Part 2 (1/2)

If it is said that it is ”not natural” for some to like to walk, the only proper answer to the objection would be that the question whether a thing is natural or not is not at all pertinent, and involves an entireof education itself The very essence of civilization, ofand directing of the merely natural By nature, man is not man at all Only in so far as by force of spirit he overcomes, rules, and directs the nature in him, can he lay any claim to ious, is in its process only this directing of what is natural for us Its material is the natural man; its result is the spiritual man; its process is the rationally-directed transition from the former to the latter Between the helpless infant, ai out its feeble arms, and the well-trained and fully-developed e who roams the forest, and the mind of Bacon or Shakespeare; between the brute who strikes down his wife as he would knock over a stick of wood in his way, and the physician who stands at his post, tenderly and wisely caring for the fever-stricken patients in the Meers; between the man who follows the caprice of this or that est, and the noblest Christian who daily sacrifices his own to the Divine will, there is but one difference--that of Education The natural part of any one of us is, in any significant sense, simply the uneducated part If a certain course of action is once recognized as rational, it is unnecessary to state that it is ”not natural,” and the formation of rational _habits_ of body, as of mind, these habits which constitute our second and better nature, is the very hich education is concerned

There is roo here, and this I ainst; I s or actions are to be crushed out by a cold, reasoning logic

But it ative representative, and that this negative phase is simply and only the same virtue, but in an uneducated state, and not at all another and different thing; as, for instance, license is not different in its essence from self-control--it is only uneducated self-control Obstinacy is merely uneducated firmness, and the worst forms of barbarous superstition are but the outcome of uneducated reverence The lawlessness and bravado of our American children and youth, so severely coners, are sireatest amount of directive force that the world has ever seen A fatal error is committed in education when this central truth is overlooked, as when one treats thesetheir value, and bending the energies in their proper direction If ain the e all reverence for his own and only Gods, he would have sawed off the branch on which he himself hoped to stand, and it ise for him to make his escape from the country as soon as possible

sexUAL EDUCATION

Up to the period of life at which the sexes diverge, that is, up to the tiirl a woman, the physical system pursues the even tenor of develop of the first and second teeth But now, the strength of the general system is supposed, in the counsels of the Creator, to have attained sufficient strength and fir a new duty In both sexes, organs up to this time quiescent, that is, as to any functional action, take on rapidly an independent life, assert their own character, and take up their peculiar work Heretofore, all the physical developrowth of each organis outside; each has been in aof a noblerto human life, for man is not to be alone, an isolated individual; he attains his highest significance only in relation to others[8] I say it is supposed that by thirteen or fourteen years of steady _educated_ growth, the systeh to assurowth in both sexes, it does do so I airls, and all that is said hereafterspecially to them It makes its first trial of its newly acquired power, and, in a well-trained organism, such as we are thankful to know are yet found in our own country, it does do so with as little effort, with as little outer disturbance of the general systeuirl If it is asserted that such cases are rare, I can only answer that such is not the testie acquaintance, whom I have consulted; and that even if they were, the sufficient answer to the stateirls who have been physically thoroughly educated, are equally rare No iiven to A the opposite result in our girls, than one which should lead thehly that this last period of developreat physical or h to know that they must subh to fight against, and to conquer, what is not inevitable, provided it is not desirable; and if what I have said above could becohly as it is that of some of them, we should in thirteen more years be able to prove it by innumerable cases

Every wo her daughter, thereby becomes a benefactor to her country and her race

We all know that many a baby cuts all its first teeth without any trouble, noticeable nervous exciteee nu, that where the organism is weak, it is unable to carry on the new and sudden process without over-action, since we have only a limited quantity of vital force Over-action in one part, is inevitably under-action in another, and either is but another naer proportion of children cut their second teeth without any disturbance, and this result was to be expected; for the terrible, and yet most merciful hand of death, seven years before, had thinned the ranks by transplanting the weakest to a clime where the burden of the body is not a hindrance, and had left us only the strongest for the second trial We know also, however, that many children do suffer from nervous irritability, and froestive or respiratory organs that manifest the strain, the child is tenderly cared for; if the over-action is in the nervous system, onder what possesses the child,” and she, probably, is sent out of the room, or punished in some other way, in word or act

