The Best Kinds of Exercise.
[Mulcaster gives a list of the forms of exercise which he thinks most suitable, both for indoors, and for out of doors. In the former class are—speaking and reading aloud, singing, laughing, weeping, holding the breath, dancing, wrestling, fencing, and whipping the top; in the latter are—walking, running, leaping, swimming, riding, hunting, shooting, and playing at ball. These of course are not all considered suitable for children, but a selection could be made from them to be practised in school under the regulation of the master. He then enters upon a detailed and curious examination of the value of each of these forms of exercise, considered mainly in regard to their physiological effects. In all this it has been pointed out by Schmidt (Geschichte der Erziehung, Vol. III., Pt. I, pp. 374-6) that Mulcaster followed closely, though without special acknowledgment, the De Arte Gymnastica of Girolamo Mercuriale, a contemporary Italian physician. As the science is mostly of the traditional and somewhat fantastic character then prevalent, the discussion is not particularly profitable from a modern standpoint. It will be interesting, however, as an illustration of his treatment, to see how he deals with a game that seems to have had much the same features in his day as in ours.]
Football as a Form of Exercise.
Football could not possibly have held its present prominence, nor have been so much in vogue as it is everywhere, if it had not been very beneficial to health and strength. To me the abuse of it is a sufficient argument that it has a right use, though as it is now commonly practised, with thronging of a rude multitude, with bursting of shins and breaking of legs, it is neither civilised, nor worthy the name of any healthy training. And here one can easily see the use of the training master, for if there is some one standing by, who can judge of the play, and is put in control over the players, all these objections can be easily removed. By such regulation, the players being put into smaller numbers, sorted into sides and given their special positions, so that they do not meet with their bodies so boisterously to try their strength, nor shoulder and shove one another so barbarously, football may strengthen the muscles of the whole body. By provoking superfluities downwards it relieves the head and the upper parts, it is good for the bowels, and it drives down the stone and gravel from the bladder and the kidneys. The motion also helps weak hams and slender shanks by making the flesh firmer, yet rash running and too much violence often break some internal conduit and cause ruptures.
Is Education to be offered to both Sexes?
We are next to consider who are those to whom education should be given, which I take to be children of both sorts, male and female. But young maidens must give me leave to speak of boys first, because naturally the male is more worthy and more important in the body politic; therefore that side may claim learning as first framed for their use and most properly belonging to them, though out of courtesy and kindness they may be content to lend some advantages of their education in the time of youth to the female sex on whom they afterwards bestow themselves, and the fruit of their whole training.
All cannot receive a Learned Education.
As for boys, it has been set beyond doubt long ago, that they should be sent to school, to learn how to be religious and loving, how to govern and obey, how to forecast and prevent, how to defend and assail, and in short, how to perform excellently by labour the duties for which nature has fitted them only imperfectly. But in the matter of this so desirable a training, two important questions arise; first, whether all children should be put to school without any restraint upon the number, and secondly, if any restriction is needful, how it is to be imposed. In the body politic a certain proportion of parts must be preserved just as in the natural body, or disturbances will arise, and I consider that it is a burden to a commonwealth on the one hand to have too many learned, just as it is a loss on the other hand to have too few, and that it is important to have knowledge and intelligence well adapted to the station in life, as, if these are misplaced it may lead to disquiet and sedition.
There is always danger to a State in excess of numbers beyond the opportunities of useful employment, and this is specially true in the case of scholars. For they profess learning, that is to say, the soul of the State, and it is too perilous to have the soul of the State troubled with their souls, that is, necessary learning with unnecessary learners. Scholars, by reason of their conceit which learning inflames, cannot rest satisfied with little, and by their kind of life they prove too disdainful of labour, unless necessity makes them trot. If that wit fall to preach which were fitter for the plough, and he to climb a pulpit who was made to scale a wall, is not a good carter ill lost, and a good soldier ill placed?