Education and Innervation. 55 



bility of bringing into the world those who are by and by to 

 take their places, have the faintest idea of the duties devolving 

 upon them? They have not the slightest conception that upon 

 the early treatment of their offspring depends, if not the 

 question of their life and death, at least their moral welfare or 

 their ruin. To judge by analogy, just imagine what would be 

 the result if an individual were to set up in business as an 

 accountant, who had not even a smattering knowledge of 

 arithmetic or bookkeeping ; or if a man undertook to pilot a 

 ship when he knew nothing whatever about the course of the 

 channel, or the whereabouts of the rocks or shoals which lay 

 hidden beneath the billows ; or imagine the absurdity of a 

 man setting up as a medical practitioner whose knowledge of 

 anatomy or physiology was of the crudest description, or whose 

 acquaintance with the properties of drugs was based upon the 

 slightest and most casual observation ! Truly we should wonder 

 at this audacity and feel the utmost pity for his patients. And 

 yet that the lives and well-being of the little ones are at the 

 mercy of those whose knowledge of their duties and responsi- 

 bilities is as a rule of the most elementary character causes 

 neither uneasiness nor even surprise, is one of the most 

 astonishing facts of modern experience. This point is a very 

 important one, and deserves a whole evening for its con- 

 sideration, but I can do but little more than just refer to it 

 here. To quote the words of a very eminent educationalist — 

 " The regimen lo which children are subject is hourly telling 

 upon them to their life-long injury or benefit, so as there are 

 twenty ways of going wrong to one way of going right, it is 

 not a very difficult process to form some idea of the enormous 

 mischief done everywhere by the thoughtless, ignorant, hap- 

 hazard system that prevails among us." Here again, I am afraid 

 I must specialise a little, for since regimen is really that which 

 determines the conditions of circulation, of waste, and of general 

 nutrition, these in their turn act and react upon the nervous 

 system. The various exercises contributing to these may be 

 divided into sensory, intellectual, muscular, and affective. The 



