nd fortifies his spiritual
being, just as when his body is bathed in fresh air and his limbs move
freely in the meadows, he works at the growth of his physical organism
and strengthens it.

VI

ATTENTION

The phenomenon to be expected from the little child, when he is placed
in an environment favorable to his spiritual growth, is this: that
suddenly the child will fix his attention upon an object, will use it
for the purpose for which it was constructed, and will _continue_ to
repeat the same exercise indefinitely. One will repeat an exercise
twenty times, another forty times, and yet another two hundred times;
but this is the first phenomenon to be expected, as initiatory to
those acts with which spiritual growth is bound up.

That which moves the child to this manifestation of activity is
evidently a primitive internal impulse, almost a vague sense of
spiritual hunger; and it is the impulse to satisfy this hunger which
then actually directs the consciousness of the child to the determined
object and leads it gradually to a primordial, but complex and
repeated exercise of the intelligence in comparing, judging, deciding
upon an act, and correcting an error. When the child, occupied with
the solid insets, places and displaces the ten little cylinders in
their respective places thirty or forty times consecutively; and,
having made a mistake, sets himself a problem and solves it, he
becomes more and more interested, and tries the experiment again and
again; he prolongs a complex exercise of his psychical activities
which makes way for an internal development.

It is probably the internal perception of this development which
makes the exercise pleasing, and induces prolonged application to the
same task. To quench thirst, it is not sufficient to see or to sip
water; the thirsty man must drink his fill: that is to say, must take
in the quantity his organism requires; so, to satisfy this kind of
psychical hunger and thirst, it is not sufficient to see things
cursorily, much less "to hear them described"; it is necessary to
possess them and to use them to the full for the satisfaction of the
needs of the inner life.

This fact stands revealed as the basis of all psychical construction,
and the sole secret of education. The external object is the gymnasium
on which the spirit exercises itself, and such "internal" exercises
are primarily "in themselves" the end and aim of action. Hence the
solid insets are not