MANUAL TRAINING. 805 



tions, the brain does not act as a whole. It is rather a series of 

 resonance boxes, each box responding to vibrations of particular 

 pitch. The reports of the several senses are all duly pigeon- 

 holed. In the same way every outgoing nerve impulse comes 

 from a special center. It is not by a general action of the brain 

 that we carry on our several activities, but by the action of a 

 special part of the brain, depending on the nature of the activity. 

 Any injury to this center, and the activities connected with it are 

 as completely paralyzed as if the whole tissue were destroyed. 

 By so much is a man dead ; by so much is his universe curtailed. 

 On the other hand, any increase in the power of these centers, 

 and there comes an increase of life, an expansion of the realized 

 universe. 



Power, that is what we are after. Let us keep it always in 

 mind. Let us not be turned off from the main quest, however 

 alluring the side issues. We want the increased power of the 

 human spirit. 



Now, power is a result as well as a cause. Intellectual power 

 is the result of a developed brain organism. This development 

 comes through use. Any activity at the circumference means a 

 corresponding activity at the center. The exercise of any one of 

 the senses means the development of its corresponding brain cen- 

 ter. The sum of this development is intelligence. This is what I 

 mean by the psychological import of manual training. This it is 

 which makes the lovers of power value manual training. Each 

 movement of a motor nerve, whether it be in the fashioning of 

 wood or metal or clay, involves a corresponding brain movement. 

 These movements stimulate growth, and growth is what we are 

 after. Intellect is a function of brain surface. 



I believe, then, that the very strongest argument for manual 

 training is not the practical value of the skill which it develops, 

 not even the moral significance of the sturdiness which it incul- 

 cates, but that it is something which includes these and the other 

 ends of culture, that it is the increased intellectual power which 

 is the necessary physiological result of such training. This is a 

 large claim, and one that has never been urged before, I believe, 

 on precisely these grounds. But it is a claim which can be fully 

 substantiated. 



Perceiving, as we must if these considerations are well taken, 

 that manual training means power because it leads to the devel- 

 opment of the brain as an organ, and to increase of function as a 

 result of this growth it becomes very evident that manual train- 

 ing is by no means the only method of securing this development. 

 It is far from being the end of the purpose which it involves. It 

 is only one out of a group of possible methods which have a com- 

 mon purpose, the development of human faculty. To accomplish 



