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The physical education of children is thus, in various ways, seriously faulty.  It errs in deficient feeding; in deficient clothing; in deficient exercise (among girls at least); and in excessive mental application.  Considering the regime as a whole, its tendency is too exacting:  it asks too much and gives too little.  In the extent to which it taxes the vital energies, it makes the juvenile life far more like the adult life than it should be.  It overlooks the truth that, as in the foetus the entire vitality is expended in growth—­as in the infant, the expenditure of vitality in growth is so great as to leave extremely little for either physical or mental action; so throughout childhood and youth, growth is the dominant requirement to which all others must be subordinated:  a requirement which dictates the giving of much and the taking away of little—­a requirement which, therefore, restricts the exertion of body and mind in proportion to the rapidity of growth—­a requirement which permits the mental and physical activities to increase only as fast as the rate of growth diminishes.

The rationale of this high-pressure education is that it results from our passing phase of civilisation.  In primitive times, when aggression and defence were the leading social activities, bodily vigour with its accompanying courage were the desiderata; and then education was almost wholly physical:  mental cultivation was little cared for, and indeed, as in feudal ages, was often treated with contempt.  But now that our state is relatively peaceful—­now that muscular power is of use for little else than manual labour, while social success of nearly every kind depends very much on mental power; our education has become almost exclusively mental.  Instead of respecting the body and ignoring the mind, we now respect the mind and ignore the body.  Both these attitudes are wrong.  We do not yet realise the truth that as, in this life of ours, the physical underlies the mental, the mental must not be developed at the expense of the physical.  The ancient and modern conceptions must be combined.

Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty.  Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.  Men’s habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please.  Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature’s dictates, they regard simply as grievances:  not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious.  Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime; yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal.  It is true that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognised; but none appear to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression.  The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins.  When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then, will the physical training of the young receive the attention it deserves.