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THE HYGIENE OF INSTRUCTION
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evolution. But we are pretty certain that for them also there is a receiving station—a storage place." In short, the whole body is laid under contribution, and the nervous system specially designed, for a life so great and wonderful that we have not even begun to appreciate it. And in every child born there is the desire to achieve that life. In every child that desire struggles on, glancing through all his impulses, interests, and affinities. It may be balked in myriads, it is balked in myriads. It is arrested, turned back; but it persists while life lasts, so that even the diseased make haste to seize life, to enjoy and advance, and the defective are roused at times and press forward. Yes! the great army advances boldly, and what we begin to say in the modern school is briefly this: "They are to be suffered to advance. They are not to be turned back."

It is a great admission. For ages their path was made difficult. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages fell like a weight on the youth of the age. Its iron hand is not yet quite withdrawn. But now it is to be removed we hope, and what is more, the obstruction in the organism itself is to be searched out and removed if possible. The gates are to be lifted up, that the glory of life may enter. …