of cadet and rifle corps in
the Secondary Schools of the country and in the Evening Continuation
Schools attended by the sons of the working classes. The time when
systematic instruction in military exercises and in the use of arms
shall form part of every youth's education has not yet arrived, but the
necessity for some such step looms already on the horizon.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Locke's _Thoughts on Education_.

[25] Bowen's Froebel (Great Educator Series), p. 48.

[26] Cf. chap. ii.

[27] Cf. MacDougall's _Physiological Psychology_ (Dent); _also_ Sir
James Crichton Browne's article on "Education and the Nervous System,"
in Cassell's _Book of Health_.

[28] _Principles of Heredity_, ibid. p. 242.

[29] Cf. next chapter.

[30] _Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers_ (English Board of
Education), chapter on Physical Education.

[31] Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, p. 292.

[32] _Ibid._ p. 329.

CHAPTER X

THE AIM OF THE INFANT SCHOOL

It is needless to point out that the method of educating the infant mind
is the method of all education--viz., the regulation of the process by
which experiences are acquired and organised so as to render the
performance of future action more efficient. This, as we shall see
later, is the fundamental truth at the foundation of the Kindergarten
method of Froebel, and it must guide and control our conduct not only
during the earlier stages but throughout the whole process of education.

Moreover, since the early acquisitions of the child are the bases upon
which all further knowledge and practice are founded, we must realise
how important these first experiences are for the whole future
development of the child. Further, we have seen that all education--all
acquiring and organising of experience in early life--must be motived by
the felt desire to satisfy some instinctive need of the child's nature,
and that it is these instinctive needs which determine the nature and
scope of his early activities.

Later, indeed, acquired interests may be grafted upon the innate and
instinctive needs, but at the beginning and during his first years the
child's whole life is determined by the primitive desires of human
nature.

Now, the first instinctive need which requires the aid of education is
the need felt by the child to acquire some measure of control over his
bodily movements and over the things in his immediate physical
environment. Hence the first stage in educa