If we wish to train an individual or a nation to great intellectual power, we should look first to the stock, and next to bringing them up to the highest standard of physical health, sure that then there will be the greatest amount of mental energy. Only we must not set up a false standard of health : the burly Hercules is a wider departure from it than the graceful Apollo. Men were not made for athletes any more than they were for Ganymedes. To be in perfect health is not merely to have the strength of the ox, the fleetness of the deer, the digestion of the ostrich, the sleep of the sloth; the possession of these rather shows that the nervous fluid has been drawn from the brain and appropriated to the muscles; that the mind has been starved to feed the body. But to be healthy is to have all the organs of the body, those that serve more immediately for the manifestation of the mind, (namely, the brain and nervous system,) as well as the organs of nutrition and locomotion, in perfect order. This is not the case with the laboring class. The brawny blacksmith will hold out firmly at arm's-length for several minutes a heavy hammer that the pale student can hardly raise with both his hands; but address an argument to the reason of the two, and that slender man shall grasp it with his mind, and hold on to it through all its course, and his flashing eye shall mark the unwearied zeal with which he carries it to its conclusion; while the attention of his swarthy antagonist soon flags, he loses his hold, and his drowsy features tell you that he is dropping to sleep, he cannot keep his attention on the stretch any more than the student can hold out the hammer at arm's-length. Now, why is this? The soul, the immaterial principle that animates those two or ganized bodies, is, for aught we know, the same; but the machinery by which it works and manifests itself, in this state of existence, is very different. If the smith had worked his arms less, and his brain more; if the student had thought less, and exercised his arms more, both would have been nearer to the normal standard of health. Both have sinned, both have gone out of the way; and it is not at all certain that the laboring class sin less against the laws of health than the non-laboring class. Perhaps, indeed, they sin more, if the tables of mortality tell a true tale. They sin, however, in ignorance, or from dire necessity; the other class from less excusable rea

sons.

It is true, that the real nobles, the class of veritable leaders of mankind, has to be recruited every now and then by de

scending into the great bosom of the people, and fetching up from thence fresh spirits full of native energy, to supply its own exhaustion; and it rises from every fall to the earth, Antæus-like, fresher and stronger than ever. But it will always be seen that the mighty men who rise up from among the laboring class are not born of parents who were overworked, and that they have not been overworked themselves; that circumstances have favored the exercise of a brain and nervous system which were naturally vigorous, and that often they have preserved the happy mean of moderate exercise of mind and body.

Surely, the millennium will never come on earth; surely, mankind will never display a hundredth part of its vigor, its goodness, its capacity for almost indefinite improvement, until the laboring class, which composes such an immense majority, is redeemed from the degrading thraldom under which it actually lies.

The doctrine that should now be preached in every workshop, in every field of our favored land, is, make not haste to be rich; do not starve the mind by overworking the body; remember that muscles move not without the exercise of volition; that any exercise of volition exhausts the brain, and that if you work off all your nervous energy through the muscles, your brain can do nothing but go to rest until the reservoir of nervous fluid is filled up again.

What a spectacle of injustice and cruelty does the history of the world reveal in the unequal distribution of labor which has ever prevailed! Millions of men doing nothing but work, work, work, from the dawn of day till the shades of night; millions of women doing nothing but drudge, drudge, drudge, from their uprising in the morning to their lying down at night, as wearied and as stupid as the tired cattle! Who shall wonder at the slow progress of humanity, with such a dead weight to drag it back as ninety-nine hundredths of its members whose spiritual and intellectual nature is undeveloped? Who shall despair of its more rapid advance, when he sees the dawn of that day when the doctrines of Christ shall be practised as well as preached; when the brotherhood of mankind shall be established; when the burden of labor shall be shared by all; when the antagonism of nations and of trade shall be fused into friendly coöperation for mutual good, based upon the principle that to love one's neighbour and strive for his good is not only to fulfil the moral law but the law of self-interest.

That day is nearer or more remote according to the success of the measures for teaching the common people to take their case in their own hands. They have become measurably independent as to abstract political rights; let them become really so as to the means of exercise for intellectual faculties and social affections, and we shall make something of a heaven upon this dirty planet, in spite of all preachers of total depravity.

We have dwelt upon the sad necessity which causes the overworked laboring class to neglect their mental culture; let us add a word upon the effects upon the moral sentiments. We will illustrate it by reference to a fact observed in idiots.

It has been remarked by writers upon idiocy, that many of those unfortunate creatures dread the sound of the human voice, especially if expressing words to which they are not accustomed. Mr. Seguin explains this by supposing that they have a dislike to any new idea; that the human voice is something which expresses an idea; that the hearer is forced to make an effort to understand it, and all mental efforts are disagreeable to idiots.

