e baby
the vital organs are growing faster. In the young child the muscular system
is coming to the front, and he runs and plays and through the stimulus of
that muscular exercise he brings out every organ in the body and gains that
magnificent health which he so much needs.

Then, after a time, the brain comes to the front and grows and develops
more rapidly than any other part of the body. Our business as teachers is
always so to stimulate, by proper exercise, the growing organs that they
shall grow faster and further than they ever could without our aid. We are
not to always hasten it. This is one thing we must bear in mind: precocity
is the worst foe of a sound education. It is the boy and the girl who
mature slowly but mature surely that in the end possess the earth. We must
not hasten the process, but when we find the organ is ready to grow and
develop, then we must give it adequate stimulus. In other words, the
stimulus must be of the right kind, and there must be just enough of it,
just enough blood to stimulate the muscles, just as much study as will best
stimulate the growing and very immature intellectual centers in the brain.
Then we will increase the stimulus as the power increases and demands the
stronger exercise, and so stimulating the growing parts by adequate
exercise, we bring one part after another up to such development that we
have one harmonious whole of perfect health.

You remember that when the old deacon in Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem
started in to build the one-horse shay, he said, "Every shay that has ever
been made has broken down, because there was always a weakest spot in it;
now I am going to make a shay that never will break down, because I am
going to make the weakest part just as strong as the rest." We cannot
always do that, but if we can make that part somewhere near as strong as
the rest, we are past masters in education.

If we obey Nature's laws, all of her powers will be on our side; and with
all her powers on our side and the very stars in their courses fighting for
us, we cannot possibly fail, there is absolutely nothing which is
impossible to us. We must be strong and of good courage, if we are to guide
these little people into the land sworn unto their fathers before them.

LESSON I

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What is meant by the expression, "Man's partnership with Nature?"
Illustrate how man makes Nature serve him.

2. In what way can man enter into a part