On the contrary, it is taken for granted that in growing, in developing his expansive instincts, the child will be following the lines and obeying the laws of his own nature; that he will be fulfilling the latent desires of his heart; that he will be seeking his own pleasure; in fine, that he will be leading a happy life.
All this is taken for granted in Utopia, and the child's life is therefore one of unimpeded, though duly guided and stimulated, activity.

Every instinct that makes for the expansion and elevation (for growth is always upward as well as outward) of the child's nature is given the freest possible play, and the whole organisation of the school is subordinated to this central end.
In order to find out what are the instincts which make for the expansion and elevation of the child's nature, and which education ought therefore to foster, we must do what Egeria has always done, we must observe young children, and study their ways and works.

Now every healthy child wants to eat and drink, and to run about.

Here are two instincts--the instinctive desire for physical nourishment, and the instinctive desire for physical exercise--through which Nature provides for the growth of the body.

How does she provide for the growth of what we have agreed to call the soul?
We need not be very careful observers of young children in order to satisfy ourselves that, apart from physical nourishment and exercise, there are six things which the child instinctively desires, namely: (1) to talk and listen: (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word): (3) to draw, paint, and model: (4) to dance and sing: (5) to know the why of things: (6) to construct things.
Let us consider each of these instincts, and try to determine its meaning and purpose.
(1) The child instinctively desires to enter into communion with other persons,--his parents, his brothers and sisters, his nurse, his governess, his little friends.