Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/197

 mankind and to love of that order. This is the second and essential step in his training.

142. But in the first part of education another subject, which is also mentioned by Pestalozzi, is not to be overlooked; the development of the pupil’s bodily powers, which must necessarily go hand in hand with those of the mind. He demands an A B C of Art, i.e., of the bodily powers. His most striking statements about this are the following: “Striking, carrying, throwing, pushing, pulling, turning, struggling, swinging, etc., are the simplest exercises of strength. There is a natural sequence in these exercises from the beginnings to the perfect art, i.e., to the highest stage of the nerve rhythm, which ensures blow and push, swing and throw, in a hundred different ways, and makes hand and foot certain.” In this, everything depends on the natural sequence, and it is not enough that we should interfere in a blind arbitrary way and introduce any kind of exercise, just in order that it may be said of us that we too, like the Greeks perhaps, have physical education. Now, everything still remains to be done in this matter, for Pestalozzi has supplied no A B C of Art. This must first of all be supplied, and that certainly requires a man who is versed in the anatomy of the human body and also in scientific mechanics, and who combines with this knowledge a high degree of philosophical spirit. Such a man will be capable of discovering in all-round perfection that machine which the human body is designed to be, and of showing how this machine may gradually be developed out of every healthy human body, so that every advance occurs