3. It is no accident—this great place that physical activity has in the life of a little child. It is nature's provision for mental as well as physical development. It is essential to the growth of personality. This becomes clear when we think of the results of a child's physical activity:

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(1) Physical growth. This is the primary need of the first six years of the child's life. It is the time of most rapid growth. A child's weight doubles during the first six months, and increases fourfold during the first three years, and sixfold during the six. Height increases nearly fifty per cent the first year, and nearly seventy-five per cent within the first three years; while at six it has been more than doubled.* .* That this growth may be normal, the child needs proper physical conditions-good food, pure air, the light and sunshine of God's out-of-doors, and plenty of sound sleep. And for the best realization of all these conditions, and the assurance of healthy growth, there is constant need of physical activity and exercise.

(2) Physical development. Because growth and development usually take place together, we often use the terms as though they meant the same. But growth means simply increase in size; while development stands for a change in the character of the bodily tissues, making for maturity and strength. Sometimes growth takes place without development, and then the child is fatty, flabby, and apt to be sickly. There is only one way to insure development-through exercise. Food and air and sleep may cause the body to grow, but the only way to get good, hard muscles is to use them. A child craves physical activity because nature wants its body to develop. Such exercise, moreover, develops the nervous system as well as the muscles. Strength and skill, steadiness and self-control, are some of its results.

(3) New sensations. The child is a discoverer in a strange, new world. He does not passively wait for things to force themselves upon him; he pushes out to seek knowledge. Each bit of activity widens his experience. It is really an experiment. It brings new sensations, new information, better understanding; and lays open new possibilities.

(4) Use and meaning. The child's physical activity does more than bring sensations; it determines their meaning. The meaning which anything has for a child depends upon what he can do with it. He is not ready to appreciate the structure of things, to discriminate

*The best statement of the facts of growth, with a discussion of their bearing upon education, is Tyler's "Growth and Education." Here, and in succeeding chapters, we make a rough use of figures which he gives exactly.

forms and textures, or to comprehend definitions. He is interested primarily in the use which a thing may have, and especially in that use to which he himself may put it. Ask any child to tell you what some familiar nouns stand for, and his answer will bear witness to this fact. "A knife is to cut," "Coffee is what papa drinks,” “A circus is to see the elephant"'—are typical children's definitions. Professor Barnes found that 80 per cent of the definitions of a list of common nouns which six-year old children gave him, were in terms of activity and use. This percentage decreased to 63 per cent for children of seven and eight, 57 per cent for those of nine, 43 per cent for those of ten and eleven, and about 30 per cent for those of twelve to fourteen.*

(5) Habits. A thing done once is easier to do again. What a child does becomes a very part of himself through the working of the law of habit. Grouping these last three results-new sensations, meanings and habits-we see that the child's mental and moral development is in a great degree dependent upon his physical activity.

4. The causes of a child's physical activity are to be found in deep inner laws of his being. He is so made that he must be active.

(1) He is impelled to act by the energy that is being constantly generated within him. Energy always seeks an outlet. The heat of a firebox begets the steam which drives a dynamo, and the electric current gives forth light throughout a great city. Human energy is no exception. It finds its natural outlet in physical activity. Much of the child's activity is the spontaneous expression of the bounding life that quickens every fiber of his being.

(2) He is impelled to act by the sensations he gets. He reaches for everything he sees, turns toward the sound he hears, plays with what he touches. His senses rouse his muscles. His impressions call forth reactions.

We can see why this should be so if we think for a moment of the structure of the nervous system. It is made up of three classes of cells-sensory, associative and motor. The sensory cells receive impressions; the motor cells impel the muscles to act. The associative cells connect the sensory with the motor, and so connect impressions and actions. These three classes of cells may be coupled up in a myriad intricate ways, yet they are always so related that the goal of a sensory current is an associative cell, and that of an associative current is ultimately motor. The natural result of every sensation, therefore, is an action. Every nerve current tends to go the whole way, and so to issue in activity.

*

Quoted by Bagley: "The Educative Process," p. 80.

The nervous system has been well defined as a mechanism for translating sensations into movements. Its function is to receive impressions from the outside world, and to respond to them with appropriate actions. Strike at the fly that annoys you, and he is gone before your hand touches him. His nervous system received an impression from the movement of air and responded with an action that took him out of danger. Strike laughingly at a friend, and he will dodge the blow before he thinks-his nervous system has connected action with the sight of the threatening arm. The nervous system is made for action—and to adapt actions to situations. Every sensation becomes an impulse.

