102 REMARKS ON DR. CALDWELL'S 



moral practice of doing good. Reading the biographies of men 

 remarkable for high and practical morality, and well-written works 

 of moral fiction, contributes materially to the same end. This 

 course, he affirms, when skilfully and inflexibly pursued, will infal- 

 libly strengthen and enlarge the moral organs, and confirm the 

 persons subjected to its influence in habits of virtue. He repre- 

 sents the perfect physical education of the brain as consisting in the 

 competent exercise of every part of it, so that each of its organs 

 may possess due strength and activity and be itself healthy, and 

 that there may exist between them the equilibrium necessary to the 

 health and regulated action of the whole. If one or more organs 

 or parts of the brain be exercised too much, they may become ex- 

 hausted and debilitated, or excited to inflammation or a condition 

 bordering on it, and not less truly morbid ; while other parts, 

 being exercised too little, or not at all, will be enfeebled by inac- 

 tion; and thus must the health, not only of the brain, but of the 

 whole system, suffer : for the brain being one of the ruling viscera 

 of the animal economy, any derangement of it must injure the con- 

 dition of all the others. He adds the position that the cerebral or- 

 gans are liable to become exhausted or inflamed, according to their 

 character : when small, phlegmatic, and feeble, they are easily pro- 

 strated by severe exercise ; when large, high-toned, and vigorous, 

 intense exercise inflames them, or produces in them such irritability 

 and inordinate action as to derange the balance of the brain, induce 

 mental irregularities, and lay the foundations of cerebral disease. 

 This view of the subject shews the propriety and advantage of pu-" 

 pils pursuing several studies or modes of mental exercise at the 

 same time, instead of being confined exclusively to one. It sug- 

 gests, moreover, the reason of it ; for by changing from one study 

 to another successively in the same day, those who are cultivating 

 science and letters not only learn much more than they could under 

 confinement to a single study, but do so with less exhaustion and 

 danger to health. By closely studying one branch of knowledge, 

 in other words, by labouring all day with one cerebral organ, it 

 becomes exhausted and dull ; and, when thus worn out by toil, it 

 is not merely unfit to continue its exercise with due effect, and to 

 master its task, but its health is endangered, if not actually injured. 

 On the contrary, when the pupil feels himself becoming unfit for 

 one study and passes to another, he engages in the latter with fresh 

 and active organs, and makes rapid progress in it until, beginning 

 to be again fatigued and dull, he changes to a third, or returns to 

 that which he had relinquished, and finds the exhausted organs re- 



