to his age that you mean to show
your pupil, you know beforehand which of them will influence his will.

Now if you have the appliances, and know just how to use them, are you
not master of the operation?

You object that children have caprices, but in this you are mistaken.
These caprices result from faulty discipline, and are not natural. The
children have been accustomed either to obey or to command, and I have
said a hundred times that neither of these two things is necessary.
Your pupil will therefore have only such caprices as you give him, and
it is just you should be punished for your own faults. But do you ask
how these are to be remedied? It can still be done by means of better
management and much patience.

Physical Training.

Man's first natural movements are for the purpose of comparing himself
with whatever surrounds him and finding in each thing those sensible
qualities likely to affect himself. His first study is, therefore, a
kind of experimental physics relating to his own preservation. From
this, before he has fully understood his place here on earth, he is
turned aside to speculative studies. While yet his delicate and
pliable organs can adapt themselves to the objects upon which they are
to act, while his senses, still pure, are free from illusion, it is
time to exercise both in their peculiar functions, and to learn the
perceptible relations between ourselves and outward things. Since
whatever enters the human understanding enters by the senses, man's
primitive reason is a reason of the senses, serving as foundation for
the reason of the intellect. Our first teachers in philosophy are our
own feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for these is teaching
us not to reason, but to use the reason of another; to believe a great
deal, and to know nothing at all.

In practising an art we must begin by procuring apparatus for it; and
to use this apparatus to advantage, we must have it solid enough to
bear use. In learning to think, we must therefore employ our members,
our senses, our organs, all which are the apparatus of our
understanding. And to use them to the best advantage, the body which
furnishes them must be sound and robust. Our reason is therefore so
far from being independent of the body, that a good constitution
renders mental operations easy and accurate. In indicating how the
long leisure of childhood ought to be employed, I am entering into
particulars which maybe th