And "the realities of life"
may stand as a name for all those things which have to be learned in
order to live, and which lesson-books do not teach. The realities of
life are not material things, but they are very deeply wrought in with
material things. There are things to be done, and things to be made, and
things to be ordered and controlled, belonging to the primitive wants of
human life, and to all those fundamental cares which have to support it.
They are best learned in the actual doing from those who know how to do
them; for although manuals and treatises exist for every possible
department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much
further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams.
The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is
shown to be worth doing and deserving of honour.
Something which cannot be shown to children, but it will come to them
later on as an inheritance, is the effect of manual work upon their
whole being. Manual work gives balance and harmony in the development of
the growing creature. A child does not attain its full power unless
every faculty is exercised in turn, and to think that hard mental work
alternated with hard physical exercise will give it full and wholesome
development is to ignore whole provinces of its possessions.
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