succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if those readers who have
interested themselves in the question will communicate to me at once
the result of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will make such
use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I will give my
own experience.

THE REPLIES

The correspondence which I have received in answer to my appeal shows
that at any rate I did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast
mass of reflecting people in this country, a clear consciousness of
being mentally less than efficient, and a strong (though ineffective)
desire that such mental inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is
stronger than I had imagined, but it does not seem to have led to
much hitherto. And that "course of treatment for the mind," by means
of which we are to "realize some of the ambitions which all of us
cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of the
magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums"--that
desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised by
anybody. The Sandow of the brain has not yet loomed up above the
horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy
that I personally am going to play the role of the Sandow of the
brain. Vain thought!

I have been very much interested in the letters, some of which, as a
statement of the matter in question, are admirable. It is perhaps not
surprising that the best of them come from women--for (genius apart)
woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for
the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the letters I have received,
however, is from a gentleman whose notion is that we should be
hypnotised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment
of "an institution of practical psychology from whence there can be
graduated fit and proper people whose efforts would be in the
direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even
the adult," this hypnotist proceeds: "Between the academician, whose
specialty is an inconsequential cobweb, the medical man who has got it
into his head that he is the logical foster-father for psychonomical
matters, and the blatant 'professor' who deals with monkey tricks on a
few somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go
unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development." Am
I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can
assure him that he is wron