100 EDUCATION. 



circumstance on the othor. It would be well for many 

 parents to remember that for the practical purposes of 

 life, health, above all health of nerve, includes all the 

 restraints ; truth includes all the fidelities ; kindliness 

 includes all the graces of life. 



What more can be done for the individual that is 

 not done for all, will depend on special, personal, 

 inherited nerve. Nerve is paramount, but education 

 can do much. It is true a young bone can be bent 

 more easily than a young brain can be radically 

 changed ; but a young bone can be bent if taken in 

 time by suitable and untiring methods. Idle nerve 

 cannot help being idle, hence punishment is barbarous 

 and coarsening. But idle nerve should not be lightly 

 given up ; it may come to this in the end, but it 

 should come with kindliness and resignation rather 

 than with despair or anger. Frequently idle nerve 

 may be helped by patience and watchfulness. Some- 

 times it is merely a stage in nerve development which 

 passes away. Sometimes it is an ailment for which 

 the physician can do more than the formal moralist or 

 the too eager schoolmaster. An industrious boy can- 

 not help being industrious. Now and then, indeed, 

 industry is excessive, and is a nerve-ailment; add to 

 this ailment an extensive curriculum, numberless 

 examinations, an exacting and exhausting university 

 (the London University for example), and the result is 

 life-long disaster life on a lower nerve level. I am 

 strongly of opinion that the reflective temperament 

 does not bear educational high-pressure as well as the 

 active temperament : it unfolds more slowly, sees and 

 retains less quickly, and must be given more time. 

 Goethe intimates moreover that, where there is much to 

 unfold, the slower is the unfolding. It is true that in all 



