ibition--that power for restraint and self-control which is the
highest aspect of the will and the latest to develop. The little child
entering the primary school has very little of this power of
inhibition. To see a thing he would like is to try to get it; to want
to do a thing is to do it; he acts impulsively; he does not possess
the power to restrain movement and to deliberate. A large part of the
difficulty of the training of children at home and at school lies in
the fact that this power of the will for restraint and self-control
is undeveloped. So-called "willfulness" is a will in which the
volitional power has not yet been balanced with this inhibitive power.
One realizes in this way the force of Matthew Arnold's definition of
character as "a completely fashioned will."

There is no agency that can so effectively and naturally develop power
of inhibition as games. In those of very little children there are
very few, if any, restrictions; but as players grow older, more and
more rules and regulations appear, requiring greater and greater
self-control--such as not playing out of one's turn; not starting over
the line in a race until the proper signal; aiming deliberately with
the ball instead of throwing wildly or at haphazard; until again, at
the adolescent age, the highly organized team games and contests are
reached, with their prescribed modes of play and elaborate
restrictions and fouls. There could not be in the experience of either
boy or girl a more live opportunity than in these advanced games for
acquiring the power of inhibitory control, or a more real experience
in which to exercise it. To be able, in the emotional excitement of an
intense game or a close contest, to observe rules and regulations; to
choose under such circumstances between fair or unfair means and to
act on the choice, is to have more than a mere knowledge of right and
wrong. It is to have the trained power and habit of acting on such
knowledge,--a power and habit that mean immeasurably for character. It
is for the need of such balanced power that contests in the business
world reach the point of winning at any cost, by fair means or foul.
It is for the need of such trained and balanced power of will that our
highways of finance are strewn with the wrecks of able men. If the
love of fair play, a sense of true moral values, and above all, the
power and habit of will to act on these can be developed in our boys
and girls, it will mean imm