280 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



recent legislation the vitally important medical inspection 

 of children in connection with Board schools, and the 

 registration and official inspection of feeble - minded 

 children which will surely be made compulsory before 

 another year has passed, the danger of which I am about 

 to speak will very shortly no longer exist. It is this. 

 Feeble-minded children (whose condition falls short of 

 that of actual idiocy) are almost impossible to manage 

 as members of an ordinary family or household. Their 

 condition is often not properly recognised ; their parents 

 or guardians find them to be obstinate, unteachable, and 

 dirty. Often, when the family is poor, they are, under 

 these circumstances, (c boarded out " for a very small pay- 

 ment, or even taken charge of, out of charity. None of 

 the persons concerned in these transactions know that 

 they are dealing with a hopelessly unteachable child, born 

 with this defective brain. They find scolding has no 

 effect in guiding the child, mild chastisement fails, and 

 the poor ignorant foster-parent (sometimes even the 

 child's own mother) becomes exasperated and determined 

 to subdue what seems to be mere obstinacy and indiffer- 

 ence. The awful demon of cruelty is let loose. What 

 seems at first a virtuous determination to control and 

 regulate the child's behaviour for its own good leads to the 

 infliction upon it of blows of savage violence, then to the 

 less dangerous but revolting attempt to enforce obedience 

 by the pain caused by a burn, and to starvation as a final 

 instrument of discipline. A very large number of the 

 cases of cruelty to children and adolescents which from 

 time to time are brought into the law courts have their 

 origin in the fact that the victim was " feeble-minded," 

 and that the guardian found guilty of cruelty did not (any 

 more than do the judge and jury) understand or, indeed, 

 know anything at all about such a condition. Often the 

 feeble-mindedness itself has been attributed to the cruel 



