Kemp. — On the Medical Aspects of Education. xxxiii 



capacity aud turu of mind in different learners. There are many minds 

 of neutral tendency — minds that can take in a certain limited amount of 

 knowledge on almost any and every subject, but which can never master 

 much in anything. These minds, if they be not unduly pressed or flattened 

 down, become in time moderate in learning, and sometimes imbued with the 

 plainest common sense. They bear at school much work with comparatively 

 small injury, for they are known to be dull, and great things are not 

 expected of them nor attempted by them. They do the necessary work of 

 mediocrity — in this world a most important work. There are two other 

 very different orders of minds. There is the mind analytical — that looks 

 into details in business, into elements in science, into figures and 

 facts in civil and natural history. In the school such a mind is 

 good at mathematics — good at facts and dates, good at niceties of Ian-, 

 guage. In these directions its lessons are pleasures, or, at most, scarcely 

 labours. There is, again, the mind constructive or synthetic — the mind 

 which builds ; which uses facts and figures only, in the end for its own 

 purposes of work ; which easily learns principles of construction ; which 

 grasps poetry and the hidden meaning of the poet ; which is wonderful 

 in its power of keeping knowledge as a. whole, and which cannot take 

 fast hold of minute distinctions. In the small school of the youth, as in 

 the great school of the world, these two orders of minds are ever present. 

 The mistake is, that they are so commonly confounded, and that no change 

 is made in the mode of study to suit the genius of the one or the other. 

 The consequence is, that lessons are given to these two classes of minds 

 which neither can master. Under these conditions, both chafe and get 

 weary, and still do not get on. Then they fall into bad health, grow fretful 

 aud feverish, are punished, and otherwise made unhappy and morose. And 

 so, if they be unduly forced, they grow up unhealthy in body and mind, 

 feeling that the occupations into which they have drifted are uncongenial to 

 them, for they know that they have not mental power necessary to carry 

 them on successfully." 



Without going at any length into the order of the gradual expansion and 

 invigoration of the mental powers, I cannot pass the subject by without 

 givuig a word of warning, especially to parents. The formation of associa- 

 tions takes place with great ease and rapidity during the earliest period of 

 childhood ; and these exercise so much influence over the succession of the 

 thoughts and the disposition of a child during the whole remainder of life, 

 that the "force of early associations" has become proverbial. It may be 

 granted that the state of feeling which is habitual to each individual may 

 depend in great measure upon his pecuHar constitution, yet it is unques- 

 tionable, that his disposition, thoughts, and feehngs, are largely influenced 



