THE EDUCATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 357 



psychological result comparable with the ideal human 

 form at one time sought in sculpture. Since conditions 

 of life on the globe are not uniform, and since man only 

 approaches the ideal in his development when in har- 

 mony with his surroundings, such a universal ideal 

 is as fanciful as was the notion of Goethe concerning 

 the " Urpflanze " ; a sort of grandfather of all the plants 

 possessing the characters of its multiform descendants, 

 yet displaying them with an ancestral simplicity worthy 

 of the golden age of which it had formed a part. 



As a matter of fact, the education of an individual is a 

 very local problem in its details. The weak points in the 

 central system must be strengthened, that the abilities 

 given by the strong ones may be guided by some sort 

 of balanced judgment. But the balanced and judicial 

 states are, so far as they go, plainly statical, and the 

 vigour of a healthy restlessness is very necessary if 

 there is to be advance. While growth continues, things 

 bodily and mental are lop-sided, for growth is never 

 general, but accentuated, now at one spot, now at 

 another. But this very unbalance, if only it be the 

 outcome of natural endowment and not of a priori 

 training, gives a vigour not otherwise to be obtained. 



The history of the normal individual is through 

 various phases of unstable equilibrium and awkward 

 strength, to the poise and quiescence of late maturity, 

 yet in any community examples of all these phases 

 are found as terminal states in both old and young. 

 The formal methods, therefore, which shall recognise, 

 in the presence of these enormous differences in endow- 

 ment, the dynamic value of the natural inequalities of 

 growth, and utilise them, preferring irregularity to the 

 roundness gained by pruning, will most closely follow 

 that which takes place within the body, and thus prove 

 most effective. 



