The third phase in the history of bodily training is that neutral condition, between the two foregoing extremes, which generally characterizes the present period,—a state of almost universal indifference, or a fitful alternation of unregulated attention to it and neglect of it. The pedagogue gives his pupils some crude exercises to keep them from utterly losing their health and breaking down on his hands under the barbaric pressure of mental forcing; the drill-sergeant disciplines his recruits to go through their technical evolutions; the dancing-master trains the aspirants for the mysteries of the ballet; and the various other classes of public performers who get their living by playing on the curiosity, taste, or passion of the public, have their specialities of bodily education for their particular work. But a perfected system of æsthetic gymnastics, based on all that is known of the laws of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene,—a system of exercises regulated by the exactest rhythm and fitted to liberate every articulation, to develop every muscle, and to harmonize and exalt every nerve,—such a system applied from childhood to maturity for the purpose not of making professional exhibitors of themselves, but of perfecting men and women for the completest fulfilment and fruition of life itself, does not yet exist. It is the great educational desideratum of the age. Co-ordinating all our bodily organs and spiritual faculties, unifying the outward organism and the inward consciousness, it would remove disease, crime, and untimely death, open to men and women the highest conditions of inspiration, and raise them towards the estate of gods and goddesses. Avoiding equally the classic deification of the body and the mediæval excommunication of it, emerging from the general indifference and inattention to it which belong to the modern absorption in mental work and social ambition, the next phase in the progress of physical education should be the awakening on the part of the whole people of a thorough appreciation of its just importance, and the assigning to it of its proportionate place in their practical discipline. This is a work worthy to be done now in America. As democratic Athens gave the world the first splendid gymnastic training with its transcendent models of manhood, so let democratic America, improving on the old example with all the new treasures of science and sympathy, make application to its citizens of a system of motions for the simultaneous education of bodies and souls to the full possession of their personal sovereignty, making them all kings and queens of themselves, because strong and beautiful and free and happy in every limb and in every faculty!