316 INTRODUCTION TO NEUROLOGY 



Whether this process occurs at the age of twenty or eighty years, 

 it is the beginning of senility. And, alas, that this coagulation 

 of the mental powers often takes place so early! Many a boy's 

 brains are curdled and squeezed into traditional artificial molds 

 before he leaves the grades at school. His education is complete 

 and senile sclerosis of the mind has begun by the time he has 

 learned his trade. For how many such disasters our brick-yard 

 methods in the public schools are responsible is a question of 

 lively interest. 



We who seek to enter into the kingdom of knowledge and to 

 continue to advance therein must not only become as little 

 children, but we must learn to continue so. The problem of 

 scientific pedagogy, then, is essentially this : to prolong the plas- 

 ticity of childhood, or otherwise expressed, to reduce the in- 

 terval between the first childhood and the second childhood to 

 as small dimensions as possible. 



