320 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
the American physical education movement hitherto. We cannot pass to 
the stage of constructive development, unless respect for experience, 
accurate knowledge, clear ideas, definite aims, thorough training, and 
she capacity for sustained effort shall become much more general within 
our ranks and among our allies than is yet the case. 
But our prospect is not wholly dark. I am constrained to believe that 
there are gleams of promise in the sky. It is a significant and encourag- 
‘ng fact, that the question of bodily training is like Banquo’s ghost, and 
vill not down. In one form or another it rises and shall rise before every 
generation of civilized men. For us and our successors it has assumed 
portentous proportions, by reason of the untoward influences of city life 
upon the rising generation. Never before have the teachings of medical 
science been so clear and authoritative as they are to-day regarding the 
necessity and the means of securing and conserving the health of the stu- 
dent class. Physiology and psychology have been revolutionized within 
sixty years, and the critics of our educational aims and methods are begin- 
aing to use the weapons thus furnished to their hands. The existing sys- 
;ems of physical education and culture” are largely empirical in their 
ature ; but the time is at hand when they shall be subjected to the scrutiny 
and tests of disinterested scientists, and shall have judgment passed upon 
chem by men who are able to distinguish between claims and proof, be- 
sween shadow and substance. Our present fashion of lauding apparatus 
and of multiplying gymnasia, club-houses, and grounds is, after all, some- 
what of a blessing in disguise, as it tends to force the question as to the 
real purpose of such appliances and the best means of securing their 
proper use. 
That our educational authorities as a class shall continue much longer 
both deaf and blind to the plain teachings of science and experience as to 
the nature, scope, and legitimate results of physical education, seems im- 
probable. To my mind, the most hopeful and distinctive characteristic of 
the present diversified and expanding interest in physical training is found 
in the growing conviction that trained intelligence must be employed to 
supplement and reénforce enlightened enthusiasm, and in the evident 
lesire of a few benefactors and governors of educational foundations to 
provide ways and means for developing and seconding such intelligence. 
[n various quarters, including two of our leading universities, attempts 
are in progress to embody that conviction and to realize that desire. These 
attempts, and such meetings as this, betoken the dawning of a new day. 
Let us gird ourselves and go forth to meet it!