Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/487

Rh our women also to be in this respect real helpmeets to men, we shall not have on this continent a race which is to remain. What Dr. Clark says, in the Building of a Brain, may well be quoted here: "On this continent races have been born and lived and disappeared. Mounds at the west, vestiges in Florida, and traces elsewhere proclaim at least two extinct races. The causes of their disappearance are undiscovered. We only know they are gone. The Indian, whom our ancestors confronted, was losing his hold on the continent when the Mayflower anchored in Plymouth Bay, and is now also rapidly disappearing. It remains to be seen if the Anglo-Saxon race, which has ventured upon a continent that has proved the tomb of antecedent races, can be more fortunate than they in maintaining a permanent grasp upon this western world."

How shall we develop this power? Regarding the new-born child as a bundle of latent forces, how shall we draw out these forces so that they shall be active, and yet be directed and controlled by an enlightened will? Only general suggestions can be offered. The order of development is important. The earliest attention should necessarily be given to the physical powers. Nutrition is of the first importance. Next comes motion, the exercise of muscles, and through these a certain development of mind and will. And these phenomena of motion on the part of children are so common, and, when we wish them to be quiet, so exasperating to us, that we miss their great importance in development. How can children grow without continual motion? Consider how large a part of our physical economy is dependent on motion. We pour food into the stomach, but the stomach is a muscular organ and does a great part of its work through muscular motion. It is to a certain extent dependent for its tone on the vigor of the muscular system. After the food is converted into chyle and sent drop by drop into the blood and is then passed through the oxygenizing process in the lungs, what is it that pumps it along the arteries but another muscular organ, the heart? And how much help this flow of nutritious blood to the very extremities of the system, into every nook and cranny of every organ of the body, derives from the action of the voluntary muscular system, we can hardly estimate. But we know the life current is quickened by exercise and slackened by the cessation of exercise. There is another way in which we know the influence of the voluntary muscular system. When more exercise is taken, more food is required to repair the waste, and there is better circulation of the blood.

Again, consider the senses, those avenues of knowledge to the knowing mind. Take the eye. It is not only a combination of lenses with a retina behind them sensitive to impressions. The lenses are furnished with adjusting muscles. And the ball itself