on_." (The italics are ours.)--Maudsley, _Body and Mind_, 2d
Edition, pp. 83, 84.

"The next step will be to desire our opponent to show how, in
reference to any of the pursuits or acts of citizens, the nature
of a woman differs from that of a man. That will be very fair;
and perhaps he will reply that to give an answer on the instant
is not easy--a little reflection is needed."--PLATO, REP., BOOK
V.

MENTAL EDUCATION,

or,

THE CULTURE OF THE INTELLECT.

"Now, as refusal to satisfy the cravings of the digestive faculty
is productive of suffering, so is the refusal to satisfy the
craving of any other faculty productive of suffering, to an
extent proportioned to the importance of that faculty. But, as
God wills man's happiness, that line of conduct which produces
unhappiness is contrary to his will."--FRANCIS BACON.

If one is to educate the body, she would be presumptuous in the extreme
if she made the attempt without first understanding in some measure its
anatomy and physiology. With as much reason, in approaching the subject
of mental education--that one third of education which with too many
persons stands for the whole--we must pause a moment for a few
reflections on the nature of mind and the necessary results thereof.
"_Mind is essentially self-activity_." In this, as we have been taught,
lies its essential difference from mere matter, whose most essential
property is inertia--_i.e._, absolute inability to move itself or to
stop itself.[16]

When, therefore, mind acts at all, it must act from within, and no
amount of information given will be of the slightest concern to it,
unless by its own activity the mind reach forth, draw it in, and
assimilate it to itself. This voluntary activity, directed towards any
subject, is Attention, and so great is the power of mind when in this
state, that it dissolves and draws in all food, no matter how abstruse,
that may present itself. Thus the problem of mental education, which had
seemed so complex, resolves itself very simply. We have first to educate
the attention of the child, so that she shall be able to use it at will,
and to turn it towards any object desired; and secondly, we simply have
to present to the aroused attention the knowledge which the past
centuries have created and accumulated, and to present this in such
quantity and in such order as the experience of the same centuries has