of a house by memories of the salubrity of other houses similarly situated, and as to the prudence of a line of conduct by means of the consequence of other lines of conduct previously pursued.

Similarly, again, on the bodily side, the skill with which we perform any operation depends upon the accuracy with which we remember the amount of previous efforts and their results and on the precision with which we reproduce them. But to reproduce an action is to have over again an activity of the same nervous process which produced it before-that is, to remember the action. From every point of view, then, we see the importance of memory, of fully conscious memory; which is the early repetition of a newly-formed nervous process, accompanied by vivid consciousness; of subconscious memory, which is the repetition, after very many times, of a well-organized nervous process, accompanied by faint consciousness, and of unconscious memory, which is the repetition, after innumerable times, of a completely organized nervous process, unaccompanied by any consciousness.

MOTOR TRAINING IN EDUCATION.

The ends of exercise may be characterized, in a general way, as first the promotion of health, and second the formation of proper habits of action. The one is a hygi enic end, while the other is a distinctively educational end. It matters not whether we consider a single muscle which admits of only a single limited motion, or a group of muscles, or a complicated system of muscular organs like the organs of speech, or the communal structure we call the body, or a class of school children, or a football team, or a regiment of soldiers-the ends of exercise are practically identical in each case, and can only be attained through a combination of hygienic and educational measures.

The main field of education is the nervous system, and the principles of all forms of education into which physical training enters as a factor are based upon the power of the nervous system to receive impressions and to register them or their effects; in other words, upon its ability to memorize the part it has played in acquired movements, and on occasion to revive and repeat such movements. The student of nervous disorders notes carefully the peculiarities of his patient's movements in order to determine the seat of his injury or weakness and the nature and extent of his disease. It is equally necessary that the practical teacher should apprehend the significance of the spontaneous and acquired muscular movements of his pupils, be those movements coarse or fine; since those movements constitute an index of the action of the brain which it is the teacher's business to develop and train, and also serve to measure the success and test the character of the teacher's efforts at instruction. This is true not only of instruction in football, military drill, gymnastics, sloyd, shoemaking, and sewing, but of instruction in drawing, singing, and the three R's as well. Genuine success in any of the departments of instruction mentioned above is conditioned on the intelligence and skill of the instructor in selecting and teaching such forms of neuro-muscular action as are adapted to the sex, age, and capacity of the pupil.

The motor element in education is so large and of such vital importance that we hazard little in predicting that the systematic study of movements is destined to play a much more prominent part than has been accorded it hitherto, in the professional training of all classes of teachers. "It can scarcely be too often reiterated," says Mercier, "that the study of movements is the only means by which we can gain any insight whatever into the working of the nervous system."

As Mercier's work, The Nervous System and the Mind, contains the latest and most satisfactory study of movements that has come to my notice, I am content to follow him in developing that part of my subject which relates to the classification of movement and the hierarchical arrangement of the nerve centers which represent them.

CLASSIFICATION OF MOVEMENTS.

As regards their regional relations, our bodily movements may be characterized as central or peripheral. "By a central movement," says Mercier, is meant, generally, a movement of the trunk. By a peripheral movement is meant, generally, a

movement of the digits, mouth, or eyes; and the remaining parts of the body are classed in an intermediate position, and in one which approximates to the central or to the peripheral, according, generally, to the size of the part moved, and the size and individuality of the muscles concerned in the movement. . . . . The movements here called central are continuous in duration, vague in limitation, few in number, same in character, and form a general, approximate or coarse adjustment. Progress toward the periphery brings us to movements that are more intermittent in duration, more precisely defined, more numerous, more diversified, and more specially adapted to particular ends; and when at the eyes, the articulatory apparatus, and the digits, we reach the extreme periphery, all these characters reach their highest degree of development."

