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history, I believe, the National Educational Association has a section on 
physical training, and this is its first meeting. 
Is it too much to hope that the meetings in this hall and the publica- 
tion of this congress shall arrest and awaken the attention of school 
superintendents, school boards, and the trustees of secondary schools and 
colleges throughout the country, to the fact that physical education is 
more highly developed, more thoroughly and effectively organized, more 
intelligently and generously supported in most of the leading countries of 
Europe, than they have ever drcamed it could be? It may be folly to 
expect the immediate or brilliant fruition of our hopes, but hope we must 
and shall for wide and permanent results from such gatherings as this. 
The teachings of science, of the best experience, favor our contention that 
physical training is an indispensable and effectual element toward securing 
the health, increasing the intelligence, and strengthening and fortifying 
the character of the rising generation; and in the end these teachings 
will prevail over apathy and ignorance. 
Progress in our cause has been materially impeded by the preposses- 
sions and prejudices of the teaching class, which, like the general public, 
is still largely ruled by ancient and traditional conceptions of mind and 
body, and has so feeble a comprehension of the new physiology and the 
new psychology that it is unprepared to acknowledge the just claims of 
physical education. Progress there has been during the past half century, 
but for the most part it has been sporadic, fitful, and retarded. Too 
often the experiments in our field of endeavor have been characterized 
by furor, hurry, and failure. ‘We are still prone to rash experiment and 
;o uncritical imitation. It iy in the comparatively rude and primitive 
field of athletics that our greatest triumphs have been won. Our origi- 
nality has been chiefly shown in the improvement of buildings and the 
invention of apparatus. 
In the field of superior education, the interest of faculties and trustees 
in physical training is most usually manifested by costly offerings of 
buildings or other plant to the unappeasable ‘¢ animal spirits” of their 
students and younger alumni. In the field of elementary education, 
though cheapness is a sine qua non, we have succeeded in initiating a num- 
ber of tentative schemes, a few of which are decidedly promising. In the 
professional training of the teaching class, bodily training is commonly 
considered superfluous; and it is only here and there that public normal 
schools have taken any measures to provide for it. A large proportion of 
those who are rushing forward to fill the rdle of apostles and teachers of 
physical education are self-educated or insufficiently trained. 
Since physical training, on its theoretical side, belongs to a class of 
questions that fascinate doctrinaires and dabblers, it has suffered much 
at the hands of its vociferous friends. Agitation, discussion, crude and 
short-lived experiment, have been the dominant factors in the growth of