In order that a person, whose professional work is wholly intellectual and highly abstract, may keep reasonably sane, it is most important that he should have some side-occupation which involves the exercise of bodily skill, and, if possible, of constructive activity in the material world. (I never see a bat emerging from a belfry without being forcibly reminded of certain of my colleagues who have lacked such outlets.) Natural scientists have the great good fortune to be provided, in their own laboratories and as part of their professional work, with what is needed. Many other intellectual workers find in games like golf or tennis, in mountain-climbing or horse-riding or gliding, in driving and puttering about with their cars, or even in painting pictures, the means of preserving their mental balance. All these are highly worth-while activities, and I take off my hat to those who can perform them. But I, alas, am utterly incapable of any of them. So I record with thankfulness a hobby [model trains] which has given me many hours of solitary happiness and also much pleasant companionship on a non-intellectual but not unintelligent level, and has helped to keep me in such measure of mental health as I have enjoyed.
(C. D. Broad, "Autobiography," in The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 10 [New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1959], 1-68, at 37 [essay written in 1954])
Note from KBJ: And now, dear reader, you know why I run, ride, and play softball.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 