s the aid rendered to each individual creation in its work of
self-improvement. It is not a noble and generous culture which dwarfs
the tree that early ripened or peculiarly flavored fruit may be
obtained; and it is not a noble and generous culture of the child which
forces into unnatural activity certain faculties or powers that surprise
us by their precocity, or excite wonder by the skill exhibited in their
use. Rather let the child grow, expand, mature, according to the law of
its own being, giving it only encouragement and example, which are the
light and air of mental and moral life. I am not conscious that any one
has given us a philosophical, logical system of development, that
relates to the physical, intellectual, and moral character; and to-day I
state the educational want in this particular, but I do not attempt to
supply it. Yet in nature such a system there must be, and only powers of
observation are needed that we may avail ourselves of it. And in stating
this want more particularly, I offer, as my first suggestion, the
opinion, common among educators, that, speaking generally and with
reference to a system, we have no physical training whatever.

In the days of our ancestors, one hundred or two hundred years ago, this
training, as a part of a system of education, was not needed. We had no
cities, and but few large towns. Agriculture and the ruder forms of
mechanical labor were the chief occupations of the people. Populous
cities, narrow streets, dark lanes, cellar habitations, crowded
workshops, over-filled and over-heated factories, and the number of
sedentary pursuits that tax and wear and destroy the physical powers,
and undermine the moral and mental, were unknown. These are the
attendants of our civilization, and they have brought a melancholy train
of evils with them. In the seventeenth century, men perished from
exposure, from ignorance of the laws of health, from the prevalence of
malignant diseases that defied the science of the times; and, as a
consequence, the average length of human life was not greater than it
now is. At present, there is but little exposure that is followed by
fatal results; malignant diseases are deprived of many of their terrors;
rules of living, founded upon scientific principles, are accessible to
all; and yet we daily meet young men and women who are manifestly
unequal to the lot that is before them. In some cases, the sin of the
parent is visited upon the children, and