never be an inspiration. It is
the same with everything else. The object would seem to be fatigue for
its own sake, that fatigue which has engrossed almost the sum of
effort of experimental psychology.

In this environment, where free exercise is prohibited, as also the
choice of work, and meditation, where every sentiment is oppressed,
and from which every external stimulus which might enrich the
intelligence with spontaneous acquisitions is eliminated, an attempt
is made to excite the imagination by giving "compositions" to be
written. This means that the child has to _produce_ without having the
necessary material; to give, without possessing; achieve internal
activities which he is prevented from developing. And _production_ is
to come from the _exercise of production_; "constant practise in
composition" is to develop the imagination; from the sterility of the
void the most complex products of the intelligence are to be evolved!

It is well known that "composition" represents the great difficulty of
our schools. All teachers have declared that children are "poor in
ideas," that they have "disorderly minds," that they are "absolutely
without originality." The examination in written composition has
always been the most painful of all; every one knows the expression of
the child who hears the title of an obligatory theme dictated; and who
in a few hours must hand in a written composition, a product of the
imagination; it is with anguish, with oppression of the heart, with
cold hands and eyes anxiously interrogating the clock in terror of the
fleeting hour, under the distrustful surveillance of a teacher who for
the occasion is transformed into a spy-warder like those in penal
prisons, that he undergoes his torture to the end. Woe to him if he
does not hand in his composition! He will be ruined, for this is the
principal test, the one in which he is _free_ to manifest his own
worth, to give the true individual fruit by which others will measure
his intelligence. It is in this way that our young generations often
find neurasthenia and even suicide. Scholars cannot answer as did the
greatest poet of our times, Carducci, when he was requested to write
an ode on the occasion of the death of a personage: "It is
inspiration, not an occasion, which would make me write an ode."

It is interesting to study the methods by which, in "modern schools,"
where some elements of psychical hygiene have penetrated, attempts are
made to