It has been already remarked that the spirit of Spartan education was severe. It was, in fact, precisely the same as that which, in the last generation, pervaded the discipline of the Seneka and Mohawk Indians, and produced those numerous examples of patience, fortitude, and magnanimity, together with that force, agility and suppleness of body so greatly admired and, perhaps, envied by civilised nations. It was this stern and martial system that constituted the secret model, according to which Locke fashioned his plan of youthful training, designed rather to produce a sound mind in a sound body than to shatter and enervate the latter by the piling up in the brain of miscellaneous and often useless knowledge. But in his attempts at hardening the frame and rendering it invulnerable to the stings of suffering, our countryman did not dare to go the lengths of the Spartan legislator, who in this, at least, exhibited superior wisdom, that he did not consider the chastisement of stripes to have any tendency towards creating a base and servile habit of mind.[869] Footnote 867: Plut. Ages. § i. Footnote 868: Müll. Dor. ii. 315. Footnote 869: On the democratic tendency of Spartan discipline see Bœckh. in Plat. Min. 181. sqq. Isocrat. Areop. § 14–16. Consistently with the general aim of his institutions, Lycurgus, instead of ordaining, like Locke, that his alumni should wear leaky shoes, dispensed with the incumbrance altogether. And, certainly, in a soldier, the habit of trampling with the naked foot on ice and snow and the sharpest rocks, is worthy of acquisition. Institutions are generally based on the actual circumstances of society. Lycurgus legislated for a people to whom it was important to be able easily to climb steeps, or descend them with a sure foot, to spring forward also, to run, to bend, and perform innumerable acts of personal dexterity. He, therefore, commenced with boyhood the inculcating of those habits and exercises which their manhood would imperatively require of them.