PRODUCTION OF STUPIDITY IN SCHOOLS. 133 



The various persons whose duties have required them to undertake 

 original investigations into the phenomena of physical science have 

 nearly always exhibited a remarkable intellectual growth as one re- 

 ward of their exertions. They have become more cautious, more saga- 

 cious, more diffident than before ; and there is not the slightest reason 

 to suppose that they were, in the majority of instances, men of excep- 

 tional natural powers. On the contrary, the parallel facts connected 

 with the muscular system, and the remarkable uniformity with which 

 the faculties of reflection and judgment expand and strengthen under 

 proper use, may conjointly be taken to prove that the ordinary life of 

 civilized Europe does not develop either body or mind in a degree at 

 all commensurate with their capacities for action. The cricket-field 

 and the boating-club produce a certain amount of vigor and hardi- 

 hood ; but their most ardent votaries would be exhausted by the pas- 

 times of a savage, or by the daily drill and duty of a soldier of old 

 Rome. From the universities, and from schools of the first order, 

 issue many men unquestionably of high attainments, and some of great 

 and cultivated parts ; but the aggregate of both classes may be said 

 to have a point of resemblance to Brummel's finished cravat, and to 

 suggest that a large number of " failures " have been quietly conveyed 

 down-stairs. 



In schools of an inferior kind, the attainments of the pupils are less 

 conspicuous; and the existing state of mental education may be 

 summed up in the earnest and weighty words of Prof. Faraday, who 

 declares that, " in physical matters, multitudes are ready to draw 

 conclusions who have little or no power of judgment in the cases; that 

 the same is true of other departments of knowledge; and that, gener- 

 ally, mankind is willing to leave the faculties which relate to judgment 

 almost entirely uneducated, and their decisions at the mercy of igno- 

 rance, prepossessions, the passions, or even accident." The same 

 authority says again, that " society, speaking generally, is not only 

 ignorant as respects education of the judgment, but is also ignorant of 

 its ignorance." 



It must be conceded, we apprehend, that in the present day no 

 man is called upon to undergo a course of severe physical training, or 

 to exercise the muscular system to the acme of its powers. But it 

 must also be conceded that there have been conditions of society 

 which rendered such training the duty of every one, and in which it 

 was enforced by a public opinion of the most rigid kind. We think 

 that, in the times in which we live, the duty of mental cultivation is at 

 least equally binding, and that its performance requires to be prompted 

 by the same incentive. 



For we are convinced that a very large proportion of the stu- 

 pidity now existing in the world is the direct result of a variety of 

 influences, educational and social, which operate to the prejudice of the 

 growing brain, either by checking its development altogether, or by 



