The established fact that the pupils may even deform their skeletons in the course of their work, goes to prove that this work contains some _error in principle_ that is fatal to successive generations; and so long as this principle is maintained, we may assert a priori that even if, with the help of school benches as complicated and as costly as orthopedic machines, we should succeed in checking the deformation of the vertebral column, we should fail to check the deformation of the soul. Because whoever is condemned to labour that deforms is a slave.
And as a matter of fact we employ coercive means, "rewards and punishments," to enforce upon children a condition that in their eyes amounts to serving their first sentence.
It is not the school bench, but the _method_ that needs reforming; it is not the ligaments of the spinal column, but _human life in_ _evolution_ that we ought to respect, and _lead toward the attainment_ _of perfection_! Amid the many banners of liberty that have been raised in these latter times, one is still missing--one which we ought to seize upon as the standard of our cause: the liberty of the new generation, which is groaning in the slavery of compulsory education, upon iron-bound benches, emblematic of chains!
I foresee, in a radical reform of pedagogic methods, the practical possibility of taking as guiding principles the _individual liberty_ _of the pupil_ and a _reverential regard for life_. And I affirm this all the more loudly, because I have applied such a method with indisputable success in the "Children's Houses," obtaining prodigious results in the health and happiness of the children, perfect discipline in the classes, marvelously rapid progress in studies, and a surprising awakening of souls, a passionate love for the work.
VARIATIONS DUE TO ADAPTATION IN CONNECTION WITH CAUSES OF VARIOUS KINDS--SOCIAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, PHYSICAL, PSYCHIC, PATHOLOGICAL, ETC.
=Physiology and Social Conditions.=--_Nutrition._--One of the effects of environment, of the highest importance in its relation to the development of stature, is nutrition. In order to attain the maximum development as biologically determined by heredity in a race, sufficient nutriment is the first necessity. It is a familiar fact that material or physiological life consists essentially in the exchange and _renewal of matter_, or in _metabolism_, which is also a renewal of vital force.