——In the single combat there is found also a qualitative modification, whence we have three systems: (_a_) boxing and wrestling; (_b_) fencing with sticks; and (_c_) rapier and broad-sword fencing. In the first, which was cultivated to its highest point among the Greeks, direct immediateness rules. In the boxing of the English, a sailor-like propensity of this nation, fist-fighting is still retained as a custom. Fencing with a stick is found among the French mechanics, the so-called _compagnons_. Men often use the cane in their contests; it is a sort of refined club. When we use the sword or rapier, the weapon becomes deadly. The Southern Europeans excel in the use of the rapier, the Germans in that of the sword. But the art of single combat is much degenerated, and the pistol-duel, through its increasing frequency, proves this degeneration.—— THIRD CHAPTER. _Sexual Education._ NOTE.——The paragraphs relating to Sexual Education are designed for parents rather than for teachers, the parent being the natural educator of the family and sexual education relating to the preservation and continuance of the family. This chapter is accordingly, for the most part, omitted here. It contains judicious reflections, invaluable to parents and guardians.——_Tr._ § 72. Gymnastic exercises fall naturally into a systematic arrangement determined by the chronological order of development through infancy, childhood, and youth. Walking, running, and leaping belong, to the first period; lifting, swinging, and throwing, to the second; swimming, riding, and bodily contests, to the third, and these last may also be continued into manhood. But with the arrival at youth, a new epoch makes its appearance in the organism. It prepares itself for the propagation of the species. It expands the individual through the need which he feels of uniting himself with another individual of the same species, but who is a polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a new individual. The blood rushes more vigorously; the muscular strength becomes more easily roused into activity; an indefinable impulse, a sweet melancholy takes possession of the being. This period demands a special care in the educator. § 73. The general preventive guards must be found in a rational system of food and exercise. By care in these directions, the development of the bones, and with them of the brain and spinal cord at this period, may be led to a proper strength, and that the easily-moulded material may not be perverted from its normal functions in the development of the body to a premature manifestation of the sexual instinct.