Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/166

 The lower level includes, of course, all the spinal system, whose branches, flung wide and lying deep, have to do with the movements and life of the big organs— the heart, the lungs, the viscera. Strong and stubborn is the grip of life in these underground regions, and in infancy and early childhood the tides of life seem to toss and boil there just as water does in a cavern ere it has forced a way between the cliffs. But until the school doctor arrived this gathering together of energy was discouraged. It was drained off—that energy—in little wearing tasks. This misfortune happened to a generation—but not to many generations, else one cannot tell what would have been the result. For education is openly, almost grossly physical, in its early stages. Young, vigorous races, and especially the great men of these, appear to be subject to great shocks and upheavals of every organ, and to be more conscious than are later generations of the intensity of the life fermenting in them. Thus, for example, the Psalmist in his outpourings speaks of his heart, of the viscera, of the bones even, continually, and, as it seems, of necessity. In less primitive people the response of the organism is much less violent and general; and perhaps this is why teachers, for centuries and in every land, have been in such haste to