ON BRAIN-FORCING. 217 



advocated by their own party. But no man need be excluded from 

 participation in the common feelings, nor from so much of the public 

 expression of them as is open to all the laity, by the unphilosophical 

 narrowness of those who guard the mysteries of worship. Am I to be 

 prevented from joining in that common joy at the revelation of en- 

 lightened principles of religion, which we celebrate at Easter and 

 Christmas, because I think that certain scientific, logical, and meta- 

 physical ideas which have been mixed up with these principles are un- 

 tenable ? No ; to do so would be to estimate those errors as of more 

 consequence than the truth an opinion which few would admit. Peo- 

 ple who do not believe what are really the fundamental principles of 

 Christianity are rare to find, and all but these few ought to feel at 

 home in the churches. 



-*>- 



ON BRAIN-FOKCING. 



By T. CLIFFORD ALLBUTT, M. A., M. D. 



WHEN the editors of Brain sought my aid in the construction of 

 this first number, I felt the honor they did me was not to be light- 

 ly refused ; but, on the other hand, painfully aware that of late years 

 my life had lain too much in the world to have led me to those results 

 which are won by the patient labor of the student. From direct ex- 

 amination into the finer shapes of brain and nerve of late years, I have 

 become too much estranged ; but I trust that observations in the field 

 of practice may compensate, in some measure, the want of closer and 

 more accurate research. On one subject I have long been fain to 

 speak, for it is one in which I am exercised almost daily ; moreover, I 

 venture to hope it is not foreign to the purposes of this magazine. 

 Almost daily I am in contention with parents and guardians, school- 

 masters and schoolmistresses, clergymen and professors, youths and 

 maidens, boys and girls, concerning the right way of building up the 

 young brain, of ripening the adult brain, and of preserving the brain 

 in age. Grievously ill do we take in hand to deal with this delicate 

 member, and well is it that innate development overruns our schemes 

 and brings the variety of natural good out of the monotony of human 

 folly. It is dimly felt by society that the reign of bone and muscle is 

 over, and that the reign of brain and nerve is taking its place. Even 

 the Gibeonites now have the hydraulic ram and the steam felling- 

 machine ; the spectacled general of forces fights in his tent by click of 

 battery and wire, and his lieutenant hoists an iron-clad by the touch of 

 two buttons upon his waistcoat ; the patient earth forgets the tread of 

 horse and ox, and is ploughed by steam ; and ere long, no doubt, our 

 ministers will wind sermons out of barrel-organs, and our morning egg 

 will be broken for us by a wafer of dynamite. Hence it comes that all 