With some modifications, the fact and the explanation are true. There are certain conditions of the brain in which mental effort is painful. Whoever has suffered with nervous headache knows, that if he is forced to use his brain in thinking, the pain is increased to intensity, just as pain would be increased in a sore arm by exercise of the muscles.

There is another condition of the mind, arising from long disuse of certain faculties, in which exercise of those faculties is very disagreeable, not only to idiots, but to all of us. In childhood we delight in the exercise of the perceptive faculties; we love to learn the names and minute qualities of all the individual things arouud us; we master the forty or eighty thousand words of our native tongue as though it were delightful sport; and forty-sixty- a hundred thousand are mastered by children who, with a little pains, learn three or four languages. We have seen children in Malta, not more than ten years old, who spoke fluently four different languages; two of which, the Italian and Maltese, they had learned in the streets and at their play, without any special instruction, and the others from their parents, who were French and English, without any painful effort. Now, if these very children had learned only one language in childhood, and should afterwards, at the age of fifty or sixty, be required to learn three new ones, they would sit down and die in despair. How is this?

Does the mind grow old and stiff? Are its innate powers rusted and impaired? We are forced rather to believe that the brain, the only material organ by which the mind can act in this stage of our existence, becomes stiff and unhandy from long disuse, and in old age is as inapt and clumsy an instrument for picking up words, as our fingers would be for working at mosaic or at embroidery.

But the mind has not grown altogether sluggish and lame in old persons. They do not like to pick up the pins of detail, but they do love to grasp general principles. As children, they loved to see the fact of an apple falling to the ground, and to know whether it was red or green, ripe or rotten. As men, they love to consider the principle of gravitation which brought that apple down, and to extend that principle to the rise of the tide, and the course of the planets. What care they whether the apple was a russet or a pippin?

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There are two lesons to be learned from this, both important, and one awful. The first is, that the different mental faculties have each their proper period for exercise and activity, a principle all important in education; the second is, that by long disuse of any faculty we come to dislike to use it at all, perhaps to be unable to use it. If we apply this principle to the mere intellectual faculties, it seems unimportant; because we care not to learn anew the multiplication table, and we do not need to study a new language; but, is it not even so with our benevolence? If it has been long inactive, do we not dislike to have it called into play to pity and help a suffering brother. Is it not so with our conscience, — do we not dislike to have it called upon to obey long unobserved rules of right? Is it not so with our veneration, do we not stiffly bend the knee of homage to a long-neglected God? Let us take heed to this: there is a time for all things; once past it comes not back again. No repentance, however long and however bitter, can entirely remove the consequences of sins of omission or commission. Time lost, opportunities neglected, abuses committed, are sins both of omission and of commission; some faculties have been unused, some have been abused; in the ledger of life the balance is struck upon the page of every day, and the account closed for ever; for even God himself cannot make that which has been, not to have been.

The second great truth or law which has been developed and illustrated by these researches into the physical condition

of idiots, is that of the hereditary transmission of morbid and vicious tendencies, whether of body or mind.

We do not mean that this truth has not been before observed; it is now generally admitted in theory, but we have never seen it so fully demonstrated as in the case of idiocy.

The idiotic child is just as much the result of some organic weakness or vice in the constitution of the parent, as the sour and crabbed apple is the necessary product of a wild and bad stock. Do men look for grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, or healthy children from diseased parents?

Truth is most apparent in extreme cases, but it is not less real in common ones. From the bottom of the scale-from idiocy up to common stupidity, from utterly wicked and vicious children up to the passionate and perverse ones, the same influence of the progenitors is seen; the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.

Our limit will not allow us to enter largely into this important subject; there is one part of it, however, that we must touch upon. Putting aside all squeamishness, we address young wives and mothers, and earnestly recommend to their attention the laws which govern the production of the race; laws, the knowledge of which is more important to mankind and to individual happiness than knowledge of those which govern the planets.

You all know the general principles of physiology; you know how the condition of your own bodily health affects that of your future offspring. But it is not merely of bodily health and condition that we speak. You know the immense influence of the emotions and passions upon the whole physical system, and the mutual action and reaction between them, and can you suppose your unborn babe to be unaffected by any commotion within you?

While the warm tide of your own blood is filling every vein and vessel of its tiny frame, think you it matters not whether your heart be moved by the sweet spirit of love or the dark spirit of hate?

You know that sudden fears, and violent anger, have sometimes stricken dead the infant in the womb; or, what is worse, blighted the spirit in its bosom, and left but a growing body to come forth in time, and cumber the earth with a drivelling idiot. And if excess of emotion bring these awful consequences, must not a less degree of it have corresponding effects? We speak not to those who will not hear; to those poor