8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



What reformer so unimaginative that he does not thrill at his 

 own mind-pictures of a perfected humanity ! But, alas ! how few 

 reformers, however earnest, who are patient enough to build from 

 the mudsills up ! For the most part we are a set of idle dreamers. 

 Science has reclaimed from the unknown much more than we 

 teachers have utilized. The laboratory is far ahead of the class- 

 room. To our shame be it said. We know better than we do. 

 The time has come to stop this trifling. I, a man, cry to myself, 

 Halt ! And I ask myself what I would do if I did the best I knew. 

 The answer comes clear and unmistakable. I would stop trying 

 to educate boys by the hundred an impossible task and devot- 

 edly try to educate a little group. I would begin at the begin- 

 ning. One must know the sort of material one has to work upon. 

 This is the beginning. Education must take in the whole day, 

 and not a mere fragment of it. Knowing the condition of the 

 whole organism, the powers and defects of each organ, our first 

 business is to set about making this organism healthy and ade- 

 quate for the life of a man. This is a matter of daily regime and 

 not of intermittent treatment. It is a matter of food, baths, cloth- 

 ing, rest, and exercise. It can not be divorced from school life 

 any more than it can from home life. This is the first and great 

 requirement. No boy, unless heavily handicapped at birth or by 

 subsequent accident, will fail to respond to such treatment and 

 come out a relatively healthy organism. 



Meanwhile, we are not forgetting that power resides in the head. 

 But neither are we forgetting that the head is only made possible 

 by the rest of the body ; that the supply of blood depends on that 

 pumping engine down below, the heart ; that the condition of the 

 vast system of nerves of which the head is the center depends 

 upon the health of the entire network ; in short, that not the least 

 and meanest function of the organism is without influence .upon 

 the crown of it all. Education begins by a bodily renovation. 

 And while this renovation is in progress, much else is being done. 

 Each organ of sense is not only to be in health through its own 

 health and the general health of the entire organism, but it is to 

 be gaining power through exercise, for it is the office of the senses 

 to supply the brain with raw material that is, with sensations. 

 There are many opportunities for such exercis^. To begin with, 

 let us consider the eye. Incidentally, all life contributes to its 

 culture, and yet for lack of adequate training it remains a very 

 inaccurate instrument. Its function is to appreciate distance, 

 color, tone, light and shade, proportion. Put in the most general 

 terms, it is to apprehend relations. Many wholesome exercises 

 could be devised to develop these several phases judgments of 

 distances, discrimination between different colors and different 

 shades of the same color, the evaluation of light and shadow, the 



