I would wish every mother to pay attention to the difference between a course of action, adopted in compliance with the authority, and between a conduct pursued for the sake of another.
The first proceeds from reasoning; the second flows from affection. The first may be abandoned, when the immediate cause may have ceased to exist; the latter will be permanent, as it did not depend upon circumstances, or accidental considerations, but is founded in a moral and constant principle.
In the case now before us, if the infant does not disappoint the hope of the mother, it will be a proof, first of affection, secondly, of confidence.
Of affection—for the earliest, and the most innocent wish to please, is that of the infant to please the mother. If it be questioned, whether that wish can at all exist in one so little advanced in development. I would again, as I do upon almost all occasions, appeal to the experience of mothers.
It is a proof, also, of confidence. Whenever an infant has been neglected; when the necessary attention has not been paid to its wants; and when, instead of the smile of kindness, it has been treated with the frown of severity; it will be difficult to restore it to that quiet and amiable disposition, in which it will wait for the gratification of its desires without impatience, and enjoy it without greediness.
If affection and confidence have once gained ground in the heart, it will be the first duty of the mother to do every thing in her power to encourage, to strengthen, and to elevate this principle.—Pestalozzi.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
The revival of gymnastics is, in my opinion, the most important step that has been done in that direction. The great merit of the gymnastic art is not the facility with which certain exercises are performed, or the qualification which they may give for certain exertions that require much energy and dexterity; though an attainment of that sort is by no means to be despised. But the greatest advantage resulting from a practice of these exercises, is the natural progress which is observed in the arrangement of them, beginning with those which, while they are easy in themselves, yet lead as a preparatory practice to others which are more complicated and more difficult. There is not, perhaps, any art in which it may be so clearly shown, that energies which appeared to be wanting, are to be produced, as it were, or at least are to be developed, by no other means than practice alone. This might afford a most useful hint to all those who are engaged in teaching any object of instruction, and who meet with difficulties in bringing their pupils to that proficiency which they had expected. Let them recommence on a new plan, in which the exercises shall be differently arranged, and the subjects brought forward in a manner that will admit of the natural progress from the easier to the more difficult. When talent is wanting altogether, I know that it can not be imparted by any system of education. But I have been taught by experience to consider the cases, in which talents of any kind are absolutely wanting, but very few. And in most cases, I have had the satisfaction to find, that a faculty which had been quite given over, instead of being developed, had been obstructed rather in its agency by a variety of exercises which tended to perplex or to deter from further exertion.
And here I would attend to a prejudice, which is common enough, concerning the use of gymnastics; it is frequently said, that they may be very good for those who are strong enough; but that those who are suffering from weakness of constitution would be altogether unequal to, and even endangered by, a practice of gymnastics.