_Dietetics._
§ 57. Dietetics is the art of sustaining the normal repair of the
organism. Since this organism is, in the concrete, an individual one,
the general principles of dietetics must, in their manner of
application, vary with the sex, the age, the temperament, the
occupation, and the other conditions, of the individual. Pedagogics as a
science can only go over its general principles, and these can be named
briefly. It we attempt to speak of details, we fall easily into
triviality. So very important to the whole life of man is the proper
care of his physical nature during the first stages of its development,
that the science of Pedagogics must not omit to consider the different
systems which different people, according to their time, locality, and
culture, have made for themselves; many, it is true, embracing some
preposterous ideas, but in general never devoid of justification in
their time.
§ 58. The infant's first nourishment must be the milk of its mother. The
substitution of a nurse should be only an exception justified alone by
the illness of the mother; as a rule, as happens in France, it is simply
bad, because a foreign physical and moral element is introduced into the
family through the nurse. The milk of an animal can never be as good for
a child.
§ 59. When the teeth appear, the child is first able to eat solid food;
but, until the second teeth come, he should be fed principally on light,
fluid nourishment, and on vegetable diet.
§ 60. When the second teeth are fully formed, the human being is ready
for animal as well as vegetable food. Too much meat is not good; but it
is an anatomical error to suppose that man, by the structure of his
stomach, was originally formed to live alone on vegetable diet, and that
animal food is a sign of his degeneracy.
--The Hindoos, who subsist principally on vegetable diet, are not, as
has been often asserted, a very gentle race: a glance into their
history, or into their erotic poetry, shows them to be quite as
passionate as other peoples.--
§ 61. Man is omnivorous. Children have therefore a natural desire to
taste of everything. For them eating and drinking possess a kind of
poetry; there is a theoretic ingredient blended with the material
enjoyment. They have, on this account, a proneness to indulge, which is
deserving of punishment only when it is combined with disobedience and
secrecy, or when it betrays cunning and greediness.
§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are undergoing the most
active progressive metamorphosis. In after-life sleep and waking should
be subjected to periodical regulation, but not too exactly.
§ 63. The clothing of children should be adapted to them; i.e. it should
be cut according to the shape of the body, and it must be loose enough
to allow free play to their desire for movement.
--With regard to this as well as to the sleeping arrangements for
children, less in regard to food--which is often too highly spiced and
too liberal in tea, coffee, &c.--our age has become accustomed to a very
rational system. The clothing of children must be not only comfortable,
but it should be made of simple and cheap material, so that the free
enjoyment of the child may not be marred by the constant internal
anxiety that a rent or a spot may bring him a fault-finding or angry
word. From too great care as to clothing, may arise a meanness of mind
which at last pays too great respect to it, or an empty frivolity. This
last may be induced by dressing children too conspicuously.--
§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be accustomed for
the sake of their physical well-being, as well as because, in a moral
point of view, it is of the greatest significance. Cleanliness will not
endure that things shall be deprived of their proper individuality
through the elemental chaos. It retains each as distinguished from every
other. While it makes necessary to man pure air, cleanliness of
surroundings, of clothing, and of his body, it develops in him a sense
by which he perceives accurately the particular limits of being in
general.