PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 469 



exist without a certain daily expenditure of muscular labor. 

 Many persons, it is true, enjoy perfect health without giving 

 themselves methodically up to physical culture ; but such persons 

 are easily disturbed by departures from their regular course, or 

 suffer fatigue disproportionate to the effect produced. They can 

 not endure the causes of perturbation, while it is the power to 

 endure that constitutes robust health. It is one of the great bene- 

 fits of exercise and of regime that they give the organism the fac- 

 ulty of accommodation to the diversities of our activity and of 

 the medium that surrounds us. From the hygienic point of view 

 the introduction into our daily habits of exercise in the open air, 

 in the form of various games and sports, can not be too highly 

 commended ; but all such exercises, if we wish to make them al- 

 ways efficacious and exempt from dangers, should be subjected 

 to rule. 



"We can not prudently leave youth without direction to or- 

 ganize competitions, like the race, in which violent exercises fig- 

 ure ; it is indispensable to be on guard against the excesses which 

 unrestrained emulation and self-love induce. Without this, exer- 

 cises, which are salutary when practiced with moderation, degen- 

 erate into overstrain of the most dangerous character. We have 

 in this way to regret numerous grave accidents due to colds, 

 troubles of the digestion and the circulation, falls and blows. 

 Under these restrictions, exercise taken under the form of open- 

 air games presents a special attraction to all ; it offers the best 

 hygienic conditions ; but, to constitute a physical education, it 

 ought also to respond to the desiderata exposed above the har- 

 monious development of the body and useful application. Fur- 

 ther than this, this form of exercise offers in practice, especially 

 in the large cities, difficulties which are often insurmountable, 

 at least for the present. In public instruction, as now consti- 

 tuted, the problem of physical education is very complex ; it 

 involves finding means to exercise regularly every day a large 

 number of pupils at once, in a narrow space and a short time. It 

 is in this shape that the question has been put to the ministerial 

 commission charged with revising the programme and the manual 

 of school gymnastics. Every pupil must receive an equal por- 

 tion of exercise, and often there is only one master to direct from 

 forty to sixty subjects. Large plats of land are needed near the 

 schools, and often they do not exist. To send the children away 

 through narrow ,streets crowded with vehicles takes much time, 

 and is dangerous. With all this adjusted, large plats of ground 

 are not enough; ample sheds are needed for open-air exercise. 

 Our climate is not very mild, and if we depend upon the fair days 

 for taking exercise we shall run a great risk of seeing the number 

 of our meetings reduced to an insufficient minimum ; for it is not 



