of the
improved balance it gives himself, and as an indication to the
observant teacher of his progress and of the next step to be taken in
his development.

It is for the sensory child, I think, that the kindergarten has its
great utility. It gives him facility in movement and expression, and
also some degree of personal and social confidence. But for the same
reasons the kindergarten over-stimulates the motor scholars at the
corresponding age. There should really be two kindergarten
methods--one based on the idea of deliberation, the other on that of
expression.

The task of the educator here, it is evident, is to help nature
correct a tendency to one-sided development; just as the task is this
also in the former case; but here the variation is on the side of
idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius immediately. For genius, I
think, is the more often developed from the contemplative mind, with
the relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than from the
smooth-working machine of the motor one. But just for this reason, if
the damming-up be liberated, not in the channels of healthy
assimilation, and duly correlated growth, but in the forced discharges
of violent emotion, followed by conditions of melancholy and by
certain unsocial tendencies, then the promise of genius ripens into
eccentricity, and the blame is possibly ours.

It seems true--although great caution is necessary in drawing
inferences--that here a certain distinction may be found to hold also
between the sexes. It is possible that the apparent precocious
alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, may be simply a
predominance among them of the motor individuals. This is borne out by
the examination of the kinds of performance in which they seem to be
more forward than boys. It resolves itself, so far as my observation
goes, into greater quickness of response and greater agility in
performance; not greater constructiveness, nor greater power of
concentrated attention. The boys seem to need more instruction because
they do not learn as much for themselves by acting upon what they
already know. In later years, the distinction gets levelled off by the
common agencies of education, and by the setting of tasks requiring
more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to
furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the
ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive and more prone
to the less reflective form