WHEN CHARACTER IS FORMED. 661 



irritated and satisfied witli none of her ordinary pleasures. A 

 nervous, irritable parent will breed these qualities in bis children, 

 because his personal contact will overstimulate them and they 

 will be in a state of chronic fatigue. Such a parent will be apt to 

 nag his children, to be constantly forbidding or commanding, and 

 this arouses emotions which draw off the energies from the brain 

 very rapidly. Antagonism is a breeder of nerve fatigue, and 

 some children seem hardly ever to be free from it during waking 

 hours. 



Again, in many homes older children make the life of the 

 smaller ones wretched much of the time. The writer knows a 

 family where there are three children, the youngest about two 

 years of age. The plder ones seem to find no greater pleasure 

 than to tease the babe on every opportunity, for she occasions 

 them much merriment by her violent vocal and bodily expres- 

 sions whenever she is tormented beyond endurance. One does 

 not need to remain about this home long before seeing plainly 

 that this child is being worried into an ugly disposition. Even 

 at two years she has reached the point where she is intolerable 

 much of the time, showing her unbalanced condition by flying 

 into a passion over every little thing that occasions her displeas- 

 ure. The attitude of the older children serves to keep her in a 

 more or less constant state of fatigue, and the actions performed 

 in this condition are rapidly forming habits, thus determining 

 her character. 



The evil effects of overstimulation are evident also in the 

 attempts of parents and teachers to hasten as rapidly as possible 

 the intellectual development of the children under their care. It 

 has come to be regarded as desirable that a little child should 

 begin hard work in school at five, and keep it up continuously 

 until the college course is completed. Many think it creditable 

 to a child to be precocious in his learning, and so he is encouraged 

 to sit still and study instead of being spontaneously active in play 

 milch of the time. He is subjected in school to the great strain 

 of appearing before his elders in "speaking pieces," etc., all of 

 which tends to overstimulate, and hence to fatigue easily and un- 

 necessarily. There is in our midst a feeling that maturity ought 

 to be reached as early as possible and by the shortest cuts, but 

 science shows that excessive rapidity in development is secured 

 at the expense of mental health and attainment of the highest 

 ultimate ends.* It assures us that too early and rapid organiza- 

 tion of the nervous system through undue stimulation or edu- 

 cative influence of any kind finally results in arrested growth. 

 Precocity is usually succeeded by mediocrity, if by nothing 



* Cf. Spencer, op. cit., p. 262. 



