humble when compared with the pride of ignorance.”  If any one would learn how little faith is to be placed in human judgments, and how much in the pre-established arrangements of things, let him compare the rashness of the inexperienced physician with the caution of the most advanced; or let him dip into Sir John Forbes’s work, On Nature and Art in the Cure of Disease; and he will see that, in proportion as men gain knowledge of the laws of life, they come to have less confidence in themselves, and more in Nature.

Turning from the question of quantity of food to that of quality, we may discern the same ascetic tendency.  Not simply a restricted diet, but a comparatively low diet, is thought proper for children.  The current opinion is, that they should have but little animal food.  Among the less wealthy classes, economy seems to have dictated this opinion—­the wish has been father to the thought.  Parents not affording to buy much meat, answer the petitions of juveniles with—­“Meat is not good for little boys and girls;” and this, at first probably nothing but a convenient excuse, has by repetition grown into an article of faith.  While the classes with whom cost is no consideration, have been swayed partly by the example of the majority, partly by the influence of nurses drawn from the lower classes, and in some measure by the reaction against past animalism.

If, however, we inquire for the basis of this opinion, we find little or none.  It is a dogma repeated and received without proof, like that which, for thousands of years, insisted on swaddling-clothes.  Very probably for the infant’s stomach, not yet endowed with much muscular power, meat, which requires considerable trituration before it can be made into chyme, is an unfit aliment.  But this objection does not tell against animal food from which the fibrous part has been extracted; nor does it apply when, after the lapse of two or three years, considerable muscular vigour has been acquired.  And while the evidence in support of this dogma, partially valid in the case of very young children, is not valid in the case of older children, who are, nevertheless, ordinarily treated in conformity with it, the adverse evidence is abundant and conclusive.  The verdict of science is exactly opposite to the popular opinion.  We have put the question to two of our leading physicians, and to several of the most distinguished physiologists, and they uniformly agree in the conclusion, that children should have a diet not less nutritive, but, if anything, more nutritive than that of adults.

The grounds for this conclusion are obvious, and the reasoning simple.  It needs but to compare the vital processes of a man with those of a boy, to see that the demand for sustenance is relatively greater in the boy than in the man.  What are the ends for which a man requires food?  Each day his body undergoes more or less wear—­wear through muscular exertion, wear of the nervous system through