and of the Latin secondary schools, which admitted children at nine years of age. In the elementary schools the failure was evidenced in the study of the catechism and the three R's by methods which provided no opportunity for the physical activity of little children, but required silence and restraint, and which never considered whether the material was understood as long as it was learned. The failure in the first years of the secondary schools has been emphasized by Quick. The Renaissance ideal of the scholar, he said,

led schoolmasters to attach little importance to the education of children. Directly their pupils were old enough for Latin grammar the schoolmasters were quite at home; but till then, the children's time seemed to them of little value, and they neither knew nor cared to know how to employ it. If the little ones could learn by heart forms of words which would afterwards come in useful," the schoolmasters were ready to assist such learning by unsparing application of the rod, but no other learning seemed worthy even of a caning. (3: 19.)

Delayed maturing of religious instinct.— Problems of educational practice which grow directly out of Rousseau's demand that activities appropriate to the degree of maturity of the child should be provided are to be found in the teaching of every subject. In teaching religion, which, as we have seen, was the principal factor in the elementary school, we get the greatest contrast between Rousseau and contemporary practice. Émile was not to be instructed in religion until the period of adolescence, and then the instruction was to be of the type described above in Chapter VIII. In this connection Rousseau said:

Let us refrain from announcing the truth to those who are not in a condition to understand it, for this is equivalent to substituting error for it. It would be much better to have no idea of the Divinity, than to have ideas which are low, fanciful, wrongful or unworthy of him. . . . The great evil of the deformed images of the Divinity which are traced in the minds of children is that they remain there as long as they live, and that when they have become men they have no other conception of God than that of their childhood. (1: 231.)

Delayed maturing of walking instinct.-Another example of Rousseau's attack on the tendency to expect of children achievements not suited to their age is teaching children to walk. Genetic psychology teaches us to-day that walking is a delayed instinct, appearing at a certain period in a child's life when he will learn to walk without instruction, but many mothers still persist in the practice which Rousseau described, and with similar results. He said:

Our pedantic mania for instruction is always leading us to teach children things which they would learn much better of their own accord. Is there anything more foolish than the trouble we take to teach them how to walk, as though anyone had ever been seen who, through the negligence of his nurse, was not able to walk when grown up? On the contrary, how many people have we seen who walk poorly all their lives, because they have been badly taught how to walk? (1: 43.)

Almost all their defects of body and mind come from the same cause we wish to make men before their time. (1: 91.)

Rousseau did not stop with the general proposition which we have been discussing but described in detail the psychological characteristics of children of different ages and recommended specific treatment to correspond to each characteristic. We shall take up a few of these special principles which have been most revolutionary in their influence on practice.

Physical activity essential in the maturing of children. One of the most influential of these principles is the importance of physical activity in the maturing and education of children. In Europe during Rousseau's time infants were bound in swaddling clothes, children in the home were to be seen, not heard, and silence and sitting still were the rule of the school. Against this, Rousseau protested on physiological and psychological grounds. Concerning the current method of dressing infants, he said:

The inaction and constraint imposed on the limbs of a child can but impede the circulation of the blood and other fluids, prevent him from growing strong, and weaken his constitution. In countries where these extravagant precautions are not taken, the men are all tall, strong, and

well proportioned; but where children are bound in swaddling clothes, the country swarms with the hump-backed, the lame, the knock-kneed, and the sickly — with all sorts of patched-up men. For fear that the body may be deformed by a free movement, we hasten to deform it by putting it in a press. We would purposely render it impotent in order to prevent it from becoming crippled! (1: 10.)

The movements of children, said Rousseau, "are needs of their constitution, which is trying to fortify itself." (1: 47.) One of the special aspects of the general physical activity of the child, namely, the instinct of manipulation, Rousseau discussed as follows:

[In the heart of the child] activity is abundant and extends itself outward; ... Whether he makes or unmakes matters not; it suffices that he changes the state of things and every change is an action. Though he seems to have a greater inclination to destroy, this is not through badness. The activity which forms is always slow; and as that which destroys is more rapid, it is better adapted to his vivacity. (1: 32.)

