uld
regard our muscles merely as servants or instruments of the will.
Since we have learnt to employ external forces for our purposes, the
mere bulk of a muscle is now a matter of little importance. Of the
utmost importance, on the other hand, is the power to coordinate and
graduate the activity of our muscles, so that they may become highly
trained servants. This is a matter however not of muscle at all, but
of nervous education. Its foundation cannot be laid by mechanical
things, like dumb-bells and exercises, but by games in which will and
purpose and co-ordination are incessantly employed. In other words the
only physical culture worth talking about is nervous culture. The
principles here laid down are daily defied in very large measure in
our nurseries, our schools and our barrack yards. The play of a child,
spontaneous and purposeful, is supremely human and characteristic.
Although when considered from the outside, it is simply a means of
muscular development, properly considered it is really the means of
nervous development. Here we see muscles used as human muscles should
be used, as instruments of mind. In schools the same principles should
be recognised. From the biological and psychological point of view,
the playing field is immensely superior to the gymnasium[1]."

It would be a mistake to under-estimate the value of the Swedish
system of physical exercises. Its object is not the abnormal
development of muscle, but the production of a healthy, alert and well
balanced body. The military authorities in the last three years have
been confronted with the problem of restoring promptness of movement,
erectness of carriage, poise and flexibility to numbers of men whose
muscles have been given a one-sided development by the constant
performance of one kind of manual work, or have grown flabby by long
sitting at a desk, and the task would have been much less successfully
tackled without the aid of the Swedish methods. In schools these
exercises may be used with real benefit given two conditions, small
classes and a really skilled instructor. For the value a boy derives
from the exercises, to a very large extent depends upon himself, on
the concentration of his own will. It is almost impossible to make
sure in a large class that this concentration is given, and any kind
of exercise done without purpose or resolution rapidly degenerates
into the most useless gesticulations. But though we may use physical
exercises as