§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are growing and changing so fast. In later years, waking and sleeping must be regulated, and yet not too exactly.
§ 63. The clothing of children should follow the form of the body, and should be large enough to give them free room for the unfettered movement of every limb in play.
The Germans do more rationally for children in the matter of sleep and of dress than in that of food, which they often make too rich, and accompany with coffee, tea, etc. The clothing should be not only suitable in shape and size, it must also be made of simple and inexpensive material, so that the child may not be hampered in his play by the constant anxiety that a spot or a rent may cause fault to be found with him. If we foster in the child's mind too much thought about his clothes, we tend to produce either a narrow-mindedness, which treats affairs of the moment with too much respect and concerns itself with little things, or an empty vanity. Vanity is often produced by dressing children in a manner that attracts attention. (No one can fail to remark the peculiar healthful gayety of German children, and to contrast it with the different appearance of American children. It is undoubtedly true that the climate has much to do with this result, but it is also true that we may learn much from that nation in our way of treating children. Already we import their children's story-books, to the infinite delight of the little ones, and copies of their children's pictures are appropriated constantly by our children's magazines and picture-books. It is to be greatly desired that we should adopt the very sensible custom which prevails in Germany, of giving to each child its own little bed to sleep in, no matter how many may be required; and, in general, we shall not go far astray if we follow the Germans in their treatment of their happy children.)
§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be trained, not only for the sake of their physical health, but also because it has a decided moral influence. Cleanliness will not have things deprived of their distinctive and individual character, and become again a part of original chaos. It is only a form of order which remands all things, dirt included, to their own places, and will not endure to have things mixed and confused. All adaptation in dress comes from this same principle. When every thing is in its proper place, all dressing will be suitable to the occasion and to the wearer, and the era of good taste in dress will have come. Dirt itself, as Lord Palmerston so wittily said, is nothing but "matter out of place." Cleanliness would hold every individual thing strictly to its differences from other things, and for the reason that it makes pure air, cleanliness of his own body, of his clothing, and of all his surroundings really necessary to man, it develops in him the feeling for the proper limitations of all existent things. (Emerson says: "Therefore is space and therefore is time, that men may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and divisible." He might have said, "Therefore is cleanliness.")
Second Chapter.
Gymnastics.
§ 65. Gymnastics is the art of cultivating in a rational manner the muscular system. The activity of the voluntary muscles, which are under the control of the brain, in distinction from the involuntary, which are under the control of the spinal cord, renders possible the connection of man with the external world, and acts in a reflex manner back upon the involuntary or automatic muscles for the purposes of repair and sensation. Because the activity of muscle-fibre consists in the change from contraction to expansion, and the reverse, gymnastics must use a constant change of movements which shall not only make tense, but relax the muscles that are to be exercised.
§ 66. The gymnastic art among any people will always bear a certain relation to its art of war. So long as fighting consists mainly of personal, hand-to-hand encounters of two combatants, so long will gymnastics turn its chief effort towards the development of the greatest possible amount of individual strength and dexterity. But after the invention of fire-arms of long range has changed the whole idea of war, the individual becomes only one member of a body, the army, the division, or the regiment, and emerges from this position into his individuality again only occasionally, as in sharpshooting, in the onset, or in the retreat. Modern gymnastics, as an art, can never be the same as the ancient art, for this very reason: that because of the loss of the individual man in the general mass of combatants, the matter of personal bravery is not of so much importance as formerly. The same essential difference between ancient and modern gymnastics, would result from the subjective, or internal character of the modern spirit. It is impossible for us, in modern times, to devote so much thought to the care of the body and to the reverential admiration of its beauty as did the Greeks.
The Turners' Unions and Turners' Halls in Germany belonged to the period of intense political enthusiasm in the German youth, and had a political significance. Now they have come back again to their place as an instrument of education, and seem in great cities to be of much importance. In mountainous countries, and in country life generally, a definite gymnastic drill is of much less importance, for much and varied exercise is of necessity a constant part of the daily life of every one.