Corson had been truant. If so, their truancy ought to have been stig. matized and not their tardiness.

But if these boys had been tardy for some circumstances at home, I should prefer to see my children, like them, courageously indifferent to the reproach of their schoolmates, to seeing them cringe before a morbid sentiment.

I realize the importance to the pupils, both as individuals and as a school, and appreciate the pleasure afforded the teachers to have every pupil present on time, every day; yet we must remember that what is pleasant to the teacher and convenient to the school may not be conducive to the true moral training of the individual pupil.

Among the faults to which Europeans have called our attention, is our slavishness to "the fashion. " Public opinion is autocrat, and we all know that public opinion, as a rule, is formed on very superficial knowledge of the case.

In my opinion, our children need, as training for future citizenship, nothing more than training in independence, both in action and, especially, in forming their opinions. As it is now, only "cranks and those who have lost their self-respect are ready to brave public opinion. I do not mean to say that "cranks" are at all erratic, but it is the fashion to follow and to bow to public opinion in everything, even in our most sacred obligations and duties, so that those who will dare to do otherwise are branded as "cranks" by the rest.

As parent, I should like to see teachers giving more careful attention to their motives in creating sentiment in their schools and to spare no pains to impress on the minds of their pupils that no sentiments should prevail except such as clearly rest on rightness and duty.

It is pretty well determined that the lower in civilization a people is, the more submissive is it to public opinion, and the more helpless is the individual in the face of the sentiment of the crowd, and our schools should certainly aim to lift us above savagery as high as possible.

I should not have called attention to the paper of Sup't. Corson, if I had not known that many teachers are too ready to take advantage of the pupils' vanity to promote their own convenience and to overlook or disregard the future welfare of the individual pupil for the sake of a school record that makes a good showing.

Ohio University.

THE LAW OF MENTAL EXERCISE.

BY B. A. HINSDALE.

It is a common place remark that a man's faculties are strengthened by use and weakened by disuse. To change the form of statement, they grow when they are fed and nourished, and decay when they are not fed and nourished. This is true of the body and the mind alike; true of a group of faculties or of a single faculty as well as of all the faculties, and it is commonly in that way that the law of exercise or nutrition manifests itself. Moreover, every faculty demands appropriate aliment; what nourishes one will not always nourish another. Accordingly, one part of man's nature may grow while another withers, and one part may be fed and strengthened at the expense of another. Within limits, the development of the body may be due to the non-development of the mind, and vice versa ; while the intellectual power may wax, and the emotional power wane, pari passu.

Charles Darwin wrote in his autobiography (See "Life and Letters," I., 281), that in his earlier life he was led, although the religious sentiment was never strongly developed in him, "to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul." "In my journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, It is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration and devotion which fill and elevate the mind. I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now," he continues, writing in 1876, "the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who had become color-blind, and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value in evidence." There can be little question that this decay of religious sentiment was due to the disuse of the religious nature. or what is the same thing, the disproportionate development of the scientific mind.

Mr. Darwin also gives, in his perfectly frank and sincere way, an account of a similar process that went on simultaneously in another part, though a related part of his being. Up to the age of thirty or more, poetry of many kinds gave him great pleasure, and even as a school-boy he read Shakespeare with intense delight. Pictures gave him considerable, and music great pleasure. "But now for many years," he says, writing in 1881, "I cannot endure to read a line of poetry; I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so in

tolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure." He thought this curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes" "odd," and in a passage that really suggests the answer to the question, declares his inability to understand it. "My mind seems to have become a kind of a machine for grinding general laws out of a large collection of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." (I., 81, 82).

Mr. Darwin uses the right word; part of his brain had become "atrophied;" but he is mistaken in supposing that was true of one part only his religious talent, as well as his aesthetic talent had been taken from him because disused. He had been over-devoted to "grinding general laws out of a large collection of facts."

The bit of simple philosophy now presented, with the illustration, is of the profoundest importance to all thinking men; and to none more important than to students engaged in the ardent and successful pursuit of general or professional studies.

CRITICISMS WORTH CONSIDERING.

BY H. L. PECK.

