It seems strange that there should be so little consciousness of the dangers of over-education during youth, when there is so general a consciousness of the dangers of over-education during childhood.  Most parents are partially aware of the evil consequences that follow infant-precocity.  In every society may be heard reprobation of those who too early stimulate the minds of their little ones.  And the dread of this early stimulation is great in proportion as there is adequate knowledge of the effects:  witness the implied opinion of one of our most distinguished professors of physiology, who told us that he did not intend his little boy to learn any lessons until he was eight years old.  But while to all it is a familiar truth that a forced development of intelligence in childhood, entails either physical feebleness, or ultimate stupidity, or early death; it appears not to be perceived that throughout youth the same truth holds.  Yet it unquestionably does so.  There is a given order in which, and a given rate at which, the faculties unfold.  If the course of education conforms itself to that order and rate, well.  If not—­if the higher faculties are early taxed by presenting an order of knowledge more complex and abstract than can be readily assimilated; or if, by excess of culture, the intellect in general is developed to a degree beyond that which is natural to its age; the abnormal advantage gained will inevitably be accompanied by some equivalent, or more than equivalent, evil.

For Nature is a strict accountant; and if you demand of her in one direction more than she is prepared to lay out, she balances the account by making a deduction elsewhere.  If you will let her follow her own course, taking care to supply, in right quantities and kinds, the raw materials of bodily and mental growth required at each age, she will eventually produce an individual more or less evenly developed.  If, however, you insist on premature or undue growth of any one part, she will, with more or less protest, concede the point; but that she may do your extra work, she must leave some of her more important work undone.  Let it never be forgotten that the amount of vital energy which the body at any moment possesses, is limited; and that, being limited, it is impossible to get from it more than a fixed quantity of results.  In a child or youth the demands upon this vital energy are various and urgent.  As before pointed out, the waste consequent on the day’s bodily exercise has to be met; the wear of brain entailed by the day’s study has to be made good; a certain additional growth of body has to be provided for; and also a certain additional growth of brain:  to which must be added the amount of energy absorbed in digesting the large quantity of food required for meeting these many demands.  Now, that to divert an excess of energy into any one of these channels is to abstract it from the others, is both manifest a priori, and proved a posteriori, by the experience