rather than of exclusively physical exercise), and not the original idea, has been perpetuated in the modern use of the word in Germany, where the name “gymnasium” is given to the highest grade of secondary school, and the association of the word with athleticism has been entirely abandoned. On the other hand, in England, France and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in America, the history of the word has been precisely the reverse; the connexion of the gymnasium with philosophy and mental culture has been dropped, and it indicates a building exclusively intended for the practice of physical exercises. But whereas the Greeks received training in the gymnasium for contests which are now designated as athletic sports (q.v.), gymnastics in the modern sense is a term restricted to such exercises as are usually practised indoors, with or without the aid of mechanical appliances, as distinguished from sports or games practised in the open air.
It was not until near the end of the 19th century that gymnastics were recognized in England as anything more than a recreation; their value as a specifically therapeutic agent, or as an article in the curriculum of elementary schools, was not realized. More recently, however, educationists have urged with increasing insistence the need for systematic physical training, and their views received greater attention when evidence of deterioration in the physique of the people began to accumulate. During the first decade of the 20th century more than one commission reported to parliament in England in favour of more systematic and general physical training being encouraged or even made compulsory by public authority. Voluntary associations were formed for encouraging such training and providing facilities for it. Gymnastics had already for several years been an essential part of the training of army recruits with exceedingly beneficial results, and gymnasia had been established at Aldershot and other military centres. Physical exercises, although not compulsory, obtained a permanent place in the code for elementary schools in Great Britain; and much care has been taken to provide a syllabus of exercises adapted for the improvement of the physique of the children. These exercises are partly gymnastic and partly of the nature of drill; they do not in most cases require the use of appliances, and are on that account known as “free movements,” which numbers of children go through together, accompanied whenever possible by music. On the other hand at the larger public schools and universities there are elaborate gymnasia equipped with a great variety of apparatus, the skilful use of which demands assiduous practice; and this is encouraged by annual contests between teams of gymnasts representing rival institutions.
The appliances vary to some extent in different gymnasia, some of the more complicated requiring a greater amount of space and involving a larger cost than is often practicable. But where these considerations are negligible, substantial uniformity is to be found in the equipment Gymnastic apparatus. of gymnasia not designed for specifically medical purposes. The simplest, and in many respects the most generally useful, of all gymnastic apparatus is the dumb-bell. It was in use in England as early as the time of Elizabeth, and it has the advantage that it admits of being exactly proportioned to the individual strength of each learner, and can be adjusted in weight as his strength increases. The exercises that may be performed with the dumb-bell, combined with a few simple drill-like movements, give employment to all parts of the body and to both sides equally. Dumb-bell exercises, therefore, when arranged judiciously and with knowledge, are admirably suited for developing the physique, and are extensively employed in schools both for boys and girls. The bar-bell is merely a two-handed dumb-bell, and its use is similar in principle. The Indian club is also in use in most gymnasia; but the risk of overstraining the body by its unskilful handling makes it less generally popular than the dumb-bell. All these appliances may be, and often are, used either in ordinary schoolrooms or elsewhere outside the gymnasium. The usual fixed sorts of apparatus, the presence of which (or of some of them) in a building may be said to constitute it a gymnasium, are the following: a leaping-rope; a leaping-pole; a vaulting-horse; a horizontal bar, so mounted between two upright posts that its height from the ground may be adjusted as desired; parallel bars, used for exercises to develop the muscles of the trunk and arms; the trapeze consisting of a horizontal bar suspended by ropes at a height of 4 to 5 ft. from the ground; the bridge ladder; the plank; the inclined plane; the mast; swinging rings; the prepared wall; the horizontal beam.
Before the end of the 19th century the therapeutic value of gymnastics was fully realized by the medical profession; and a number of medical or surgical gymnasia came into existence, provided with specially devised apparatus for the treatment of different physical defects or weaknesses. The exercises practised in them are arranged upon scientific principles based on anatomical and physiological knowledge; and these principles have spread thence to influence largely the practice of gymnastics in schools and in the army. A French medical writer enumerates seven distinct groups of maladies, each including a number of different complaints, for which gymnastic exercises are a recognized form of treatment; and there are many malformations of the human body, formerly believed to be incurable, which are capable of being greatly remedied if not entirely corrected by regular gymnastic exercises practised under medical direction.
The value of gymnastics both for curing defects, and still more for promoting health and the development of normal physique, is recognized even more clearly on the continent of Europe than in Great Britain. In Germany the government not only controls the practice of gymnastics but makes it compulsory for every child and adult to undergo a prescribed amount of such physical training. In France also, physical training by gymnastics is under state control; in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, systems more or less distinct enjoy a wide popularity; and in Finland gymnastics are practised on lines that exhibit national peculiarities. The Finns introduce an exceptional degree of variety into their exercises as well as into the appliances devised to assist them; women are scarcely less expert than men in the performance of them; and the enthusiasm with which the system is supported produces the most beneficial results in the physique of the people. International gymnastic contests have become a feature of the revived Olympic Games (see Athletic Sports), and in those held at Athens in 1906 a team of Danish ladies took part in the competition and proved by their skilful performance that gymnastics may be practised with as much success by women as by men.
The chief work on the ancient gymnastics is Krause, Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen (1841); of more recent works mention may be made of Jäger, Gymnastik der Hellenen (1881); L. Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Altertum (1881); J. P. Mahaffy, Old Greek Education (1883); A. S. Wilkins, National Education in Greece (1873); E. Paz, Histoire de la gymnastique (1886); Wickenhagen, Antike und moderne Gymnastik (1891); Becker-Göll, Charicles ii.; Brugsma, Gymnasiorum apud Graecos descriptio (1855); Petersen, Das Gymnasium der Griechen (1858). See also N. Laisné, Gymnastique pratique (Paris, 1879); Collineau, La Gymnastique (Paris, 1884); L’Hygiène à l’école (Paris, 1889); P. de Coubertin, La Gymnastique utilitaire (Paris, 1905); H. Nissen, Rational Home Gymnastics (Boston, 1903). (R. J. M.)
GYMNOSOPHISTS (Lat. gymnosophistae, from Gr. γυμνός, σοφιστής, “naked philosophers”), the name given by the
Greeks to certain ancient Hindu philosophers who pursued
asceticism to the point of regarding food and clothing as detrimental
to purity of thought. From the fact that they often
