Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/746

726 they may be keen judges of character and conduct and "be well able to hold their own in a bargain or an argument. Of a class of about thirty girls from eight to thirteen years of age living east of the Bowery, only three had been in Central Park and only four had ever visited the country. When taken to Central Park by a friend, they first asked if they might step on the grass, and then, with the natural instinct of young animals, lay down and rolled on it.

As already remarked, it is natural for the young child to move about and change its attitude almost incessantly; in the words of Sir William Jenner, "it joys to exercise every muscle"; and it is equally true that its eyes, attention, and mind should never be directed continuously at one object for very long. A child loves to glance at this object, pick up that, reach out for a third, not restlessly but wonderingly, caressingly, and joyously, just as a short time before the infant played contentedly with its rattle or its ring, waving it about or putting it into its mouth with endless repetition, but always without studious observation or strain of attention. I am afraid we often injure these small eyes and tender brains by requiring continuous repose of body and fixation of eye and attention on some one object, as is often done in the kindergarten and primary work, at the cost of ocular and nervous strain; and this combined with bad light and general driving may account for much of modern myopia, headache, and nervous troubles. We should advance in the education of muscle, eye, and brain from the general to the particular, and impose no task requiring precision or intense application upon young children. Nature is a good schoolmistress, and her lessons are fundamental ones, no matter how much we may supplement them at school or university. The infant is learning fundamental lessons, in the correlation of muscle, brain, and sense, through the almost incessant activity of his arms and legs—at first without purpose, afterward in reaching, grasping, or trying to move about, and also when it smiles back at its mother or is quieted by her voice; so is the child repeating nursery rhymes or busy with its quiet play or romping games; or the youth with his carpenter's tools, or riding, swimming, or hunting, and learning just as truly, and perhaps more truly, than the student burning midnight oil over Greek and calculus. Nature is never systematic in the school sense; and, however much we may systematize, we must at the same time cultivate our powers and round out our individuality by keeping in touch with so much of Nature and man as lies within our horizon in a restful, informal way. If a man is to develop into something more than a machine or formula, he should be encouraged from childhood to bring all his powers into relation with his environment and to seek a wide range of adjustments