inexact and heavy but unresponsive to finer stimuli, as if the large
muscles were hypertrophied and the small ones arrested. On the other
hand, many young men, and probably more young women, expend too little
of their available active energy upon basal and massive muscle work,
and cultivate too much, and above all too early, the delicate
responsive work. This is, perhaps, the best physiological
characterization of precocity and issues in excessive nervous and
muscular irritability. The great influx of muscular vigor that unfolds
during adolescent years and which was originally not only necessary to
successful propagation, but expressive of virility, seems to be a very
plastic quantity, so that motor regimen and exercise at this stage is
probably more important and all-conditioning for mentality, sexuality,
and health than at any other period of life. Intensity, and for a time
a spurty diathesis, is as instinctive and desirable as are the copious
minor automatisms which spontaneously give the alphabet out of which
complex and finer motor series are later spelled by the conscious
will. Mercier and others have pointed out that, as most skilled labor,
so school work and modern activities in civilized life generally lay
premature and disproportionate strains upon those kinds of movement
requiring exactness. Stress upon basal movements is not only
compensating but is of higher therapeutic value against the disorders
of the accessory system; it constitutes the best core or prophylactic
for fidgets and tense states, and directly develops poise, control,
and psycho-physical equilibrium. Even when contractions reach choreic
intensity the best treatment is to throw activities down the scale
that measures the difference between primary and secondary movements
and to make the former predominate.

The number of movements, the frequency with which they are repeated,
their diversity, the number of combinations, and their total kinetic