35 THE GROWTH OF THE BRAIX. 



what capabilities may be latent, and earlier education 

 thus resolves itself into a reconnoissance among- the 



o 



nerve centres for the purpose of rinding those which 

 will best act together. By consequence the training 

 for association comes first, just as precocity tends to 

 first take that form, that for dexterity and strength 

 being deferred until later. But all growth is accom- 

 panied by impulses to activity, due to the surcharging 

 of the central system, and these express themselves 

 sometimes as disorderly outbreaks, sometimes as en- 

 larged susceptibilities. 



Since the beginning of the educational experiment 

 at the dawn of civilisation the problem has been to 

 rouse an interest in these formal exercises of the 

 schools. From the physiological side, that which 

 rouses an interest tends to quicken the pulse and 

 determine a full blood supply to the entire central 

 system, yet the narrow gymnastics of the school, in the 

 most austere form, do not in themselves produce that 

 condition of good nutrition favouring the best diffusion 

 of the impulses and the formation of secondary and 

 subconscious associations. The problem, therefore, of 

 an emotional background has been met with a hickory 

 stick and with gold, as well as everything between them 

 that could be considered as a general excitant ; but 

 useful as all these methods sometimes are, it has in the 

 main only been successfully met by a more subtle 

 sympathy and knowledge a sympathy which in one 

 way or another discovered the growing point in the 

 child and fitted the task to the necessities of the 

 individual. 



There remains another aspect of the subject before 

 closing this partial review. The avowed aim of certain 

 educational schemes is to produce a rounded, balanced 

 individual as an outcome of the training process, a 



