PERFECT HEALTH 127 



The kindergarten period is one of comparative peace. Now 

 the child is learning to get on with his fellows. He is finding 

 how much he can claim and when and how much he must 

 yield; and how to yield good-naturedly. It is no easy lesson 

 in this day of small families. Yet it must be learned, or he 

 will grow up to sorrow. A somewhat robust friend of mine is 

 apt to explain the weaknesses and defects of certain adults by 

 saying sadly: " They did not play enough with bad boys on 

 the village street when they were young-" There is usually a 

 grain of truth even in such a heresy. The result of the ex- 

 perience is worth far more than it costs, even if the price is 

 sometimes tears and bloodshed or a black eye. 



Here the boy and girl receive their first lessons in the grand- 

 est art or science of life, that of making many firm friend- 

 ships. If they do not learn to make them now, they probably 

 never will. 



The conception of fair and unfair play is almost the first 

 genuine and spontaneous moral distinction which the child 

 makes. He is still very hazy in his ideas as to rights of prop- 

 erty and far from clear in his theories as to the necessity of 

 truthfulness. But he is sure that the boy who does not play 

 fair or cheats is mean, which is his word for total depravity. 

 This germ has marvellous possibilities, if fostered and cul- 

 tivated. If you despise or neglect it, if you attempt to re- 

 place it by your own adult system of ethics, the boy and girl 

 lose faith in their own conceptions of morality, they can 

 neither understand nor appreciate yours; they are left without 

 any system which appeals to them, and their last state is 

 worse than their first. Indeed they have fallen from a high 

 estate. Despise not the day of small things. 



We must carry the spirit of play through adult Hfe. Joy, 

 like sunlight, promotes health. The work from which the play 

 element is absent can never be of the highest order. Art is 

 like play in that it is its own reward. Opportunity is an even 

 larger and higher word than duty, and opportunity must be 



enjoyed. 



About ten or eleven new instincts begin to emerge. We 



