And "the realities of life" may stand as a name for all those things which have to be learned in order to live, and which lesson-books do not teach.

The realities of life are not material things, but they are very deeply wrought in with material things.

There are things to be done, and things to be made, and things to be ordered and controlled, belonging to the primitive wants of human life, and to all those fundamental cares which have to support it.
They are best learned in the actual doing from those who know how to do them; for although manuals and treatises exist for every possible department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams.
The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is shown to be worth doing and deserving of honour.
Something which cannot be shown to children, but it will come to them later on as an inheritance, is the effect of manual work upon their whole being.

Manual work gives balance and harmony in the development of the growing creature.

A child does not attain its full power unless every faculty is exercised in turn, and to think that hard mental work alternated with hard physical exercise will give it full and wholesome development is to ignore whole provinces of its possessions.