Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/542

 as advising the following division of a student's day: Eight hours for sleep, ten for work, two for exercise, three for meals, and one for incidentals. Whether this is an authentic quotation or not, it describes with fair accuracy the practice of the average college girl, excepting that she rarely takes more than one hour of exercise. Her conscience is most approving when she spends all the time there is, apart from other definite engagements, with her books. Now, in the light of Prof. Kraepelin's experiments, if not in that of our own observation, what happens as the result of this protracted poring over books? Either injury is done to the brain through overexertion, or the brain protects itself by inattention and the student wastes precious time and depletes to no purpose her all too small store of vitality.

Prof. Kraepelin lays great stress on the importance of sleep as a compensation for all effects of mental fatigue, and all will agree with him in this. But he claims that "it is fundamentally false to regard physical effort as in any way a suitable preparation for mental labor. Protracted experiments pursued under my direction have given the result that a simple walk of from one to two hours diminishes the mental capacity in adults at least as much as about an hour's work in addition." How can we reconcile this with our own experience or with the testimony of students? Only a few days ago a student told me with enthusiasm of the ease and rapidity with which her evening tasks were accomplished after an afternoon during which she had walked two miles to town, had there taken a bicycle lesson of an hour, and then walked back to college, this being more than double her usual amount of exercise. Can there be any question as to which is the better preparation for a day of mental labor—nine hours of sleep and three hours of vigorous exercise in the open air, or twelve hours of sleep and no exercise? Of course, time should be allowed after vigorous physical exercise for the relaxation and rest of the muscles before using the brain, but the time required for this is not long.

It seems to me that the practice and experience of the English offer convincing testimony against Prof. Kraepelin's opinion on this point. An American student can not compete with the English student in respect to the amount of work done in a given time; nor, I am told, can the German student. The habits of Germans and Americans conform, and differ from the English in respect to long hours of work and short hours of exercise.

The English students have apparently learned that the brain does its best work when allowed long periods of leisure. They make strenuous efforts to reduce their hours of study to a minimum. They work on an average six hours a day. Students have taken honors at Cambridge with a smaller average of study