orthodox worship of idols. The ideals set before the
child are too high and too complex to be inculcated by physical force,
or even by force of public opinion. A rigid discipline, with many
stripes and with terrible threats of a still worse punishment in the
world to come, was the almost invariable lot of children until the
last century was well advanced. Yet has this drastic treatment of
young children fulfilled its purpose? Were the men of fifty years ago
better conducted and more controlled than the men of to-day? In any
one family did a greater proportion turn out well? Is it not true that
at least among the educated classes the relaxation of nursery and
schoolroom discipline which the last fifty years has seen has been
justified by its results? Is it not true that the childhood of our
grandmothers was often lived "in fear, in restraint, in submission, in
suffering subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary
prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling,
unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary." And though perhaps the
grandmothers of most of us may not have been much the worse for all
this discipline, is it not true that of the little brothers who shared
the nursery with them a surprising number broke straightway into
dissipation when the parental restraints were removed? If we are to
teach a child to be gentle to the weak it is not wise to beat him. The
qualities which we wish him to possess are not more subtle than the
means by which we must aid him to their possession.

[Footnote 2: _The Principles of Rational Education_, by Dr. C.A.
Mercier.]

Education comprises physical, mental, and moral training. In earlier
times physical strength and the power to fight well, alone were prized
and were the chief objects to be gained in the education of youth.
Later, under the stress of intellectual competition for success in
life, mental acquirements have come to occupy the first place. We are
only now learning to lay emphasis upon the supreme need for moral
training. Not that it is possible to separate the sum of education
into its constituent parts, and to regard each as distinct from the
others. That many men of great intellectual activity, and many men
pre-eminent for their moral qualities have harboured a great brain or
a noble character in a weakly or deformed body, forms no argument to
disprove the general rule that a healthy, vigorous physique is the
only sure foundation upon which to