THE PHYSIOLOGY OF EXERCISE. 443 



ready forms of movement for every situation of the body. Put, for 

 example, an English boy and a German boy on a road across which 

 hurdles are thrown : the English boy will be sure to climb over some- 

 how. According to the height of the impediment, the German boy 

 jumps, or he climbs, props himself, and swings himself over. 



Nothing prevents the German turner at pleasure carrying his more 

 theoretical training into practical and immediately available forms of 

 exercise, in which he, since he has learned to learn, speedily attains the 

 skill which his natural ability permits to him ; so we have been told 

 that the gymnasiast soon does as well as the real-scholar in the labora- 

 tory. 



After all this there can be no doubt that German turning, in its 

 wise mingling of theory and practice, exhibits the happiest, yes, the 

 most adequate solution of the great problem with which pedagogics 

 has been busy since Rousseau a truth which, after a short obscurity, 

 is now hardly contested, but the physiological principle of which a 

 few are beginning to understand. 



I further remark that I do not class with German turning the so- 

 called order-exercises, which, over-estimated as preparatives to exercis- 

 ing, and a lazy-bench for inefficient teachers of turning, belong, in my 

 opinion, to the Kindergarten. 



Hardly any progress in the knowledge of the laws of exercise has 

 been made since Milo of Croton's famous experiment with the calf. 

 Yet we are indebted to the creator of psychophysics for the beginning 

 of the inquiry which is here possible. Herr Fechner daily for two 

 months raised and dropped a pair of nine-and-a-half-pound dumb- 

 bells conformably to the beat of a second-pendulum, from the hanging 

 position of the hands to over his head, raised them and dropped them 

 again, till fatigue compelled him to stop. The curves, the ordinates 

 of which indicated the number of elevations daily, are instructive in 

 a double respect. At first the exercise appeared to bear no fruit, 

 then the results came out all at once ; but they soon reached their 

 limit. Volkmann had a similar experience in exercise of the senses. 

 Herr Fechner's curves, in the second place, do not rise steadily, but in 

 a serrated manner, according as weariness or increasing facility pre- 

 vailed. These experiments might be made of useful aj:>plication in 

 the inspection of recruits for particular purposes. 



Like individuals, so are whole peoples susceptible to exercise and of 

 being- trained ; and here also an originally higher talent often does 

 not go so far as continuous practice. The hardy, tough, North-German 

 stock resemble the unpromising land, conquered only by obstinate 

 labor, which we till. The Prussian is the self-made man among the 

 peoples, yet he has not made himself without some help sent him by a 

 favoring destiny. He has been eminently made, trained, and exercised 

 through the care of a series of chiefs, unique in the world's history, 

 culminating in the Emperor William. The present memorial day re- 



