Xxxvi Appendix. 
It is a generally accepted fact, that the brain grows very fast up to seven 
years of age, it then attains an average weight in boys of 40 ounces. The 
increase is much slower between seven and fourteen, at which time it attains 
45 ounces; still slower from fourteen to twenty, when it has attained its full 
size. Consequently of the more difficult intellectual exercises, some, that 
would be impossible at five or six, are easy at eight, through the fact of 
brain-growth alone. It often happens, and I think the experience of all 
teachers will bear me out in this: You try a pupil with a particular subject 
at a certain age, and you entirely fail; wait now a year or two, and you 
succeed, and that without seemingly haying done anything expressly to lead 
up to the point; although there will undoubtedly have been, in the mean- 
time, some sort of experience that prepares the mind for the reception of 
the more difficult subject. Another reason why it is all-important for us to 
find out and supply the proper quantity and quality of mental food to 
growing children is, that at this period of life the brain is in its most plastic 
form, and what it assimilates it does so thoroughly as to make it part of it- 
self—not to be lost after a time, but to remain for ever as the good foundation 
upon which, in after years, to build a superstructure of intellectual know- 
ledge. If, however, instead of supplying proper food, we try and force in 
what the brain cannot bear, we do double harm: first, by putting upon the 
brain a demand which it is incapable of bearing without injury; second, by 
depriving it of that healthy food by which it grows and becomes prepared 
ultimately to receive more advanced knowledge. The amount of harm done 
is greater in the former than in the latter case, for, as I tried to show in 
my last paper, undue pressure put upon a growing and developing brain, 
will have the effect, either of developing it abnormally in structure and at 
the same time prematurely arresting its growth, or of so overtaxing its 
powers that it will at once give way owing to some form of disease. In 
either case, if death does not ensue, it will be unfit to carry on its work, and 
so all those functions which are immediately under its control will be im- 
perfectly performed, and physical ill-health will follow. If the true end 
and aim of education were kept more clearly in view, I think less harm 
would be done. 
The object of education ought to be to open-out the undeveloped nature 
of a child; to bring out his faculties, and impart skill in the use of them ; 
to set the seeds of many powers growing; to teach as large and varied a 
knowledge of human nature as possible; to give him, according to his 
circumstances, the largest practicable acquaintance with life, what it is 
composed of, morally, intellectually, and materially, and how to deal with 
it. The mere acquisition of knowledge is not education; a writer on this 
subject says: ‘‘ A man may be able to count accurately every yard of dis- 
