MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 469 



tion when medically inspected. The minor ailments were the 

 chief cause of trouble, viz. defective teeth, adenoids, large tonsils, 

 defective vision, and especially parasitic head affections. Eye 

 strain from errors of refraction may lead to nervous affections 

 in children with a neurotic or neuropathic temperament; 

 adenoids and large tonsils are a very frequent cause of deafness 

 and consequent mental dullness. 



The extension of the meaning of education by collective 

 responsibility to the bodily welfare of the child from birth 

 onwards is one of the greatest steps made towards increasing 

 the educability of the child when it arrives in the school. We 

 have seen that the factors underlying educability are first and 

 foremost the germinal inborn potentialities derived from pro- 

 genitors (Nature) ; secondly, those conditions of nurture which 

 are favourable to the morphological development of inborn 

 potentialities, viz. bodily nutrition, sleep, and stimulus. 



The Influence of Education on the Development of 



the Mind 



The teacher is powerless to develop intelligence where there 

 is an absence of the material basis of mind, or an inherent low 

 functional value and ready fatiguability ; so that sustained 

 attention, necessary for the acquirement of knowledge, fails. 

 The former condition is quite hopeless, the latter may not be 

 due to inborn defects, but to bad nurture ; therefore preventable 

 and, in a measure, curable. 



The object of education should be to establish physical, 

 intellectual, and moral efficiency in the child by drawing out and 

 developing the good inborn qualities, by installing and fixing 

 good habits, and by repressing, controlling, and preventing as 

 far as possible the acquirement of bad habits. In the acquire- 

 ment of good or bad habits early in life when the mind is most 

 susceptible, imitation and suggestion play a most important 

 part ; thus an inborn virtue such as an amiable and confiding 

 disposition may under the influence of bad companionship lead 

 to the ready acquirement of vicious habits. The teacher has 

 only a partial influence in forming character and education for 

 efficiency. Home influence, good as well as bad, companions in 

 school and out of school, chance and opportunity, all play their 

 part in the general making of success or failure in the final 

 product of education. Home influence is the most important 



