IX.—PHYSICAL EXERCISES           Importance of Daily.—The subject of the natural training of eye and muscles was taken up pretty fully in treating of ‘Out-of-door Life.’ I will only add, that to give the child pleasure in light and easy motion—the sort of delight in the management of his own body that a good rider finds in managing his horse—dancing, drill, calisthenics, some sort of judicious … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. IX

VIII.—INFANT ‘HABITS’           The whole group of habitudes, half physical and half moral, on which the propriety and comfort of p.125 everyday life depend, are received passively by the child; that is, he does very little to form these habits himself, but his brain receives impressions from what he sees about him; and these impressions take form as his own very strongest and most lasting … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. VIII

VII.—THE FORMING OF A HABIT—‘SHUT THE DOOR AFTER YOU’ “Do ye next thinge.”           “Lose this day loitering, and ’twill be the same story           To-morrow; and the next, more dilatory:           The indecision brings its own delays,           And days are lost, lamenting o’er lost days,” says Marlowe, who, like many of us, knew the misery of the intellectual indolence which cannot brace itself … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. VII

VI.—THE PHYSIOLOGY OF HABIT           A work of Dr Carpenter’s was perhaps the first which gave me the clue I was in search of. In his Mental Physiology—a most interesting book, p.112 by the way—he works out the analogy between mental and physical activity, and shows that the correspondence in effect is due to a correspondence in cause.           Growing Tissues form themselves to Modes … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. VI

V.—THE LAYING DOWN OF LINES OF HABIT           ‘Begin it, and the thing will be completed!’ is infallibly true of every mental and moral habitude: completed, not on the lines you foresee and intend, but on the lines appropriate and necessary to that particular habitude. In the phrase ‘unconscious p.108 cerebration’ we are brought face to face with the fact that, whatever seed of thought … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. V

IV.—HABIT MAY SUPPLANT ‘NATURE’           ‘Habit is ten natures.’ If that be true, strong as nature is, habit is not only as strong, but tenfold as strong. Here, then, have we a stronger than he, able to overcome this strong man armed.           Habit runs on the Lines of Nature.—But habit runs on the lines of nature: the cowardly child habitually lies … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. IV

III.—WHAT IS ‘NATURE’?           ‘Habit is ten natures,’ went on being proclaimed in my ears; and at last it came home to me as a weighty saying, which might contain the educational ‘Open, sesame!’ I was in quest of. In the first place, what is Nature, and what, precisely, is Habit?           It is an astonishing thing, when we consider, what the … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. III

II.—THE CHILDREN HAVE NO SELF-COMPELLING POWER           An Educational Cul-de-sac.—Some years ago I was accustomed to hear, ‘Habit is ten natures,’ delivered from the pulpit on at least one Sunday out of four. I had at the time just begun to teach, and was young and enthusiastic in my work. It was to my mind a great thing to be a teacher; it was impossible … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. II

PART III ‘HABIT IS TEN NATURES’ I.—EDUCATION BASED UPON NATURAL LAW A Healthy Brain.—What I desire to set before the reader is a method of education based upon natural law. In the first place, we have considered some of the conditions to be observed with a view to keep the brain in healthy working order; for it is upon the possession of an active, duly … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 3. I

XIV.—THE CHILDREN REQUIRE COUNTRY AIR           The Essential Proportion of Oxygen.—Every one knows that the breathing of air which has lost little of its due proportion of oxygen is the essential condition of vigorous life and of a fine physique; p.93 also, that whatever produces heat, whether it be animal heat, or the heat of fire, candle, gas-lamp, produces that heat at the expense of … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 2. XIV