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't's.

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.

10. In what sense are our actions always reactions?

11. How do we differ from the little child in voluntary control?

12. What attitude should parents and teachers take toward the child's physical activity?

LESSON III

EARLY CHILDHOOD

We begin the study of the separate periods in the development of personality with early childhood—the first six years of life.

I. The little child lives in a world of play. Most of us grown people live in a world of work. The difference, we imagine, is that the things we have to do are of real value, while what the child does is not.

But the child's play is of real value. It is more than a means of occupying him, or of working off his surplus energy. It is more even than a means of exercise to promote physical growth and development. It is a preparation for life. Groos has shown that young animals instinctively anticipate in their play the activities which will be of use in their maturity. So, too, the play of children develops instincts and powers which will later be needed. Girls play with dolls and teasets; boys like to make things, build houses and dams, keep store or play at soldier. Colonel Parker used to say that "play is God's method of teaching children how to work."

More than this, play is essential to the best general development of body, mind and character. Coe sums it up well:

"Quickness and accuracy of perception; co-ordination of the muscles, which puts the body at the prompt service of the mind; rapidity of thought; accuracy of judgment; promptness of decision; self-control; respect for others; the habit of cooperation; self-sacrifice for the good of a group-all these products of true education are called out in plays and games.' "' *

And they can be gotten nowhere else so easily and surely, or so early in life. A child without play matures quickly, but his life will always remain stunted. "The boy without a play-ground is father to the man without a job."

The difference between work and play is really one of inward attitude. Any activity is play in so far as it is thoroughly enjoyed; it is work if we do it only because we must to gain some end. The negro stevedores on the Mississippi play while loading a steamboat, with *Coe: "Education in Religion and Morals," p. 143.

their songs and rivalry; yet baseball is work for the professional player who must keep at it day after day. The advance from childhood to maturity ought not to mean so much a stepping out of the world of play into the world of work, as a carrying over the play spirit into the responsible activities of manhood and womanhood.

2. The play of early childhood has its own distinctive characteristics :

(1) It is play, not amusement. The child is never content simply to watch the activities of others, and to be amused by things done for him. He wants to enter into the action himself.

(2) The little child cares nothing for games-that is, for play subject to rules. His plays are almost wholly free and unregulated, and any attempt to dictate when or where or how he shall play is apt to meet with failure. Through imitation, however, simple games may be taught. If you play in a certain manner with evident enjoyment, he will want to do the same thing.

(3) Children of this age play alone. If they do play with one another, their enjoyment is self-centered. There is neither rivalry nor team play.

(4) The child's play is at first wholly a matter of the senses and muscles. He uses neither in any accurate or definite way, but finds keen enjoyment in the free repetition of some activity or sensation. A natural rhythmical tendency is soon manifest. Jingles and songs and rhythmic movements are a source of keen delight, while many a story or bit of poetry that is not at all understood will yet be enjoyed for the cadence of the voice that reads or tells it.

(5) Plays exercising the memory and imagination begin about the third year. From that time on to the end of the period the child's play becomes largely imaginative and dramatic.

(6) Throughout the period the child's play is imitative.

3. Eager and impressionable senses are characteristic of early childhood. In this strange world where the child one day finds himself, there are so many new things to see and hear and feel that he has little time, even if he should have the power, to think over his experiences and to inquire into those abstract qualities and relations with which we older people interest ourselves. The mind of a child is intensely concrete. He lives in a world of perception, rather than of thought. Round-eyed, quick to hear and eager to touch, he is busy absorbing the world about him.

And he is not content simply to await sensations and to absorb what