68 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF "WISCONSIN. 



but it would require little space to enumerate them and tell what 

 the j have done. 1 



As things stand at present it falls to the educator to con- 

 sider some of these physical phenomena which directly deter- 

 mine the fruitfulness of his teaching. It was generally thought 

 in older times when the relation of mind and body was quite 

 differently understood, that the teacher's duty was fulfilled 

 when he simply offered mental aliment to his pupils. If they 

 did not receive and digest it, he sought to aid them in the 

 process by generous stimulation with the cane and the birch. 2 

 But inl our own day an intelligent teacher knows that when 

 his pupil is lacking in available cerebral energy his instruction 

 will be of little avail, either in cultivating the intellect or in 

 fashioning character; and he ascribes shortcomings more often 

 to defective physical conditions than to lethargy or perverse- 

 ness of the will. He sees then the necessity for considering 

 those factors which inevitably decide whether what he presents 

 will be wrought into the mental structure of his pupil or whether 

 it will simply be an added load to an already overburdened 

 mind, — overburdened because of deficiencies in the neural 

 structures through which it is manifested and by which it is de- 

 termined. 



§4. Studies at the University of Wisconsin: Purpose and 

 Methods. — Holding these views the School of Education, at the 

 instance of the writer, sent out to all students in the University 

 of Wisconsin, in the spring of 1898, a questionnaire relating to 

 the subjects discussed in the preceding paragraphs, — the modes 

 of producing cerebral energy and conserving it so that it may 

 as fully as possible be expended in profitable directions. The 

 primary purpose of the questionnaire was to turn the thoughts 



*The best work with which I am familiar is Stevenson and Murphy, op. cit, 3 

 vols. This is not adapted, however, for general reading ; nor does it devote 

 much attention to mental hygiene and economy. Other good works are Parks : 

 Practical Hygiene; Wilson: Handbook of Hygiene and Sanitary Science; Rohe: 

 Text book of Hygiene. Carpenter's Physiology has some very good hints on hy- 

 giene. Martin : The Human Body, chaps. XX, XXI, and XXIX discusses In a 

 scientific and practical way some of the problems herein considered. 



2 See a most interesting book, — Cooper: The History of the Rod. 