Movements may be classified, also, as simultaneous or successive, the former being mainly central and the latter mainly peripheral in character. "Coordination in simultaneity affects the central movements first and most, spreads toward the periphery and affects the most peripheral movements last and least. Coordination in succession involves the most peripheral movements most often and in the most prolonged and complex sequences; and when, as often happens, the succession of movements begins centrally and spreads to the periphery it is the most peripheral movements to which all the others are subservient and act as aids and adjustments." As an example of successive movements beginning centrally, those concerned in vocal utterance may serve as an example. Vocal utterance is the resultant effect of the combined-i. e., coordinated-action of the organs of breathing, phonation, and articulation, which are situated in the chest, throat, and mouth, respectively. Breathing movements are central, voice movements intermediate, and articulatory movements are peripheral. The most central movements in this series present two phases-viz, inspiration and expiration. In each phase the movements of abdominal wall, diaphragm, ribs, and glottis start simultaneously, but the enunciation of consonant and vowel sounds results from rapid successive movements of the vocal cords and of the tongue and lips-results, that is, from peripheral movements coordinated in succession.

The nervous mechanisms which innervate and represent our various movements have been divided according to their situation into lower, higher, and highest level centers; and again they have been classed as fundamental or accessory according to the order of their development. In general we may say that the coarser, more central movements, are represented in lower level centers, i. e., in the more central or basal regions of the brain and spinal cord; that the centers representing intermediate movements are found at higher places in the hierarchy than those which represent central movements; and that the highest level centers, in the cortex of the brain, represent the most special, precise, elaborate, and varied of our peripheral movements.

EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LAW OF EDUCATION OF NERVOUS SYSTEM. In the evolution of the race and of the individual, the more general functions and organs are formed and developed earlier than the special functions and their organs; e. g., the circulatory and alimentary organs develop earlier than the vocal organs and the hands and feet. The same law obtains likewise in the growth and development of the nervous system, in respect both to its massive and its minute parts. The nervous mechanisms concerned in central movements are at once older and more lowly placed than the mechanisms concerned in peripheral movements. To those parts of the nervous system, in man, which are formed earliest and are practically completed and fully organized at birth, the late Dr. Ross, a leading English neurologist, gave the name "fundamental," while he designated as "accessory" those parts which are rudimentary at birth and comparatively late in their growth and development. Broadly speaking, central movements are represented by low-level, fundamental centers, and peripheral movements by high-level, accessory centers. If, as has been stated, the nervous system is the field of education, education to be natural, safe,

and effectual should defer the training of the accessory parts of the nervous system until the development of its fundamental portions has been secured by appropriate forms of general training.

As is well known, city children as a class present more cases of nervous instability than do country children as a class. I therefore venture to quote at length Dr. Ross's views as to the part which physical training should play in the education of children with tendencies to nervous instability.

The children of parents who manifest a predisposition to severe nervous disease, as hysteria and epilepsy, are frequently not merely quick in their perceptive faculties but are also often possessed of great intellectual powers, and much of their future happiness depends upon judicious mental training in youth. The children of such families ought not to be subjected to any severe mental strain during the period of bodily development, or be allowed to enter into competition with other children in the mental gymnastics which are so fashionable in our public schools. On the other hand, regular graduated and systematic exercise in the form of walking, riding, gymnastics, and calisthenics does a great deal of good by strengthening both the muscular and nervous systems. Everything which tends to develop the muscles of the lower extremities and trunk, and indeed all muscles engaged in executing the movements common to both man and the lower animals, tends also to develop the fundamental part of the nervous system, and a good sound development of the fundamental is the first prerequisite to a well-balanced development of the accessory portion.

The order of the development of the nervous system in the race has been from the fundamental to the accessory portions; and no one can reverse this process with impunity in that further development of the individual which constitutes education in its widest sense. Yet until a few years ago the natural order of development was reversed in the education of youth, and especially in female education, so far as this could be accomplished by human contrivance and ingenuity. The natural order of development was indeed observed so far as to allow the child to acquire the power of walking prior to that of other accomplishments; but the care of the infant had not yet been transferred to the professional trainer. No sooner, however, had what is technically called education begun, than the professional trainer began to exercise the small muscles of vocalization and articulation so as to acquire the art of reading, the muscles of the hand so as to acquire the art of writing, and in the case of young ladies the still more complicated movements necessary in running over the keyboard of a piano; while little attention was paid to the development of the larger muscles of the trunk and lower extremities, upon the full development of which the future comfort of the individual depends.