Answering an imaginary objector who is alarmed at the notion of a child spending his early years in action, but doing nothing of an academic nature, Rousseau said:

Really! Is it nothing to be happy? Is it nothing to jump, play, and run, all the day long? In no other part of his life will he be so busy. Plato, in his Republic, which is deemed so austere, brings up children only in festivals, games, songs, and pastimes. It might be said that he has done all when he has really taught them how to enjoy themselves; and Seneca, speaking of the ancient Roman youth, says they were always on their feet, and were never taught anything they could learn while seated. Were they of any less value for this when they reached the age of manhood? (1: 68.)

Motor activity connected with observation. - Rousseau emphasized motor activity, not only as the basis of physical growth but also as related to sense perception and general intelligence. His position in this connection resembles recent psychological discussions of the relation between motor responses and mental life. Rousseau joined together three elements or phases of education in one process, namely, sense perception, motor activity, and intellectual activity. He said:

In proportion as a sensitive being becomes active, he acquires a discernment proportional to his powers. If then you would cultivate the intelligence of your pupil, cultivate the power which it is to govern. Give his body continual exercise; make him robust and sound in order to make him wise and reasonable; let him work, and move about, and run, and shout, and be continually in motion; let him be a man in vigor and soon he will be such by force of reason. (1: 84.)

But mere running and shouting, while they provide physical exercise, are deficient from the standpoint of sense perception. "Therefore," said Rousseau, "do not exercise the child's strength alone, but call into exercise all the senses which direct it. . . . Measure, count, weigh, compare, and do not employ force until after having estimated the resistance." (1: 97.)

Sense perception fundamental in elementary education.— The preceding paragraph stated Rousseau's idea that the motor activity provided for children should include not only physical activity but also a varied experience with natural objects through first-hand contact and manipulation. The necessity of such experiences with organic and physical nature, as the source of knowledge, was another principle in Rousseau's psychology of child experience. Contemporary teachers either considered it unnecessary to give knowledge of the world of things or assumed that such knowledge could be secured through a study of words and books. So thoroughly did Rousseau oppose this practice that he advocated making the education of the child between the years of five and twelve entirely "education through experience and the senses.' There had been educational reformers before Rousseau who advocated a study of things. Comenius (1592–1670) was the most important of these, but he had not succeeded in reforming school practice. But it is this phase of the Rousseau movement that first and most extensively modified the practice of elementary teaching, to some degree in the schools of Basedow, but more particularly in the "object teaching" of Pestalozzi and his followers. Rousseau's attitude on this question

is related very definitely to the psychological theories of Locke, to whom, as we have shown, he was indebted for many of his ideas. The following quotation expresses Rousseau's views :

In any study whatever, representative signs are of no account without the idea of the things represented. The child, however [in ordinary practice], is always restricted to these signs without ever being made to comprehend any of the things which they represent. We imagine that we are teaching him a description of the earth, but we are merely teaching him to know maps. We teach him the names of cities, countries and rivers, but he conceives them as existing nowhere save on the paper where they are pointed out to him. (1: 75.)

As all that enters the human understanding comes through the senses, the first reason of man is a sensuous reason; and it is this which serves as a basis for the intellectual reason. Our first teachers of philosophy are our feet, our hands and our eyes. To substitute books for all these is not to teach us to reason, but to teach us to use the reason of others; it is to teach us to believe much and never to know anything. (1: 90.)

Drawing from models, combining sense perception and motor activity.-Rousseau considered drawing important for young children because it combined the two factors of sense perception and motor activity. He said:

I would have my pupil cultivate this art [drawing], not exactly for the art itself, but for rendering the eye accurate and the hand flexible. ... I shall take great care, therefore, not to give him a drawing master who will give him only imitations to imitate. . . He shall have no master but nature, and no models but objects accustomed to observe bodies and their appearances correctly.

...

so as to become

I am aware that in this way he will scrawl for a long time without making anything that is recognizable; that he will be late in catching the elegance of contours [etc.] . . . but by way of compensation he will certainly contract a juster glance of the eye, a steadier hand, a knowledge of the true relations of volume and form existing in animals, plants and natural bodies, and the more ready use of the play of perspective. (1: 108.)

This long quotation serves as another illustration of Rousseau's principle of the necessity and value of beginning with the crude possibilities as they manifest themselves in children, stimulating them at their own level of possible achievement