son three times a
week, but these lessons can quite well be taken from playtime. By the
age of twelve two lessons a week are sufficient. This training will not
only develop the feeling for beauty and form by accustoming the eye to
distinguish beautiful movements and lines from those that are ugly, but
also render the children susceptible to musical impressions.

There are always children who are not able to sing in time, or even to
beat time, to walk in time, or to graduate the strength and rapidity of
their movements. Such children are unrhythmic, and it will generally be
noticed that these children are stiff and awkward, often also
over-excitable. This lack of rhythm is almost like a disease. It is
caused by the lack of balance between the mental and physical powers,
which results from insufficient co-ordination between the mental
picture of a movement and its performance by the body, and these nervous
troubles are just as much the cause as the result of such lack of
harmony. In some cases the brain gives clear and definite impulses, but
the limbs, in themselves healthy, can do nothing because the nervous
system is in confusion. In other cases the limbs have lost the power to
carry out orders sent by the brain, and the undischarged nerve-impulses
disturb the whole nervous system. In other cases again, muscles and
nerves are healthy, but insufficient training in rhythm impedes the
formation of lasting rhythmic images in the brain. To repeat, the causes
of this lack of rhythm all lie in the important but insufficiently
recognized psycho-physiological sphere of the co-ordination of brain,
nerve-paths and muscles.

The objection is sometimes made that rhythmic gymnastics cause
nerve-strain in children. This is not the case. Several brain
specialists have told me that they have effected satisfactory cures with
rhythmic gymnastic exercises.

Rhythm is infinite, therefore the possibilities for physical
representations of rhythm are infinite.

* * * * *

(ADDRESS TO STUDENTS, _der Rhythmus_, Vol. I, p. 41, _et seq._)

I consider it unpardonable that in teaching the piano the whole
attention should be given to the imitative faculties, and that the
pupil should have no opportunity whatever of expressing his own musical
impressions with the technical means which are taught him.

Whether the teacher himself be a genius is of little importance,
provided he is able to help others to develop th