any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever? If
not--if the process is, with one exception, more complex than any in
Nature, and the task of ministering to it one of surpassing difficulty;
is it not madness to make no provision for such a task? Better sacrifice
accomplishments than omit this all-essential instruction. When a father,
acting on false dogmas adopted without examination, has alienated his
sons, driven them into rebellion by his harsh treatment, ruined them,
and made himself miserable; he might reflect that the study of Ethology
would have been worth pursuing, even at the cost of knowing nothing
about AEschylus. When a mother is mourning over a first-born that has
sunk under the sequelae of scarlet-fever--when perhaps a candid medical
man has confirmed her suspicion that her child would have recovered had
not its system been enfeebled by over-study--when she is prostrate under
the pangs of combined grief and remorse; it is but a small consolation
that she can read Dante in the original.

Thus we see that for regulating the third great division of human
activities, a knowledge of the laws of life is the one thing needful.
Some acquaintance with the first principles of physiology and the
elementary truths of psychology, is indispensable for the right bringing
up of children. We doubt not that many will read this assertion with a
smile. That parents in general should be expected to acquire a knowledge
of subjects so abstruse will seem to them an absurdity. And if we
proposed that an exhaustive knowledge of these subjects should be
obtained by all fathers and mothers, the absurdity would indeed be
glaring enough. But we do not. General principles only, accompanied by
such illustrations as may be needed to make them understood, would
suffice. And these might be readily taught--if not rationally, then
dogmatically. Be this as it may, however, here are the indisputable
facts:--that the development of children in mind and body follows
certain laws; that unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by
parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree
conformed to, there must result serious physical and mental defects; and
that only when they are completely conformed to, can a perfect maturity
be reached. Judge, then, whether all who may one day be parents, should
not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are.

* * * * *

Fr