Woods Hutchinson, in an article in the North American Review on "The Physical Basis of Brain Work," says:

"Our common school pupils are crammed and forced and gorged with intellectual pabulum from six to eight hours a day, while they are at best simply advised, and often only permitted, to spend from one to three hours a day in the open air, too often in such an exhausted condition as to be incapable of really vigorous play; and this indisposition is too often increased by repeated feminine admonitions not to waste too much time in play or to indulge in energetically vigorous sport, because they are so 'rough and horrid' and spoil their nice

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clothes. A host of instructors, consisting almost exclusively of weak and nervous females, is busily engaged in impressing upon the rising generation that intellectual greatness is the only thing worth striving for, and that physical prowess is worthy only of navvies and pugilists, as the means of its development are so ungentlemanly' and 'unladylike.' Being almost wholly under petticoat government, not only in the school, but alas! too often in the home, at a time when his ideals for life are being formed, a boy is almost compelled to form his conceptions of manly vigor from pugilists and professional sports, while the mischief is intensified in both sexes from the pernicious and premature sexual development which inevitably results from our boasted system of co-education. If our school children of to-day were to spend four hours out of the eight in vigorous, pleasant out-door exercise, they would accomplish more in the remaining four hours than they do now in the entire eight, and with infinitely less strain upon their vital forces. This may seem a startling proposition, but it has been more than proved, not only by the experience of our university and college students, but also by the experiments of Mr. Chadwick, among the factory children of England, on what is known as the half time system,' by which the children were given four hours, not of vigorous recreation in the open air, but of regular work in the factory, and then four hours of study, with the surprising result that they made better progress, with less effort, than those who studied the whole eight hours.

The best brain workers of to-day in England, and on the continent, spend only three or four hours per diem at the desk or in the laboratory. In view of these facts, it seems to me the following modifications in our present common school system of education would be at least desirable: 1st. That a playground for summer and a wellequipped gymnasiun for winter should become indispensable adjuncts of every graded school building. 2nd. That for every hour of study the pupil should be expected, and, if necessary, obliged to spend an equal time in vigorous physical exercise, if possible, in the open air, for proficiency in which credit should be given him in his final average. 3d. That a thorough knowledge of the laws of health and the physiology of exercise should be required of every teacher. 4th. That at least half of the teachers should be men and be selected with a view to not only their mental and moral, but also their physical fitness, to become the ideals of the rising generation."

The majority of teachers and thoughtful friends of education will yield a ready assent to many of Mr. Hutchinson's propositions. The narrow policy, or the necessity, whichever it may be, that limits the alleged play-grounds of most graded school buildings to a tiny yard or to the street, is greatly to be lamented, both from the lack of suitable facilities for necessary physical recreation, and from the increased difficulties in government and discipline growing out of such conditions. An ample play-ground as an adjunct of a public school building is rarely found. As a result, hundreds of children spend the short time

allotted to play in lounging in the school room, and, at the close of the recess, return to their studies unrefreshed by the vigorous out-door exercise which a child in a normal state of health would naturally seek, and which is necessary to satisfactory progress in intellectual development.

Many boards of education look upon the teacher's work in about the light in which they do that of a man chopping cord-wood-so many hours, so many dollars-and in their zeal to serve their constituents and make teachers earn their money, compel primary teachers to put in the full six hours daily, regardless of the health of the children. If teacher or superintendent suggests that primary pupils ought not to be confined in school so many hours, laziness, a desire to "shirk, desire to get unearned money, &c., are insinuated. A more enlightened public sentiment, a more intelligent appreciation of the teacher's work, a more perfect knowledge of child-life and a better educated. conscience will ultimately work great change in this matter, and children six to ten years old will do fewer hours of school-room work. It has long been the opinion of the best thinkers among educators, that the great predominance of women teachers in the public schools, is detrimental to the best interests of the children taught therein, and this opinion is held without any intent to disparage the services or the efficiency of women teachers. In no other country is the number of women in the schools so largely in excess of the number of men as in ours. It is not uncommon in Germany for a man to be in charge of a primary or first year class-and the best and most experienced teachers are employed in that grade. Mr. Hutchinson's article is also a suggestion in the direction of establishing some form of manual training in connection with intellectual training. Whether this can be best accomplished by making it an adjunct of the public school is an unsolved problem, in spite of the very emphatic assertions to the contrary, of some sanguine friends of manual training. It is pretty clear, however, that the next few years will see some important modifications of our public school system.

THE EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS.

From an article on this subject in The Fortnightly Review we extract so much as bears upon the work of parents and teachers.

In approahing the subject of the Education of the Emotions, we must carry with us the important fact that no means are so efficacious in promoting good ones as the employment of the great agency of Contagion; and further, that this contagion works only by exhibiting