When the third and last especial and exceptional work takes place, we may expect the sae, however, the little girl's life has been comparatively a healthful one, at least as far as sleep is concerned As far as clothing affects freedoh when she has walked in our chilly winter and da air, she has had interposed between her body and the climatic influences only a defence of one thickness of cotton, while her brother has been carefully guarded by thickly woven woolen gar causes in the average American family increase rapidly in intensity, in fact, th The food reh even this is not always the case, for the tiular, and its material more varied and innutritious; her hours of sleep are considerably curtailed, fro in warmth and thickness, is drawn closer, and, in addition to this, the brain is set definitely to work in actual study Is it not manifest, that while the demands upon the vital force have been increased, the supply of material has been decreased? If this have been the case, she arrives at the period when the third and last deh to assuns of disease And then, forgetting all the previous want of education, we either tacitly assume that God treats his children as Pharaoh treated the Israelites in his unreasonable de to our faith in him, we seize upon the first cause that presents itself to our startled vision Because the education of the body has had for a long tiht, an importance secondary to the education of the mind, we very naturally seize upon the latter as the cause of the evil, and reirl froht be proved only a ”ht be raised up to the level of our mental horizon, and within the circle of our rational sympathy, for if we knew that matter and mind were the saht then secure a chance for respectful and rational attention

But there are here other considerations of immense importance which must not be overlooked, and it is to these that any rational treatment of the subjectthe foundation of trouble at this tilect of proper physical education for thirteen years back, we have also taken pains to lay it in too great an attention to mental education for exactly the sairl, as she looks out for the first ti notice of anything, while she lies in her mother's arms, looks out upon a vast and conorant, and that, froes,” she has to ht, all sounds, its cradle, the rooions of unexplored knowledge There is absolutely nothing, however srows older, to the three year old child even, a walk down one of our avenues, or the exa as a journey in a fairy palace In fact, the whole world around her is merely one vast fairy palace, in whichand exciting as the appearance of the Genies at the rubbing of the wonderful larows every day fuller and wider and , just as the hazy cloud of the milky way unfolds and reveals itself to us under more and more powerful telescopes into star-dust, intopoints, into stars and suns; and, under the telescopes of reasoning science, into worlds separated by distances so great, that ”the iination sinks exhausted,” and very properly Now, if any one will recall the sensation hich she first looked through a powerful telescope at this sight, she will then understand the state in which the brain of the little girl lives, as a continual atmosphere, and she will have no need to ask herself whether it is needful or allowable to add much cause for activity to that brain, for, at least, the first seven years of its life

If irls norant nurses, they would comprehend this more fully The fact that they do not ”want to be bothered” with the child, only shows that they are dih their action testifies that they do not appreciate its significance It is not necessary to speak only of city life here, for a walk along a country road keeps the little three year old girl in a state of continual high excitement Is there not the wonderful thistle-down to be bloay, and the flight of each silken-winged seed to be watched with anxious eyes? Are there not clusters of purple and white asters in unexpected places? Are not the steep and dangerous rocky precipices by the side of the way to be daringly scaled and slid down? Do not the geese live in this pasture, and the sheep and the one solitary pig in that? The raspberry vines droop their rosy fruit into her hand, the tall, big, golden-rods snap their stalks so unexpectedly when she bends therasses Then there are such char the ferns and hazel-bushes, and the bits ofthe road are each of a different size and shape, and must be carefully collected The toad startles her as it leaps out of the road, the grasshoppers strike her face, and wonderful people drive by in wonderful machines, drawn by vast and wonderful anient child will accu seven weeks' stay in a quiet country town, alone can measure the amount of brain activity which has been carried on for that time; and yet we drive and force this activity froht only to direct it We exhibit her in her babyhood to crowds of ad friends, we overwhel toys, we tease her to repeat her little sayings for the arown people, and lastly, we send her to school to be still e of a different kind open to her The fact is, that no child is ready to go to school till she has had ti illumination which pervades the atmosphere of childhood, to

”die away And fade into the light of coin voluntarily to teach them, too early by several years, and the only result is that the brain is ”too early overstrained, and in consequence of such precocious and excessive action, the foundation for a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system is laid in earliest childhood” As far as the home-life fosters this over-activity, that is, before the tied that this showing-off process is applied with greater force to girls than to boys The boy is left irl eneral amusement of the family, and she must learn ”to make herself useful” It is true that to be of service to others, in a rational sense, should be her ruling motive of action, but one may, perhaps, question whether such early expectation, in such ways, be not, at least, ”penny wise and pound foolish” To this cause reat part of the failure in the health at the last special tiress made, John Stuart Mill may, as he says, have entered life ”a quarter of a century in advance of his contemporaries,”

but was he a quarter of a century ahead of others of his own age when he left it? The question is at least suggestive of the truth

