Learning is the last and least concern in Locke’s philosophy of education. It is, he recognizes, a great help both to virtue and wisdom in all well-disposed minds; but “in others not so disposed, it helps them only to be the most foolish or worse men.” When Locke saw “what ado is made about a little _Latin_ and _Greek_, how many years are spent in it, and what a noise and business it makes to no purpose,” he could not but despise it, and say: “A great part of learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe, and that goes ordinarily into the round of education, a gentleman may in a good measure be unfurnished with, without any disparagement to himself or prejudice to his affairs” (7: p. 74). “_Learning_,” he declares, “must be had, but in the second place, as subservient to greater qualities.... Place him (your child) in hands where you may, as much as possible, secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and settle in him good habits. This is the main point, and this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain” (7: pp. 128-129). In learning, too, acquirement of habits is the chief educational process. Not so much to supply ready-made knowledge nor to impart the teacher’s own ideas, as to implant, by practice, a proper habit of reading, thinking, observing, and doing is the goal to be striven for. The educator must see to the constant and correct exercise of the powers to be developed. But premature use or overexercise is as detrimental to the vigorous development of the mind as neglect or too little exercise. “The mind, by being engaged in a task beyond its strength, like the body strained by lifting at a weight too heavy, has often its force broken, and thereby gets an unaptness or an aversion to any vigorous attempt ever after” (8: pp. 87-88). Children’s natural weakness of mind should be understood and not taken for their willful fault. Healthful activity of mind is the thing to be secured, and for this the following principles are laid down by Locke, which we may regard as the laws of hygiene of attention and association: * * * * * 1. Keep up the natural tendency of children to free, spontaneous activity; if they lack this, awaken it. Introduce them to something, anything, which they can do with pleasure and enthusiasm. “None of the things they are to learn should ever be made a burden, or imposed upon them as a _Task_. Whatever is so proposed, presently becomes irksome” (7: p. 52), and they will form an habitual prejudice against it. This manifestation of spontaneous activity has its ebb and flow; so catch the proper moment as well as the proper subject for setting them to work.