Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/89

 PREVENTION OF MENTAL DISEASES 75

faculty of assimilation ; and the parents, or even the teachers, in consequence of self-love and a pride and ambition badly directed, consume these objects of their glory and too often end by pre- cipitating their ruin. Numerous children who might be the hap- piness and honor of their parents and of those to whom their instruction has been intrusted, have fallen into a state of deca- dence or intellectual arrest, or have even become insane or demented, because too great demands have been made on their intellectual forces. Some children, good students at college, have been found to be backward and unproductive at the uni- versity, or in preparation for commercial or industrial vocations. Some students have obtained their diplomas, maxima cum latide, and have been arrested in the course of their liberal career, intel- lectually, because their personal vanity or that of their parents urged them in pursuit of honor.

Society does not comprehend, at least adequately, that man is a being who can go on unceasingly toward perfection, even to an advanced age ; that his brain does not reach its complete development even at the age of twenty-five years, and that this very precious organ ought to be respected and directed without suspension of function. We have the proof of this in the exam- ple of merchants, industrials, advocates, physicians, engineers, etc., who, not having abused their intellectual powers, make a fresh beginning at an age when many of their companions feel that there is an end of their intellectual development.

THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILD OUGHT TO BE MADE THE OBJECT

OF SPECIAL CARE.

The programs of study should be modified in primary and secondary instruction. We do not advise a return to the pro- gram of a half century ago ; the child exercised its memory, but apprehended many things which it did not comprehend. Today there are programs more logical, more in harmony with our physical and intellectual nature. We should prescribe for the child the progressive development of all the constituent parts of his being; all parts have need of instruction and educa- tion, suitable to the end which they fulfill in nature. The limbs