urge in the same
direction.

Harmonious development without one-sidedness, and yet with full justice
to the individual talents and equipments, should be secured. That means
from the start an effort to secure balance between general education and
particular development. The latter has to strengthen those powers by
which the boy or girl by special natural fitness promises to be
especially efficient and happy. It has to be supplemented later by a
wise and deliberate choice of such a vocation as brings these
particular abilities most strongly to a focus. Yet this alone would mean
a one-sidedness in which the equilibrium would be lost. More important,
it would leave undeveloped that power which the youth especially needs
to acquire by serious education, the power to master what does not
appeal to the personal likings and interests. An equilibrium is secured
only if at the same time full emphasis is given to the learning and
training in all which is the common ground of our social existence. From
the multiplication table to the highest cultural studies in college, the
youth is to be adjusted to the material of our civilization without any
concession to the emasculating desire to adjust civilization simply to
the particular youth. He has to learn learning and not only to play with
knowledge, he has to learn to force his attention in adjustment to those
factors of civilization which are foreign to his personal tendencies and
perhaps unsympathetic. Free election of life's work and unyielding
mental discipline in the service of the common demands should thus
steadily cooeperate. The one without the other creates a lack of mental
balance which is the most favorable condition for a pathological
disturbance.

The mere learning is of course on both sides only a fraction of what the
community has to develop in the youth. Mental hygiene begins with
physiological hygiene. The nourishment of the child, the care for the
child's sense organs, the recesses and the rest from fatigue, and
especially the undisturbed sleep are essential conditions. The
interferences with sufficient sleep are to a high degree responsible
for the later disturbances of the mental life. It must not be forgotten
that the decomposition of the brain molecules can never be restituted by
anything but rest, and ultimately by sleep. Physical exercise is
certainly not such restitution. In the best case it brings a certain
rest to some brain centers by engaging other bra