Youth : its education, regimen, and hygiene / by G. Stanley Hall.

  • G. Stanley Hall
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Youth : its education, regimen, and hygiene / by G. Stanley Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    These smaller muscles might almost be called organs of thought. Their tension is modified with the faintest change of soul, such as is seen in accent, inflection, facial expressions, handwriting, and many forms of so-called mind-reading, which, in fact, is always muscle-reading. The day-laborer of low intelligence, with a practical vocabulary of not over five hundred words, who can hardly move each of his fingers without moving others cr all of them, who can not move his brows or corrugate his forehead at will, and whose inflection is very monoto- nous, illustrates a condition of arrest or atrophy of this later, finer, accessory system of muscles. On the other hand, the child, precocious in any or all of these later respects, is very liable to be undeveloped in the larger and more fundamental parts and functions. The full unfoldment of each is, in fact, an inexorable condition precedent for the normal development to full and abid- ing maturity of the higher and more refined muscularity, just as conversely the awkwardness and clumsiness of adolescence mark a temporary loss of balance in the opposite direction. If this general conception be correct, then nature does not finish the basis of her pyramid in the way Ross, Mercier, and others have assumed, but lays a part of the foundation and, after carrying it to an apex, normally goes back and adds to the foundation to carry up the apex still higher and, if prevented from so doing, expends her energy in building the apex up at a sharper angle till instability results. School and kinder- garten often lay a disproportionate strain on the tiny ac- cessory muscles, weighing altogether but a few ounces, that wag the tongue, move the pen, and do fine work re- quiring accuracy. But still at this stage prolonged work requiring great accuracy is irksome and brings dangers homologous to those caused by too much fine work in the
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