SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF RECREATION 793 



Now, if less time were consumed in girls' schools by mental work, 

 more time would be allowed for mental as well as for bodily recreation. 

 And, if the time thus gained were judiciously expended, I believe that, 

 even as a matter of mental culture, more would be gained than lost. 

 Suppose, for instance, that some time in every day were set apart for 

 mental occupation of a voluntary kind a good library of general 

 though selected literature being provided for the use of the pupils, and 

 the cultivation of art being allowed to rank as " mental occupation." 

 In this way the more intellectual of the pupils would be able to receive 

 that culture which only general reading can impart, the more artistic 

 would be able to improve themselves in their art by additional prac- 

 tice, and even the unstudiously disposed would find in a standard novel 

 a kind of reading less distasteful than Euclid. 



And here, while treating of mental recreation among girls, I may 

 add that school-life is the time when provision ought to be made for 

 mental recreation in after-life. Be it observed that mental recreation 

 is impossible unless there is a natural and more or less cultured taste 

 for some branch or branches of mental work. Indeed, the capacity for 

 such recreation is clearly proportional to the degree of such culture 

 an idealess mind being incapacitated for obtaining any variety of ideas. 

 Hence the great importance of width of cultured interest, and the con- 

 sequent duty of the heads of schools to ascertain the mental predilec- 

 tions of their pupils individually, and, in each case where such a pre- 

 dilection is apparent, to bestow special attention on its culture. If 

 this were more generally done, I am convinced that the gain to their 

 pupils in after-life would be enormous. We are living in a world 

 teeming with interest on every side, but to make this interest our own 

 possession we require a trained intelligence. It ought, therefore, to 

 be one of the first aims of education to supply special training to special 

 aptitudes, whereby the mind may be brought en rapport with the 

 things in which it is by nature fitted to take most interest, and so in 

 them to find a never-ending source of mental recreation. If this 

 method were more universally adopted in girls' schools, ladies as a rule 

 would be supplied with more internal resources of mental activity and 

 cease to be so dependent for the stimulation of such activity on the 

 mere excitement which is supplied by the external resources of society. 

 But as it is, whether in the concert-room, the picture-gallery, the li- 

 brary, or the country walk, it is of most ladies literally and lamen- 

 tably true, that having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear 

 not, neither understand. Most ladies have a natural taste for some 

 one or other of the many lines of intellectual activity, and if this taste 

 were developed in early life it would grow with the knowledge on 

 which it feeds, till in mature life it would become an unfailing source 

 of pleasurable recreation. Yet in most cases such a taste in early life 

 is not so much as discovered. For instance, how seldom it is that we 

 meet, even among musical ladies, with any knowledge of harmony ! 



