ON BRAIN-FORCING. 229 



lines of least resistance are established, and thus habits are formed. 

 A man cannot bite his nails without fingers and teeth, nor can habits 

 be formed in the mind without the preexistence of conflicting ganglia, 

 but it is infinitely important to test the child for their presence, and to 

 set up in them certain lines of movement, and certain coincident memo- 

 ries or " associations." Thus also appears the Will, that is the revela- 

 tion to consciousness of the balancing of the faculties, though where 

 consciousness enters we know not, and shall never know on this side 

 of the grave. No mistake, then, is more fatal than that of parents who 

 let children run wild, on the pretense of physical development. This, 

 indeed, they may obtain, and how guarded we are to be in forcing the 

 brain I need not say again ; but there can be no misfortune to a child 

 greater than to escape the life of justice, order, and rule, or to escape 

 the training of those perceptions of social needs and social laws which, 

 when graven in our ganglia and long current in our nerves, become 

 habits of sympathy, charity, and self-sacrifice. Herein I fear that the 

 partisans of " secular " education are greatly at fault. Children may 

 be trained in board-schools to habits of cleanliness and order, but they 

 are not trained in the principles of liberty, nor are their eyes turned to 

 the sanctions of religion. From this system I fear there may be a sad 

 awakening for a coming generation. I may sum up thus : The powers 

 of the nervous system with which education is chiefly concerned are 

 Quality, Quantity, Tension, Variety, and Control. Quality is beyond 

 the direct efforts of education; its rarer development, both in nations 

 and individuals, is as yet incalculable: in the early life of the individual 

 it is often latent, and its greatest results belong to years of maturity. 

 On the other hand, education may often overlay it, thwart it, or expend 

 it, and, as quality is largely dependent upon quantity or volume of nerve- 

 force, the ripening of those degrees of it which exist in ordinary men, 

 and the favoring of those revelations of it which occur more rarely, are 

 constantly prevented by brain-forcing in early life. In men of great 

 quality or genius such brain-forcing has too often dimmed or blighted 

 the splendor of their work, or has shortened their days, and has only 

 failed to do so in others by virtue of their perennial springs of inward 

 energy. Quantity, therefore, is a very fruitful possession, and, unlike 

 quality, may be directly reenforced by wholesome conditions by phys- 

 ical education, and by the promotion of healthy and rapid digestion, 

 assimilation, and excretion. 



Tension is a virtue without which quality and quantity of nerve- 

 force may be wasted. By it men overcome resistance, and are fired 

 with impulse. Promptness, alertness, and acute sense, come also of this 

 attribute. Tension may be increased greatly by education, and it 

 springs up in the busier contentions of men. It is largely independent 

 of physical health and of food, but is favored by action and the training 

 of observation. Variety, by which men are enabled to touch the world 

 at many points, can be favored by education. If in excess, it results in 



