There is only one reliable remedy against the incalculable stirrings of a passionate heart: adherence to schedules, carried out to the last detail; and it was to this practice, which he had adopted in good time, that Lindner owed the successes in his life as well as the belief that he was by nature a man of strong passions and hard to discipline. He got up early in the morning, at the same hour in summer and winter, washed his face, hands, and one-seventh of his body—a different seventh each day, of course—at a small iron washstand, whereupon he rubbed the rest with a wet towel, so that the full bath, that time-consuming and voluptuous procedure, could be limited to one evening every two weeks. This constituted a clever victory over matter, and whoever has had occasion to consider the inadequate washing facilities and uncomfortable beds personalities who have become historical made do with will hardly be able to dismiss the conjecture that there must be a connection between iron beds and iron men, although we must not put too fine a point on this, lest we all immediately proceed to sleep on beds of nails. So here reflection was tasked with an additional, educative function, and after Lindner had washed himself in the reflected glow of inspiring examples, he also (but only within measure) made adroit use of the towel to give the body some movement while drying himself at the same time. It is after all a fateful misunderstanding to base health on the animal part of the person; rather, it is spiritual and moral nobility that produce the body’s powers of resistance; and though that does not always apply to the individual case, it applies most certainly on a large scale, for the strength of a people is a consequence of the right spirit, and not the other way around. That is why Lindner had bestowed on his rubdowns a special, meticulous discipline that avoided the crude gripping and grabbing involved in the usual male idolatry but instead engaged the participation of the whole personality by associating the body’s movements with beautiful inner tasks. He particularly detested the worship of the dashing daredevil, a foreign import that many in his fatherland were already holding up as an ideal, and distancing himself from this was an integral part of his morning exercises. He substituted for it, with great circumspection, a more statesmanlike attitude in the gymnastic use of his limbs, combining exertion of willpower with properly timed indulgence, mastery over pain with humane common sense, and if, as a concluding exercise for the practice of bravery, he leapt over an upside-down chair, he would do so with as much reserve as self-confidence. Such development of the whole wealth of human capacity made his calisthenics, ever since he had taken them up a few years ago, true exercises in virtue.