i8 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they never recover. That many of our most independent and clear- 

 headed educators themselves express so much dissatisfaction with the 

 working and results of our schools, affords evidence that something is 

 wrong in the present system. As we contemplate the great improve- 

 ments made in education for the last thirty or forty years, and are 

 surprised that educators were content to tolerate the state of things 

 then existing, so will the next generation, when still greater and more 

 radical changes shall have been introduced, look back with astonish- 

 ment at this generation, and wonder that it was so well satisfied with 

 its own methods. When our educators become thoroughly convinced 

 that physical development as a part of education is an absolute neces- 

 sity that a strict observance of the laws of physiology and hygiene 

 is indispensable to the highest mental culture then we shall have 

 vital and radical changes in our educational system ; then the brain 

 will not be cultivated so much at the expense of the body, neither will 

 the nervous temperament be so unduly developed in proportion to 

 other parts of the system, now so often bringing on a train of neuralgic 

 diseases which cannot easily be cured, and exposing the individual to 

 the keenest and most intense suffering which all the advantages of 

 mental culture fail, not unfrequently, to compensate. 



The more this whole subject is investigated, the more reason we 

 shall find for making allowances or some distinction in scholastic dis- 

 cipline with reference to the differences in organization of children, 

 and for adapting the hours of confinement and recreation, the ventila- 

 tion and temperature of school-rooms, the number and kinds of studies, 

 the modes of teaching, etc., to the laws of the physical system. But 

 another and still more important change must take place. Some time 

 may that time be not far distant ! there will be a correct and estab- 

 lished system of mental science, based upon physiological laws; and, 

 until this era arrives, the modes and methods of education must remain 

 incomplete and unsatisfactory. The principles of this science, in the 

 very nature of things, must rest upon a correct knowledge of the laws 

 and functions of the brain ; and, until these are correctly understood 

 and reduced to a general system, all education must be more or less 

 partial, imperfect, and empirical. While the old theories of metaphy- 

 sicians are very generally discarded, they still have practically a pow- 

 erful influence in directing and shaping our educational systems and 

 institutions. In the selection and arrangement of studies very little 

 attention is paid to the peculiar nature or operations of the various 

 faculties of the mind, or the distinct laws that govern their develop- 

 ment and uses. For illustration, instead of educing, drawing out and 

 training, all the mental faculties in their natural order and in harmony, 

 each in proportion to its nature or importance, the memory is almost 

 the only faculty appealed to in every stage of education ; and this is 

 so crammed and so stuffed that frequently but little of the knowledge 

 obtained can be used advantageously. Instead of developing the ob- 



