The Illustrations of Exercises were drawn from Nature expressly for this book by Miss Helen Burt. The Illustrations of Dress by Miss Clara Wakeman, THOMAS PSYCHO-PHYSICAL CULTURE. CLASS TALK. The Requirements of the Present. AMONG all civilized nations, in all ages of the world, there been some great controlling idea toward which the mind has gravitated. At one time it was conquest and universal dominion; at another it was symmetry and form; at another, physical perfection; again it appeared in rich and costly hangings, frescoed ceilings and sumptuous feasts; still later it was knighthood, the tournament, chivalry, then liberty and equality, in opposition to royalty. All these are way-marks in history, which point out the course of thought down the ages, and show how restless and unsatisfied humanity has swayed hither and thither, each generation seeking in some way to appease the cravings and longings of the human heart and soul. A study of the past reveals to us how men of other ages have wrestled with and solved to their satisfaction the various problems of ethics, religion, sociology, and politics, of their times; and it is much easier to sift the records of the past where human action has become quiet, and one may calmly and deliberately weigh and measure results, than to discover in the currents and counter-currents of such a busy age as ours what the historian of the future will record as the leading characteristic of our time. But, in our opinion, when that verdict has been written, it will be found recorded in history that this was an age preeminent for intense intellectual life, and unless we call a halt, and that right speedily, in this direction, and bring into more prominent activity other endowmen's of our being which are becoming weak from disuse, we shall find ourselves prematurely and hopelessly diseased. This tendency to run off on a bias, to grow one-sided, is producing an unsymmetrical development; and, in fact, we are already beginning to pay the penalty of too great mental strain and lack of harmonious development. Man is composed of a "trinity "—body, mind, and soul,—and in proportion to the harmonious development of this trinity do we secure the end of a true education; for education signifies that complete unfoldment of all the powers and faculties of body, mind, and soul which will give the most perfect types of cultured, well-developed and self-governed men and women. In proportion as we neglect one part of this trinity, or educate one to the exclusion of the other, do we produce abnormal growth-monstrosities. One class of such is the intellectual prodigy, the "book-worm," who is continually held up by parent and teacher as an object of admiration and wonder, and is pointed out with pride to every visitor. Nevertheless he is a monstrosity. Every sensible person can but feel commiseration for such, for he looks from the boy to the man, the girl to the woman, from the home and school-room to the outer world, with its rude encounter, its stern and prolonged conflict, and he sees how unfit are such frames and such habits for the battle of life. Then, again, we see the opposite-men and women with frames so strong and hardy and enduring that incessant toil can scarcely fatigue, and rest alone seems to tire them, yet of mental calibre so small that the intellect seems scarcely able to provide for the safety of the body, the mental machine confided to its care. This is another form of monstrosity. The latter may be more repulsive than the former, and more humiliating to our intellectual aspirations. Both are the result of error, arising from ignorance of ourselves. Mind and body should be viewed as the two well-fitting halves of a perfect whole, designed and planned in perfect harmony, mutually to sustain and support each other, and equally worthy of our unwearied care and attention in perfecting. He who united in us our threefold nature never made them incompatible, inharmonious, opposed, as some would argue. That there is an almost total neglect of the physical education of our youth in the home and school, is seen in the imperfectly developed frames, the narrow chests, crooked spines, round shoulders and protruding shoulder-blades, crooked legs and deformed toes, flabby muscles, squeezed waists, lungstarved and blood-poisoned bodies of our boys and girls, our men and women. The rare spectacle is the perfect and symmetrically-formed man or woman. As proof that the character or moral training in our homes and schools is deficient or neglected in this high-pressure intellectual race, is seen in the wide-spreading and alarming evils which are choking and stifling our social, political, and religious growth to-day, such as corruption in politics, misappropriation of public money, disregard of private rights by railway and other corporations, the immense increase in the liquor traffic, the libelous abuse of men and measures by public journals, the bold aggression of organized capital, and the flooding of the country with vile and infamous literature. This last I believe to be the most truthful cause of ungovernable tempers, idleness, truancy, profanity, and other vicious |