Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/746

722 would you think it strange if at the end of that time you should somewhat mix matters, and imagine that Hong-Kong is the name of a lunar volcano, that the Continental Congress is one of the parts of speech, and that the ductus communis choledechus is situated on Passama-quoddy Bay? She showed no such confusion of ideas. She had studied her lessons well, but she had done so at the expense of her brain-substance. In a little while, and English grammar, geographies, and temperance physiologies, would have been like the "subsequent proceedings" in Bill Nye's poem; they would have "interested her no more." I say that she had learned her lessons at the expense of her brain-substance. This is no flower of speech, but a sober fact. A very simple examination enabled me to satisfy myself that she was living on her brain-capital instead of her brain-income. Her expenditures were greater than her receipts, and brain-bankruptcy was staring her in the face.

An instance like this, in which disease is directly the result of excessive use of the brain, is only one of the many that are constantly coming under the observation of physicians. It is not at all likely that any remarks of mine, or the lessons that experience is daily giving to parents, will for a long time yet do much in the way of making such cases fewer. We are living under the reign of the schoolmaster. The impulse to have children acquire learning that can never be made available for any purpose of life is so powerful that it may almost be regarded as morbid. And this is especially the case relative to girls, who are made to spend years in getting a smattering knowledge of subjects which, if they knew them well, would not enhance their loveliness or render them any happier; but which, as it is, befog their minds with a multiplicity of ideas no one of which they clearly comprehend. Do not misunderstand me. I am not underrating the advantages of learning. If a person wishes to study the differential calculus, not with a view of benefiting his fellow-man, but for the object of conducing to his own happiness, let him do so. He will be wiser and better, and, whether he intends it or not, his fellow-man will be benefited. He has a right to judge for himself, and to seek his own happiness in the way that seems best to him. But for children to be reduced to one common level, as they are in our schools almost without exception, and to have studies crowded upon them in advance of their brain-development, are crimes against Nature, which Nature in her blind way expiates by punishing the wrong person, but which those who know the right should promptly expose.

The brain of a child is larger in proportion to its body than is that of the adult. A fact which is somewhat astonishing to those not aware of it is, that the head of a boy or girl does not grow in size after the seventh year; so that the hat that is worn at that age can be worn just as well at thirty. In the mean time the rest of the body has more than doubled in magnitude. Not only is the brain larger, but it is