In the education of youth in the present day the laws of development and physiology are not so openly violated and defied as they were a few years ago; but much remains to be done in this respect, and especially in the education of children of families who manifest a neuropathic tendency. In the children of such families the greatest possible care should be taken to develop carefully the fundamental actions, inasmuch as a sound development of these involves a stable construction of the fundamental part of the nervous system; a process which makes the latter to offer a greater specific resistance to the paroxysmal discharges from the later evolved centers of the accessory portions which underlie hysteria, epilepsy, and even many of the psychoses. The process of educating the accessory system, and especially the higher centers of that system, should be regular and systematic; habits of mental scrutiny and self-examination-which, unfortunately, too many religious teachers deem necessary for the welfare of the soul-ought to be discouraged. In one word, education should be made as concrete and objective as possible.

If this be true, and who shall gainsay it, is it not evident that educational measures of every kind should be selected and coordinated so as to conform to the order and rate of growth and development of the fundamental and accessory neuro-muscular mechanisms of the child and the adolescent?

The law of the evolution of the nervous system seems to me a sure and serviceable criterion of the worth and propriety of educational procedures of every kind, since it affords a means of comparing our conventional methods of educating the individual with nature's method of educating the race.

Is it too much to ask that educationists should recognize, ponder upon, and be guided by the laws of development which determine the health and power of the brain centers, and the health and efficiency of the servants and ministers of those centers, namely, the skeletal muscles? It is true, doubtless, that the laws of devel

opment are recognized, in a way, in the conventional division of schools into elementary, secondary, and superior; but it is no less true that the bodily and mental characteristics which differentiate children from youth, and both from adults, are deserving of more careful study and much fuller recognition than they have received hitherto from teachers as a class, or from those charged with the appointment and control of teachers.

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT DURING IMMATURITY.

Our "earthly pilgrimage" embraces three stages, viz, (1) that of evolution or immaturity, which is par excellence the period of growth or increase in size, of development or improvement and increase of functional powers, and of storage of energy; (2) that of maturity or completed development, in which growth and development proceed more and more slowly till they cease, a period of productive activity, of balanced income and expenditures of energy, and (3) that of dissolution or decline, marked by excess of expenditure of energy, by weakened and decaying functions, and by wasting and degeneration of organs and tissues.

Growth and development characterize the stage of immaturity, as has been said, but since development waits upon growth, the two processes vary in amount and rate in different parts of that stage, considering the body as a whole. Nor should it be forgotten that the several somatic and special mechanisms of the body differ in respect to the order and rates of their growth and development. If the education of children and youth shall ever become thoroughly natural and rational, it will be because the significance of that order and rate, and their relations to life and death, is recognized and heeded to an extent that is nowhere common as yet.

The leading somatic organs emerge from the rudimentary chaos of early fœtal life in the following order, practically speaking: The brain and nervous system; the alimentary system; the circulatory and respiratory systems; the muscles and the skeleton. And after birth the brain maintains its lead both in growth and devel opment over the muscles, until the period of second dentition, at 7 to 8 years of age, when the brain weighs, within a narrow margin, as much as it ever will. "The difference between what the brain of the child of 8 and the brain of the man of 25 can do and can resist is quite indescribable. The organ of these two periods might belong to two different species of animals so far as its essential qualities go," says Dr. Clouston in his Neuroses of Development.

In the brain the parts which preside over the sense organs appear sooner and develop earlier than do the parts which control the motor organs. Complete development of motor ability does not and can not take place until the muscular instruments or end organs of the motor brain centers have attained full growth, which is not accomplished till puberty. The skeleton is not fully consolidated until the twenty-fifth year.

