98 EDUCATION. 



If character is for the most part a product of organi- 

 sation and parentage it follows that education is mainly 

 a physiological art. It is an art which should aim 

 at strengthening feeble, repressing exuberant, and 

 correcting perverted nerve. 



The first duty of the physiological educational artist 

 who accepts the teachings of physiology and who will 

 in future come to be the one supreme, confidential 

 " Father confessor," is to study the character, that 

 is the endowments, proclivities, conduct, the gifts, 

 defects, and eccentricities of the parents. A child 

 usually takes after one parent or one parent's family. 

 But both sides should be studied. A child sometimes 

 turns back to one of the father's family if it takes after 

 the father, or to one of the mother's side if it takes 

 after the mother ; it is probably so when the offspring 

 appears to resemble neither of the parents. A son 

 may take after the father's side or the mother's ; a 

 daughter after the mother's side or the father's. How 

 often we find the disappointing son of a great father to 

 be the image of a maternal nonentity. Often, on the 

 other hand, the son of a paternal dullard displays 

 unexpected power he takes after a mother of high 

 capabilities. Edward I., a sagacious ruler, was the 

 son of a male fool and the grandson of a male knave ; 

 hence we infer that his mother, Eleanor of Provence, 

 had those high qualities which, in her son, changed so 

 much in the course of English history. The mothers 

 in history have been strangely neglected: in this 

 matter a large field of enquiry lies open to the histo- 

 rian of the future who will need to have physiological 

 as well as literary training. 



Self-searchings and self-confessions would have for 

 parents themselves, at a time when they greatly need 



