Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/25

 hour of birth and twelve years of age. This is the time wherein vice and error take root, without our being possessed of any instrument to destroy them; and when the implement is found they are so deeply grounded that they are no longer to be eradicated.

"If children took a leap from their mother's breast and at once arrived at the age of reason, the methods of education now usually taken with them would be very proper; but, according to the progress of nature, they require those which are very different. We should not tamper with the mind till it has acquired all its faculties; for it is impossible it should perceive the light we hold out to it while it is blind, or that it should pursue, over an immense plain of ideas, that route which reason hath so slightly traced as to be perceptible only to the sharpest sight.

"The first part of education, therefore, ought to be purely negative. It consists neither in teaching virtue nor truth, but in guarding the heart from vice and the mind from error."

"Meantime a smiling offspring rises round, And mingles both their graces. By degrees, The human blossom blows; and every day, Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm— The father's luster, and the mother's bloom."

After this brief review, the only conclusion that we can come to is, that everything depends upon a proper system of physical training. Without a systematic development of the physical frame, a healthful and vigorous intellectual condition need not be looked for. The mental and the physi