Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/532

514 that the consideration of all the known conditions that favor or impede the plastic growth of the system should be searching and minute.

Although some philosophers have taught that all minds are nearly equal in regard to facility of acquirement, a schoolmaster that would say so must be of the very rudest type. The inequality of different minds in imbibing lessons, under the very same circumstances, is a glaring fact; and is one of the obstacles encountered in teaching numbers together, that is, classes. It is a difficulty that needs a great deal of practical tact or management, and is not met by any educational theory.

The different kinds of acquirements vary in minor circumstances which are important to be noticed after exhausting the general or pervading conditions. The greatest contrast is between what belongs to intelligence, and what belongs to the feelings and the will. The more strictly intellectual department comprises Mechanical Art, Language, the Sensible World, the Sciences, Fine Art; and to each-of these heads may attach specialties not hard to assign.

General Circumstances favoring Retentiveness.—1. The physical condition. This has been already touched upon, both in the review of physiology, and in the remarks on discrimination. It includes general health, vigor and freshness at the moment, together with the further indispensable proviso that the nutrition, instead of being drafted off to strengthen the mere physical functions, is allowed to run in good measure to the brain.

In the view of mental efficiency, the muscular system, the digestive system, and the various organic interests, are to be exercised up to the point that conduces to the maximum of general vigor in the system, and no farther. They may be carried further in the interest of sensual enjoyment, but that is not now before us. Hence a man must exercise his muscles, must feed himself liberally and give time to digestion to do its work, must rest adequately—all for the greatest energy of the mind, and for the trying work of education in particular. Nor is it so very difficult, in the present state of physiological and medical knowledge, to assign the reasonable proportions in all these matters, for a given case.

Everything tends to show that, in the mere physical point of view, the making of impressions on the brain, although never remitted during all our waking moments, is exceedingly unequal at different times. We must be well aware that there are moments when we are incapable of receiving any lasting impressions, and there are moments when we are unusually susceptible. The difference is not one wholly resolvable into mere mental energy on the whole; we may have a considerable reserve of force for other mental acts, as the performance of routine offices, and not much for retaining new impressions; we are capable of reading, talking, writing, and for taking an interest in the