em to go on in sin unrebuked, until they become a burden
to themselves? who should wait until his counsels were solicited before
he sounds the note of alarm, and points the guilty sinner to "the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world?" and who should confine
his labors almost entirely to _condemned criminals_? Such conduct on the
part of clergymen would doubtless be regarded by these very persons as
passing strange! The course commonly pursued in the employment of
physicians is equally unphilosophical, and floods society with a legion
of evils--physical and intellectual, social and moral--three fourths of
which might be avoided, by the proper exercise of the medical
profession, in _one generation_; and ultimately, nineteen twentieths, if
not ninety-nine one hundredths of them. As I have already said, this
instruction would come, perhaps, most appropriately from the members of
the medical profession. But if these things are not taught elsewhere, I
repeat it, they should be taught--the elements of them at least--in our
primary schools.

I can not better enforce the importance of physical education than by
quoting from a lecture "on the education of the blind," by one of the
most distinguished practical educators[2] in this country. "That the
proportion of the blind to the whole population might be diminished by
wise social regulations, and by the dissemination of knowledge of the
organic laws of man, there is not a doubt; but whether the time has
come, or ever will come, is another question. At any rate, to so
enlightened a body[3] as I have the honor of addressing, suggestions of
methods by which the extent of blindness may be limited will neither be
misapplied, nor liable to offend a mawkish sensibility. That the
blindness of a large proportion of society is a social evil will not be
denied, nor will the right which society has to diminish that proportion
be questioned. But how? in a very simple way; by preventing the
transmission of an hereditary blindness to another generation; by
preventing the marriage of those who are congenitally blind, or who have
lost their sight by reason of hereditary weakness of the visual organs,
which disqualifies them to resist the slightest inflammation or injury
in childhood.

[2] Dr. Samuel G. Howe, director of the New England Institution for the
Education of the Blind, 1836.

[3] The American Institute of Instruction.

"I am aware that many people would condem