Increase in height is chiefly an increase of length in the skeleton, and growth in weight consists mostly of increase in the weight of the muscles. The adult body is about three times as tall and twenty times as heavy as that of the infant at birth. Certain facts relating to the growth rate of some of the leading somatic organs may be cited here. The following figures, showing the changes brought about by growth, during the stage of evolution, in the ratios of the weight of the brain, the muscles, and the skeleton to the total body weight, are taken from Foster's TextBook of Physiology:

Weight of

Brain in new-born babe equals 14.34 per cent, in adult equals 2.37, of body weight.

Skeleton in new-born babe equals 16.70 per cent, in adult equals 15.35, of body weight.

Muscles in new-born babe equals 23.40 per cent, in adult equals 43.10, of body weight.

In other words, in the adult the brain is 3.7 times, the skeleton 26 times, and the

muscles 48 times heavier than at birth. It is obvious that if the musculature fails to attain its normal size and weight, the body can not attain its full size and weight. It is scarcely necessary to urge in the face of such facts that well-directed muscular exercise may powerfully promote normal bodily growth.

PERIODS OF IMMATURITY AND THE CHARACTERISTICS,

The stage of evolution or immaturity is of paramount importance, since the formal education of the vast majority of the pupils in our elementary and secondary schools ceases long before maturity is reached. This stage may be roughly divided into three equal periods of eight years. Both growth and development proceed during each period, but growth preponderates in the first and second and developnfent in the third period. The salient features of each period may be grouped as follows: First period, from birth to the close of the eighth year. -The whole body grows rapidly in the first two years of life, more particularly in the first year, but it is the "immense" growth of the brain, which attains its full weight within a few ounces in the eighth year, that signalizes this period most markedly. In the domain of development the sensory organs take the lead and reach a high degree of perfection, though certain of the most essential neuro-muscular mechanisms concerned in the coordination of relatively central movements also undergo active development, e. g., those concerned in equilibration, locomotion, and vocal utterance. The child is imitative, inquisitive, and acquisitive; but his perceptive powers and his memory develop faster than his powers of discrimination and expression. During this period sensory education may safely be diversified and somewhat specially emphasized; but motor education should be of a more general and elementary character.

Strenuous and exacting "drill," especially of the intermediate and accessory mechanisms, is contra-indicated for the child. Both games and gymnastics yield valuable results if they are intelligently selected and conducted; but the first should be easy and simple and the second elementary in their character.

Second period, from the beginning of the ninth to the end of the sixteenth year.—This is distinctively the period of most rapid growth in height and weight. In increase of weight the muscles play the leading part. Motor coordinations reach a higher degree of development than was possible during the preceding period, though they are not fully perfected till adolescence is nearly completed. "The process of perfecting motor coordinations can not be said to be complete," says Dr. Clouston, "while the awkward, ungraceful motions of hobbledehoyhood last, and until we reach the grace and poetry of body motion of the maiden of 23 and the dexterity, force, and swiftness of coordination of eye, hand, and body seen in the male cricketer or lawn-tennis player of 25." As Dr. Clouston has pointed out, one of the most marked features of this period is the coordination of motion and emotion.

In this period the individual diverges from the neutral condition of childhood and takes on the distinctive characteristics of youth or maiden. The changes in body, mind, and character which result from the establishment of puberty are profound and lasting in both sexes, though in this period they transpire more rapidly and proceed further in the gentler sex-i. e., females in comparison with males are precocious in their growth and development.

Self-consciousness is awakened, self-confidence is quickened, and new impulses, appetencies, and ambitions arise which prompt the adolescent to try all things and everybody. The child yields to authority and accepts dieta with comparatively good grace; but the youth demands reasons and must be convinced, or at least persuaded, by his teachers and governors; he may be led, but he resists being driven. Educational methods, therefore, particularly during the second half of this period, should savor more of incitement than compulsion. The formal education of the great majority of public-school pupils terminates in this period, since so soon as they are fairly well-grown their services become marketable. Those who are destined to the ruder forms of labor or the humbler crafts and occupations enter the lowest ranks of wage