In all such matters the "formation" is
the essential factor; the powers of will are established by exercise.

In education, it is of very great value to organize all the mechanism
useful in the production of personality at an early stage. Just as
_movement_, the _gymnastics_ of children, is necessary, because, as is
well known, muscles which are not exercised become incapable of
performing the variety of movements of which the muscular system is
capable, so an analogous system of gymnastics is necessary to maintain
the activity of the psychical life.

The uneducated organism may be easily directed towards subsequent
deficiencies; he who is weak of muscle is inclined to remain
motionless, and so to perish, when an action is necessary to overcome
danger. Thus the child who is weak of will, who is "hypobulic" or
"abulic," will readily adapt himself to a school where all the
children are kept seated and motionless, listening, or pretending to
listen. Many children of this kind, however, end in the hospital for
nervous disorders and have the following notes on their school
reports: "Conduct excellent; no progress in studies." Of such children
some teachers confine themselves to such a remark as: "They are so
good," and by this they tend to protect them from any intervention,
and leave them to sink undisturbed into the weakness which threatens
to engulf them like a quicksand. Other children, whose natural
impulses are strong, are noted merely as creators of disorder, and are
set down as "naughty." If we enquire into the nature of their
naughtiness, we shall be told almost invariably that "they will never
keep still." These turbulent spirits are further stigmatized as
"aggressive to their companions," and their aggressions are nearly
always of this kind: they try by every possible means to rouse their
companions from their quiescence, and draw them into an association.
There are also children in whom the inhibitory powers are dominant;
their timidity is extreme: they sometimes seem as if they cannot make
up their minds to answer a question; they will do so after some
external stimulus, but in a very low voice, and will then burst into
tears.

The necessary gymnastic in all these three cases is free action. The
constant and interesting movement of others is the best of incitements
to the abulic; motion directed into the channel of orderly exercise
develops the inhibitory powers of the too impulsive child, and the
child who