While we believed that thought was purely volatile, incapable of impact upon matter, or of being acted upon by matter, our theories of education were necessarily vague. We could not catch our Ariel; how then could we school him? But now, the physiologists have taught us that our wilful sprite rests with the tips of his toes, at any rate, upon solid ground; nay more, his foothold is none so slight but that it leaves footmarks behind, an impress on that domain of the physical in which we are somewhat at home. The impalpable thoughts that we think leave their mark upon the quite palpable substance of the brain, set up, so the physiologists tell us, connections between the nerve-cells of which that organ is composed; in fact, to make a long story short, the cerebrum “grows to the uses it is earliest and most constantly put to.” This fact opens up a function of education upon which M. Fouillée hardly touches, that most important function of the formation of habits--physical, intellectual, moral. “Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” says Thackeray. And a great function of the educator is to secure that acts shall be so regularly, purposefully, and methodically sown that the child shall reap the habits of the good life in thinking and doing, with the minimum of conscious effort. We are only now beginning to discover how beneficial are the laws which govern our being. Educate the child in these habits and the man’s life will run in them, without the constant wear and tear of the moral effort of decision. Once, twice, three times in a day, he will still, no doubt, have to choose between the highest and the less high, the best and the less good course. But all the minor moralities of life may be made habitual to him. He has been brought up to be courteous, prompt, punctual, neat, considerate; and he practises these virtues without conscious effort. It is much easier to behave in the way he is used to, than to originate a new line of conduct. And this is so, because it is graciously and mercifully ordered that there shall be a physical record and adaptation as the result of our educational efforts; and that the enormous strain of moral endeavour shall come upon us only occasionally. “Sow a habit, reap a character;” that is, the formation of habits is the chief means whereby we modify the original hereditary disposition of the child until it becomes the character of the man.