524 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



without seeing througli all a tendency to completion, order, and 

 beauty on an ever-rising plane, like the threads of a spiral ; and, 

 seeing this, to desire to be himself in harmony with that tendency 

 and a factor in aiding it in his own time. 



I put forth no claim to the Boston experiment or the Engle- 

 wood trial as a cure for existing evils ; but I urge every educator 

 who loves mankind to investigate each new departure in educa- 

 tion, to test any that seems to have good in it, to cease to concen- 

 trate attention on symbols and shows, and to turn thought to such 

 realities as can nourish the mind and heart, and be retained as 

 valuable furnishings for all the years to come, and to do these 

 from the first day in the primary school. 



\_Concluded.'\ 



HOMELY GYMNASTICS. 



By ALICE B. TWEEDY. 



WHILE voyaging over many seas of experiment in search of 

 education, some of us are beginning to apprehend that the 

 golden fleece of mental culture will not create for us the sym- 

 metrical man or woman. As a consequence, various systems of 

 bodily training are receiving close attention from teachers and 

 reformers, while athletic sports are now honored and encouraged 

 in schools and colleges where not many years ago they were 

 merely tolerated as safety-valves for unsubdued vitality. We 

 are returning to Greek ideals, but the elimination of the me- 

 diaeval and Puritanic expression of contempt for the body is a 

 slow process, and the formula still meets us variously masked in 

 life and literature. Now, it is the notion of the spiritualizing 

 effect of invalidism, or delicacy of health ; their debasing tenden- 

 cies toward selfishness and morbidity being ignored. Again, it is 

 the exaltation of nerve sensitiveness into an evidence of refine- 

 ment ; forgetting that the healthy nerve, like the pure metal, 

 stands the normal test put upon it, the flinching being a token of 

 failure as the alloy is of gold. In another instance, it is the scorn 

 for manual labor, although this indicates also the survival of 

 feudal feeling. We call the hand the servant of the mind, think- 

 ing we have ranked it, but educating the blind shows us that it 

 may turn instructor and incite its ignorant master to action. 



This is an age of fads and fetiches, and, as we give up our idol 

 of disembodied intellect, we erect a shrine to meaningless muscle. 

 We have outgrown croquet and archery. Even tennis no longer 

 sufiices, and we are founding schools of physical culture and 

 gymnasiums ad libitum. In truth, these are needed badly enough 



