period would be on finding in them no sign
that the learners were ever likely to be parents. "This must have been
the _curriculum_ for their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. "I
perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things; especially for
reading the books of extinct nations and of co-existing nations (from
which indeed it seems clear that these people had very little worth
reading in their own tongue); but I find no reference whatever to the
bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to omit
all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evidently then, this
was the school-course of one of their monastic orders."

Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on the treatment
of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and their moral welfare or
ruin; yet not one word of instruction on the treatment of offspring is
ever given to those who will by and by be parents? Is it not monstrous
that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of
unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy--joined with the suggestions of
ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers? If a
merchant commenced business without any knowledge of arithmetic and
book-keeping, we should exclaim at his folly, and look for disastrous
consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy, a man set up as a surgical
operator, we should wonder at his audacity and pity his patients. But
that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children,
without ever having given a thought to the principles--physical, moral,
or intellectual--which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at
the actors nor pity for their victims.

To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of thousand that
survive with feeble constitutions, and millions that grow up with
constitutions not so strong as they should be; and you will have some
idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of
the laws of life. Do but consider for a moment that the regimen to which
children are subject, is hourly telling upon them to their life-long
injury or benefit; and that there are twenty ways of going wrong to one
way of going right; and you will get some idea of the enormous mischief
that is almost everywhere inflicted by the thoughtless, haphazard system
in common use. Is it decided that a boy shall be clothed in some flimsy
short dress, and be allowed to go playing about with limbs reddened by
cold? The