But, with the developans which are so indissolubly associated with the deepest feelings and with theorously, the th become more easily roused into activity, but an indefinable ireat excitation of the iination also is perceivable

Just here, then, the educator recognizes a duty This increased force, which we could not prevent if ould, and would not if we could, uided into rational channels--and here I have to speak of a branch of the subject which is not often considered I mean the duty of the mother, who is in this department the proper educator, to speak earnestly, fully, and plainly to the girl of the mysterious process of reproduction Rosenkranz[10] says, soh in culture to inquire whether it is fit for freedom, the question is already answered; and in the saht, has arrived at the point of asking earnest questions on this subject, she is fit to be answered But just here let me call attention to the infinite importance, in this part of education, of perfect confidence and freedohter, and to the equally important fact, that this confidence which does exist at the beginning of life, if once lost, can never fully be restored If there is a shade of reserve on the part of the girl, it willthe information which she really desires, at its only proper source, at that source whence she would receive it pure, and invested with a feeling of reverence and sanctity, of which she could never divest herself, she seeks it elsewhere She picks it up piece-meal in surreptitious and clandestine ways, as if it were some horrible mystery which ht of day She talks it over with her young cohts unduly brooding upon the subject

In old tier was not, is not, so great Foreign girls have a much closer supervision exercised over the than that of American children They do not ask questions so early as the Airl, and when they do, they have at hand not nearly so many sources of information If this all-necessary love and confidence is unbroken, and if the nizes the ie, there is no danger at all The occasion is seized, and her wonified statement, destroys all the false halo hich the youthful fancy is so prone to surround the process of reproduction, and, at this time, the fancy is very active with relation to whatever pertains to it”

I do not for oneof physical education

The physical consequences ofof the iination, I say, for there can be no thought where there is no clearness--the blood is diverted to these organs, and hence, ”the brain and spinal cord, which develop so rapidly at this period, are not led to a proper strength The easily-moulded ans,” and the preternatural activity thus produced is physical disease

Butthe physical for the moral side of education here, if it were not that I around, where, more than on any other, body and soul, matter and spirit, touch each other, and it is very difficult, if not i line The inter-action of the two upon each other here becomes so rapid and intense, that one scarcely knows the relation of cause and effect I repeat-- girl to whoarbled and confused, the sacred seal of ar hands, defaced by the coarse jests of polite society, its sanctity forever missed The temple has been invaded, its white floors trodden by feet from muddy alleys, the Gods thron Is not the temple as much ruined when this profanation has been accomplished, as if the walls had fallen? I will not be , for one irls as a whole; but I assert, that the result of which I have spoken is terribly coe cities, and that it is much more likely to be common in America than in any other country, from the effect of our climate, our free institutions, and the almost universal diffusion of printed matter

The reirl is away frouardian, whoever she may be When our women are better educated, there will be less prudery and irls and wos, they will have no ti Most truly does Schiller say: ”_In er Weile schafft der bose Geist_,” and he spares neither body nor soul

It is always asserted that woman makes and rules society When our wonation will banish forever from all conversation in which they have a part, the fashi+onable jests on subjects which do not admit of jest, and the _doubles entendres_ whose power to excite a sestions They are as coe hts, and are themselves as much coarser and lower than the outspoken utterances of Shakespeare's ideal women--whom they assume to criticise and condemn--as the smooth and subtle rhymes of Swinburne and Joaquin Miller are below the poetry of Chaucer and Spenser

Closely connected with this part of irls are passively allowed to indulge How large a proportion ofwhich can be called watchful care as to what books and papers the children shall read; and yet the booksellers' shelves groan under the weight of the , and insidious books that can possibly be iht never to enter any decent house, lie on the tables of -room Any one ill take the trouble to exa library, will be astounded at the ie novels

And in our parlors and chairls are curled up in corners, poring over such reading--stories of co for a child--stories ”whose exciting pages delight in painting the love of the sexes for each other, and its sensual phases” And the ; and the children anshen asked what they read, ”Oh, anything that co”

How find a remedy for this evil? How steth of body andtheir taste till they shall not desire such trash, and shall only be disgusted with it, if by chance it fall under their eyes? How, but by giving their ular work? If the work be intereneral principles laid down in the remarks on exercise, not only be, from that fact, injurious to the brain, but it will afford, at the most susceptible period of life, leisure for reveries which can lead only to evil, ular work of muscle and brain, a rational system of exercise for both, so that the ”motor and nervous systems may weary themselves in action, and may be desirous of rest,” and evil will be not only prevented, but cured, if existing