And truly, if the only result obtained by idealistic pedagogics were the demonstration that many concepts, ordinarily considered to be substantially different, are in reality identical, we should not hesitate to call such philosophical knowledge useless and ridiculous. But in the first place we must notice that this assumed deficiency charged against us has partially been shown to be non-existent by the exposition of our doctrine, which reduces education to free spiritual becoming, and resolves the apparent multiplicity of educational forms in the immultiplicable unity of this becoming, outside of which nothing is truly conceivable. For the defect of our system was assumed in connection with an exigency which divides itself into two parts, respectively corresponding to the form and to the matter of education. For many of the pedagogical errors which we have pointed out were seen to be imputable, not to the choice of an unsuitable content of education, but to the criterion adopted in treating this content. I have already spoken of my disinclination to accomplish a mere negative task; and in the last chapter, while denouncing the materialistic conception of physical education, I certainly did not spare the ascetic view which knows of no body other than the one which harasses the spirit and hinders its progress toward the ultimate good; and thereupon I tried to show that physical culture is spiritual education endowed with that self-same nature which belongs to education when considered as formation of the will and of the intellect. But this does not mean that our thesis reduces itself to a mere theoretic transvaluation or to a new abstract interpretation of our present educative system, which however in practice could not be affected by this purely theoretical difference of interpretation. I tried to make it clear that our conception is not devoid of practical import, and that it does lead to a reform in education and to a new orientation of the school. This was especially brought out in connection with physical culture in the preceding chapter, when I insisted on the necessity that physical instructors be trained in such a way that their mental equipment shall not be limited to notions that refer exclusively to the body in its physical limitations: but that in addition to physiology, anatomy, and hygiene, they be made familiar also with those studies and disciplines that are more intimately connected with character, with the soul, and with the mind.