hat condition in which the moral system rather
than the mental power is chiefly disordered.

Idiocy is unquestionably of much more frequent occurrence in childhood,
than any of those forms of mental or moral disorder of which I have been
speaking hitherto. The term idiocy, however, is a very wide one,
including conditions differing remarkably from each other both in kind
and degree, while not seldom it is misapplied to cases in which there is
mere backwardness of intellectual power.

=Backward Children.=--_Enfants arrieres_--as the French call
them--constitute a class by no means seldom met with. They generally
attain their bodily development slowly, and the development of their
mind is equally tardy. They cut their teeth late, walk late, talk late,
are slow in learning to wash and dress themselves, are generally dull in
their perceptions, and do not lay aside the habits of infancy till far
advanced in childhood. When the time comes for positive instruction,
their slowness almost wears out everyone's patience; and among the poor
indeed the attempt at teaching such children is at length given up in
despair, and growing up in absolute ignorance, it is no wonder that they
should be regarded as idiots. Still, dull as such children are, there is
between them and the idiot an essential difference. The backward child,
unlike the idiot, does not remain stationary; his development goes on,
but more slowly than that of other children, he is behind them in the
whole course of their progress, and his delay increasing every day,
places at length an enormous distance between him and them--a distance
which in fact becomes insurmountable.

In some of its minor degrees even, this backwardness not infrequently
excites the solicitude of parents. It is sometimes observed in children
who had been ill-nourished in infancy or who had been weakened by some
serious or protracted illness, even though unattended by any special
affection of the brain; but it is also met with independent of any
special cause. The distinction, however, between such a case and one of
idiocy is this, that though at four years old the child may not seem to
be intellectually superior to most children at two, yet in manners,
habits, and intelligence it does agree with what might be expected from
the child at two; less bright perhaps, less joyous, but still
presenting nothing which if it were but younger would awaken
apprehension.

It is well in all cases of unusual b