As to physical exercises, Spencer hated gymnastics. It is merely “better than nothing”; it is the practice originated by warfare, which has “remained congruous only with the militant type of society”; it is simply the introduction of one artificiality to remedy the evils of another; namely, the suppression of free, spontaneous play. It being formal, and necessarily much less varied than plays and sports, taxes heavily special parts of the body, and thus causes a quicker fatigue and disproportionate development; being forced, it lacks the spontaneous interest and accompanying pleasures, which serve as the most healthful tonic for recreation and invigoration of our physical organism; and when carried to excess it may develop an abnormal power of muscles only at the cost of constitutional deterioration. Spencer was probably among the first who advocated the essential need of free outdoor games for girls as much as for boys, saying: “Whoever forbids them forbids the divinely appointed means of physical development” (7: p. 258). He asks: “Why this astonishing difference? Is it that the constitution of a girl differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need these active exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings to vociferous play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in boys these promptings are to be regarded as securing that bodily activity without which there cannot be adequate development, their sisters’ nature has been given to them for no purpose whatever--unless it be for the vexations of schoolmistresses” (7: p. 254). He thinks that the fear that unrestrained plays form unladylike habits and manners is groundless. “For if the sportive activity allowed to boys does not prevent them from growing up into gentlemen, why should a like sportive activity allowed to girls prevent them from growing up into ladies?... How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!” (7: pp. 255-256). Spencer, with his “constitutional disregard of authority,” and with his personal experience of self-culture, is systematically opposed to the policy of state education. In his mind, systematic school education was synonymous with artificial culture and coercive discipline. The most serious defect of it, however, is its necessary tendency toward overintellectualization. And the current, undue exaltation of academic training is based on the overestimation of the rôle of intellect at the cost of our emotional nature.