The maintainence of bodily health is from one point of view 

 not strictly a part of education at all, since it implies not a lead- 

 ing out of anything in the body, but rather a prevention of the 

 entrance of disease into it. Without health, however, education, 

 of course, cannot progress, and its very importance, while 

 emphasising the need of a study of hygiene by the parent and 

 trainer, places its discussion beyond the circumscribed limit of 

 space and time at our disposal. The cultivation of sufficient 

 muscular strength and dexterity will follow automatically the 

 giving of free play to that amount of activity which nature de- 

 mands, and which cannot be without harm refused. 



As Spencer says : — " It was the opinion of Pestalozzi, and 

 one which has ever since his day been gaining ground, that 

 education of some kind should begin from the cradle." In 

 a paper of this kind, it would, of course, be impossible to 

 do more than touch on a few points in so wide a subject, nor 

 do I feel competent to do more than refer to one or two aspects 

 which have more especially come under my observation. 

 Rules can, indeed, at best be only of the broadest, for in true 

 education there must be a facility for the freest intelligent 

 treatment of each individual case according to its needs from 

 day to day. Not only is every child different from every 

 other, but the same child never exists two days running ; we 

 have a partly new one every day, and it is the trainer's watchful 

 care to catch and preserve the good as it appears in the flux and 

 change of the growing life, while letting the evil pass dis- 

 couraged away. The neglect to recognise these universal and 

 everchanging differences is one reason why the educational 

 codes or school systems with their machine-like details are so 

 inefficient. Machines turn out splendid pins or postage stamps 

 all of the same materials, beautifully uniform, and for few and 

 circumscribed uses ; but the machine has yet to be invented 

 which will, at one operation, produce from granite paving-stones, 

 and from marble the Venus de Medici. 



In the very early treatment of children, I think what strikes 

 the male mind most distinctly is the amount of assurance with 

 which any and every female undertakes the difficult and arduous 



