Why should we sleep throughout the night, and work throughout the day? Our habits in this respect were formed in the days before fire was stolen from the gods—and they are wasteful habits, too. Artificial light one day may easily come to be as cheap as water, and man will change his ways of taking rest. Some experimenters urge that the most valuable part of sleep is in the first few minutes. The remainder of the night we spend in dreams and in gradually waking up. Let us apply the principle of rest-pauses in a thorough-going way. Distributed periods of sleep might prove a great economy. People will be taught to recline say once in every two hours, and sleep for twenty minutes. Thus will be inaugurated the twenty-four hour day, and a race of energetic Napoleons will emerge.
But to return to general education. Why should the period of learning be concentrated wholly in the early years of life? Distributed periods of study will undoubtedly prove more effective, say two hours every day, or two days every week, or, if you like, two continuous months in the year throughout the whole of life. Thus might come the solution to a variety of problems. We have, first of all, the problems of education itself. At present we arrange the life of a child so that a period of intensive cramming is followed by the abrupt cessation of intellectual life at the time when the intellect is just beginning to mature. There is the problem of industrial fatigue, due more often to monotony than to arduous labour. Recent researches afford scientific support to the adage that a change of work is as good as a holiday. Educational pursuits will provide the necessary change. Already many working men spend their evenings at classes and their only holiday at a summer school.
Lastly there is the ever-growing problem of the prolongation of infancy. Under simpler conditions a child was adequately equipped for practical purposes by the age of ten or even younger. Now-a-days fourteen years is considered necessary, whilst the professional man is almost thirty before he is fit to earn a living—and still there is more to learn.