the same organic
laws as inferior creatures. No anatomist, no physiologist, no chemist,
will for a moment hesitate to assert, that the general principles which
are true of the vital processes in animals are equally true of the vital
processes in man. And a candid admission of this fact is not without its
reward: namely, that the generalisations established by observation and
experiment on brutes, become available for human guidance. Rudimentary
as is the Science of Life, it has already attained to certain
fundamental principles underlying the development of all organisms, the
human included. That which has now to be done, and that which we shall
endeavour in some measure to do, is to trace the bearings of these
fundamental principles on the physical training of childhood and youth.

* * * * *

The rhythmical tendency which is traceable in all departments of social
life--which is illustrated in the access of despotism after revolution,
or, among ourselves, in the alternation of reforming epochs and
conservative epochs--which, after a dissolute age, brings an age of
asceticism, and conversely,--which, in commerce, produces the recurring
inflations and panics--which carries the devotees of fashion from one
absurd extreme to the opposite one;--this rhythmical tendency affects
also our table-habits, and by implication, the dietary of the young.
After a period distinguished by hard drinking and hard eating, has come
a period of comparative sobriety, which, in teetotalism and
vegetarianism, exhibits extreme forms of protest against the riotous
living of the past. And along with this change in the regimen of adults,
has come a parallel change in the regimen for boys and girls. In past
generations the belief was, that the more a child could be induced to
eat, the better; and even now, among farmers and in remote districts,
where traditional ideas most linger, parents may be found who tempt
their children into repletion. But among the educated classes, who
chiefly display this reaction towards abstemiousness, there may be seen
a decided leaning to the under-feeding, rather than the over-feeding, of
children. Indeed their disgust for by-gone animalism, is more clearly
shown in the treatment of their offspring than in the treatment of
themselves; for while their disguised asceticism is, in so far as their
personal conduct is concerned, kept in check by their appetites, it has
full play in legislatin