help of his laborious expedients, may succeed in fixing the
rebellious attention of his pupils on himself. On the other hand, the
spiritual school puts no limits to the beauty of its environment, save
economical limits. No ornament can distract a child really absorbed in
his task; on the contrary, beauty both promotes concentration of
thought and offers refreshment to the tired spirit. Indeed, the
churches, which are _par excellence_ places of meditation and of
repose for the life of the soul, have called upon the highest
inspirations of genius to gather every beauty within their precincts.

Such words may seem strange; but if we wish to keep in touch with the
principles of science, we may say that the place best adapted to the
life of man is an artistic environment; and that, therefore, if we
want the school to become "a laboratory for the observation of human
life," we must gather within it things of _beauty_, just as the
laboratory of the bacteriologist must be furnished with stoves and
soils for the culture of bacilli.

Furniture for children, their tables and chairs, should be light, not
only that they may be easily carried about by childish arms, but
because their very fragility is of educational value. The same
consideration leads us to give children china plates and glass
drinking-vessels, for these objects become the _denouncers_ of rough,
disorderly, and undisciplined movements. Thus the child is led to
correct himself, and he accordingly trains himself not to knock
against, overturn, and break things; softening his movements more and
more, he gradually becomes their perfectly free and self-possessed
director. In the same way the child will accustom himself to do his
utmost _not to soil_ the gay and pretty things which enliven his
surroundings. Thus he makes progress in his own perfection, or, in
other words, it is thus he achieves the perfect coordination of his
voluntary movements. It is the same process by which, having enjoyed
silence and music, he will do all in his power to avoid discordant
noises, which have become unpleasant to his educated ear.

On the other hand, when a child comes into collision a hundred times
with an enormously heavy iron-bound desk, which a porter would have
difficulty in moving; when he makes thousands of invisible ink-stains
on a black bench; when he lets a metal plate fall to the ground a
hundred times without breaking it, he remains immersed in his sea of
defects without p