FEMALE EDUCATION. 325 



thinness, should be at once attended to before it goes too far. The 

 great thing is to stop the beginnings of evil. If a girl has grown a 

 couple of inches a year, then depend upon it she should not study 

 hard. Nature has enough to do in such a case to firm up the body in 

 proportion to its bulk. You want not only growth, but activity, grace 

 of movement, alertness, strength. You won't have these if the girl 

 goes on studying hard while she is growing fast.* If growth and in- 

 crease in weight stop too soon, a wise parent will send off her daughter 

 to the country to run to grass for a time, to see if mental inactivity 

 will restore the body-growth. If she is getting thin, let her live out 

 in the open air, instead of in a school, till her appetite becomes raven- 

 ous, and she puts on flesh. 



There are three considerations that ought certainly to determine 

 the mode, kind, and amount of the education given to any youth or 

 maiden. These are — 1. The hereditary constitution of the brain, in- 

 cluding both its strong and weak points ; 2. The actual ascertainable 

 mental and bodily qualities and capacities and special tendencies of 

 the child ; and, 3. The purposes in life that he or she is destined to 

 accomplish. It is owing to our backward physiological knowledge 

 alone that the two former have not hitherto been taken into account, 

 as they ought to have been, by doctors, parents, and teachers. In re- 

 gard to heredity, when we know its laws more fully in human beings, 

 we shall be able, by influences brought to bear on development and by 

 appropriate conditions of life, greatly to counteract weak points, and 

 to make strong ones available for the purposes of life. We are now 

 able to do so to a considerable extent in the animal kingdom. Man 

 has for his own purposes developed breeds of carrier-pigeons, race- 

 horses, pointer-dogs, etc. We shall not be able to control the heredity 

 of human beings as we can that of the lower animals, but we can apply 

 conditions of life in a scientific manner for our aims. And, even in 

 regard to the mode in which marriages are arranged, a medico-psy- 

 chologist can not for a moment admit that young persons of either 

 sex fall in love and assort themselves on no scientific principles. The 

 sympathies and affinities of sex are just as much subject to law as any 

 other part of nature. We doctors have much occasion to know that 

 persons of a nervous heredity and disposition are extremely apt to fall 

 in love with and marry each other. The way in which nervousness of 

 all sorts is thus increased is extraordinary. The educators do their 

 best to foster this tendency in the maidens by brain-forcing. The 

 brilliancy of the results at the time are certainly very tempting. 



* On October 1st I weighed and measured three children of one family, two boys and a 

 girl, on their return to school after the holidays, and on November 30th I a<;ain did so. 

 The boys had each gained four pounds in weight and grown half an inch, the girl had 

 neither gained nor grown. The boys had had lots of play in the open air between les- 

 sons, the girl had been five hours each day continuously in school. The boys' class- 

 rooms had been built for a school, the girl's class-rooms were in a small private house. 