(3) The child is impelled to act by his instincts. His nervous system contains certain pre-established pathways which incoming currents are sure to follow, as they go on to discharge themselves in action. These pathways are natural and hereditary. They constitute great inborn tendencies to act and feel in certain ways. Fear, shyness, curiosity, imitation, play, acquisitiveness—these are only a few of the natural tendencies which every child possesses, which determine the character of his reactions to the things that present themselves to him. Not all of these tendencies, of course, are present at birth; but they manifest themselves in the course of the natural growth and development of the nervous system. Each stage of development has its own dominant instincts, naturally and inevitably determining its actions and attitudes. A young child is just as certain to carry things to its mouth as is the little chick to peck at any small object within range. And at a certain age a child will fear the dark, a boy will love to fight, and a youth will conceive a tender passion, just as naturally and with as little consciousness of the reason why.

(4) The child is impelled to act by his ideas. For him, as a rule, to think is to act. He says whatever comes into his mind; he goes at once to seek the toy of which he happens to think. He reacts as directly to the presence of an idea or memory in his mind as to his sensations. It matters nothing where the idea has come from. We express it by saying that a child is naturally impulsive; or, if the idea has come to him from someone else, that he is very suggest ible.

We can see why this should be so if we think again of what we just learned about the nervous system. Ideas and memories are always accompanied by nerve-action within the associative cells which make up the gray matter of the brain. And a nerve-current in the associative cells, we saw, tends naturally to run over into the motor cells,

and so to result in action. Ideas, therefore, are dynamic; they become impulses.

5. These principles of action hold true for us who are grown as well as for little children.

The law of motor discharge remains true. We, too, are impelled to action by every nerve current. Every sensation calls for a response; every idea is an impulse. See an attractive book, and it is hard to resist picking it up; think of the pleasure of a tennis game, and you feel the impulse to play. Action of some sort is the natural outcome of every nerve current, and hence of every sensation and idea.

Our actions, again, are reactions. They depend upon the situation; we fit them always to the circumstances. No action possesses an intrinsic value. "There is a time," as the Preacher says, "for every purpose and for every work.' To do the right thing at the right time, we all naturally seek; and we do what we do at any moment because there seems to be something in the present situation that calls for just such action. Human actions are seldom without motive, and most motives are rooted in our sense of the situation.

To the end of life, moreover, the development of personality depends upon action. It is what we do, more than what we see or feel or think, that determines what we are and what we become. Life's real meanings are determined by its deeds. Thoughts are idle that make no practical difference. No bit of knowledge is really learned until it grips the life.

It is action, as a matter of fact, that measures the final worth of any life. We are in the world, not to look on, but to do. He lacks manhood who lives but to be amused by the passing show. Work bestows meaning upon life, and brings unity to its scattered impulses. Work gives a man dignity and poise; it shows forth the divinity that is within him. Not just to find out God's wisdom are we here, but to work for Him and with Him in the building of His kingdom.

6. We differ from little children in the voluntary control which we have acquired, and which they do not yet possess. We are able to select from among our sensations those pertinent to our purposes, to prevent immediate reactions, and to check impulses by taking thought. Through experience, we have gained self-control. The child, on the other hand, has had little experience, and consequently possesses few ideas, and is able to grasp only in a very limited way the meaning of the situations he faces. We cannot expect him to have self-control. These great laws which in us are so complexly interwoven with the results of experience, appear in his life in their simplest

and clearest form. His energy must find immediate physical expressions. He reacts at once to his impressions, and is drawn here and there by the passing attraction of the moment. He thinks of but one thing at a time, and it comes right out in impulsive action. He is an eager bundle of instincts of which he is not yet master.

Yet, be it remembered, it is out of this very turmoil of activity, all lacking in unity as it is, and out of it alone, that growth and development, experience and intelligence, habit and will, can come. And so it is plain what our attitude toward it should be. We will seek to use and direct, rather than repress, the physical activity of childhood. The child who is forced to be quiet and to sit still is failing to get what he most needs to build for him a sturdy body, a sound mind, and the right sort of character. "A child shut up without play," said Martin Luther, "is like a tree that ought to bear fruit but is planted in a flower-pot." More than that, repression works within him a positive injury. The child whose energy is not permitted to find its natural outlet is bound to become nervous and irritable; and every now and then the tension will break in an outburst of mischief or of passion. Unhappiness and discouragement, distrust and alienation, sullenness and defiance, or else weak-willed dependence-are some of the results within a child who is continually assailed with don'ts.

QUESTIONS

1. Into what periods may we divide the development of personality? What are the corresponding departments of the Sunday school?

2. What is the distinction between growth and development? Show how physical activity is essential for each.

3. Give figures to show the rapidity of growth in early childhood. 4. Show how the child's mental development depends on his physical activity.

5. What do you understand by a sensation? A habit?

6. Show how sensations impel the child to action. What do you understand by a reaction?

7. What is an instinct?

8. Why do ideas impel the child to action?

9. State the law of motor discharge.