EDUCATION
forestalling many kinds of trouble by never giving them
the opportunity to arise*
So far as I am aware, the only system of physical
education which fulfils all these conditions is the system
developed by F. M. Alexander. Mr. Alexander has given
a full account of his system in three books, each of which
is prefaced by Professor John Dewey.1 It is therefore
unnecessary for me to describe it here—all the more so
as no verbal description can do justice to a technique which
involves the changing, by a long process of instruction on
the part of the teacher and of active co-operation on that
of the pupil, of an individual's sensory experiences. One
cannot describe the experience of seeing the colour, red.
Similarly one cannot describe the much more complex
experience of improved physical co-ordination. A verbal
description would mean something only to a person who
had actually had the experience described; to the mal~
co-ordinated person, the same words would mean some-
thing quite different. Inevitably, he would interpret them
in terms of his own sensory experiences, which are those
of a mal-co-ordinated person. Complete understanding of
the system can come only with the practice of it. All I
need say in this place is that I am sure, as a matter of
personal experience and observation, that it gives us all the
things we have been looking for in a system of physical
education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and
consequent improvement in physical and mental health;
increased consciousness of the physical means employed
to gain the ends proposed by the will and, along with this,
a general heightening of consciousness on all levels; a
technique of inhibition, working on the physical level to
prevent the body from slipping back, under the influence
of greedy * end-gaining,* into its old habits of mal-
1 Mans Supreme Inheritance, Creative Conscious Control) and The
Use of the Self.
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