FEMALE EDUCATION. 223 



and partially paralyzed, as well as the mental power weakened. If 

 undue calls are made on one part, the other portions suffer. Now this 

 wondrous and as yet only partially known organ has grown most of 

 its growth, in so far as mere bulk is concerned, by the time adolescence 

 begins. But its higher qualities its force, its power of producing 

 varied energies are then only nascent. They develop during this 

 period. It is then that the brain needs plenty of rest in sleep, fresh 

 air, pure blood, good, nourishing, non-stimulating food, and work that 

 develops but does not exhaust. The mental portion of the brain is no 

 doubt the highest, and undue calls on that portion exhaust more than 

 any other part. As I said, only a certain amount of energy or work 

 is possible by any amount of stimulation. The brain has most diver- 

 sified functions, but it has also a solidarity of action. No part is sick 

 without all the other parts suffering. No function is overtaxed with- 

 out all the other functions being weakened. Overtaxing of the men- 

 tal function is specially weakening. In mature life, after the body is 

 fully developed, such an overtaxing can be repaired by rest. The in- 

 jury is merely temporary. If a man overworks his brain in business 

 or study, and gives himself too little sleep, and gets an attack of indi- 

 gestion, it means that he has taken up the brain-energy that ought to 

 have gone toward digestion in mental work. But he stops work, goes 

 to the country, and his recuperated brain soon acquires force enough 

 to stimulate the stomach to secrete its juices and do its work. But if 

 in adolescence, before the bones are knit, and the growth completed, 

 and the feminine nature far advanced toward perfection, if the brain 

 that is in the process of doing all these things is year by year called 

 on to exert its yet imperfect forces chiefly in acquiring book-knowledge 

 by long hours of study, and in consequence the growth is stopped, the 

 blood is thinned, the cheeks are pallid, the fat destroyed, the wondrous 

 forces and faculties that I have spoken of are arrested before they 

 attain completion, then, when the period of growth and development 

 ceases, the damage is irreparable. There is no time or place of or- 

 ganic repentance provided by Nature for the sins of the schoolmaster. 

 Life has to be faced with an imperfect organism, its work and duties 

 done with impaired forces, and its chances of accidents met without a 

 stock of reserve power. This is a poor lookout for the individual ; 

 but when motherhood comes, and sound minds in sound bodies have 

 to be transmitted to posterity, how is it to be then with the future 

 race? This aspect of the question of female education during the 

 period of adolescence is of absolutely primary importance to the world. 

 Yet it is wholly ignored in many systems of education. What is the 

 use of culture, if it is all to end with the present generation ? What 

 a responsibility to transmit to future generations weak bodies and 

 over-sensitive brains, liable to all sorts of nervous disease ! Nothing 

 can be more certain than that the qualities, good and bad, acquired in 

 one generation are sent on to the next. The world may be all the 



