EDUCATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF FUNCTION. 19 



hormones which pull the trigger and set a secretive or perhaps 

 an involuntary muscular function going, and we recognise their 

 chemical nature ; we also know that suggestion will promote 

 the activity of glands, and that these chemical processes may be 

 inaugurated through a mental stimulus. In another paper I 

 have indicated my conceptions of the relationships which exist 

 between certain psychoses and neuroses and the climacteric 

 periods of life, and how they depend upon chemical inco-ordina- 

 tions, due to the over-production of some secretion on the 

 one hand or its under-production (relative or actual) or per- 

 version on the other. It also seems possible that in a healthy 

 person the over- stimulation of some one function may lead to 

 its acting in a disproportionate way owing to the establishment 

 of a disproportionate chemistry, a state of affairs perhaps 

 accounting for obsessions of various kinds, which may be very 

 hard to control. The influence of the mind upon these chemical 

 phenomena should not be forgotten ; it quite possibly accounts 

 for many acquired characteristics, for mannishness in women, 

 and one might even suggest for the psychic conditions which 

 are associated with militancy, and for a number of other 

 qualities and characteristics in both sexes. It is quite con- 

 ceivable that in many of the so-called functional diseases,which 

 express themselves through the nervous system, the upset of 

 co-ordination is essentially the result of a disorganised cellular 

 or secretive chemistry, and to this extent they may be more 

 organic in their nature than is commonly supposed, and they 

 form a group concerning which the bio-chemist will, I have no 

 doubt, be able to enlighten us in days to come, when the 

 problems which have to do with cell stability are better under- 

 stood. In education and environment we have, then, valuable 

 and powerful forces, capable of influencing what are really 

 organic functions, but in utilising these forces, while recognising 

 that there are average standards of intelligence at varying ages 

 among school children, which enable us to group them, we have 



