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proved by statistical facts and universal opinion, that, as a premature use of the bodily powers enfeebles the system, leads to disease, and diminishes the expectation of life, so a premature use of the faculties of the mind interferes with the development of the physique, and lessens the probabilities of health, and diminishes the chances of length of days; to find, that, as to use unduly any of the motor organs is to diminish the power and capability of the motor system generally, so to use the intellectual faculties unduly is to abstract unfairly from the sentiments and propensities, and indirectly to interfere with the general balance of the mental capabilities, and derange so far their character and power,-that the faculties, sentiments, and propensities, must be severally and duly exercised, if the nature and powers of the mind are to be developed and elaborated as far as possible; to find, that, as health of body ministers to the degree of mental capability, to the soundness and character of the mind's powers, so the development of the mental powers by due exercise of the several endowments, promotes the healthiness of the physique, and increases the probable duration of the life.

In the instance of all animals, a longer or shorter time after the birth is needful, to mature the bodily powers, and enable them to endure their fullest amount of exertion. To call these powers into use prematurely, is always inexpedient, and often dangerous; is commonly attended with an impaired condition of the animal machine, which no subsequent

care may suffice to restore, which may greatly diminish the future powers of the animal, and may shorten the probable duration of its life in a material degree. These conditions are well known in the instance of horses. The horse, which is used early in life, hardly ever proves eventually strong, or capable of regular labour to the same degree, as it otherwise would have been; nor even capable of the same amount of occasional exertion. Even if early and incurable lameness should not result, or if the frequent recurrence of lameness should not greatly lessen the value and usefulness of the animal, it will be usually found, that the horse which has been set to work prematurely, has neither the capability of carrying the weight, drawing the load, nor bearing the same duration of exertion at one time, nor does its time of usefulness prove so long, as would have been otherwise probable. So much is this the case, that it is seldom wise to use a horse regularly, or to put it to laborious work, till five or even six years old, which may be said to be one half of the average age of useful capability in this country, and probably fully a third of the average time of useful capability of the horse in any country, or under any circumstances. This illustration is pertinent to the case of man. If a horse which attains its full maturity of growth at little more than three years of age, which has the use of its limbs almost as soon as it is foaled, and which by training can be brought to the racing ground at two years old or under, is found to suffer by having to undergo much or continued labour until two years or more

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after the growth of the animal is completed, how much farther may not the early exercise of the human physique, in continuous exertion, or sedentary occupation, be productive of injury, when the period of helpless infancy continues so long, and of feeble childhood so much longer, when the growth of the body continues through so many years, and the full maturity of the system is not arrived at before the twentieth or twenty-fifth year of life, according to circumstances.

The human system, during the years of infancy and early childhood, is feeble and fragile to the last degree: the bones are all largely wanting in the due proportion of earthy material for strength and resistance; the muscles are all flaccid; the tissues are all engaged in the two-fold duty of protection and elimination, not only so far as these are required to maintain the integrity of the constituent elements of the body, and secure the due discharge of the superfluities of a perfect and completed machine, but, besides these, are occupied in affording protection to an imperfect, a growing, a developing, and consequently highly vascular and mobile organism, and in removing the redundancies of so much more active an economy. The processes of circulation, respiration, and nutrition, are all engaged in the two-fold duties of maintaining the existing system, and ministering to its further growth and development; and the nervous powers, the condition and medium of all vital force, are, in the same proportion, occupied in ministering to the activity and due performance of

these great vegetative functions.

Yet these great

vegetative offices of the nervous system called vegetative, because the functions of circulation, respiration, nutrition, and growth, are common to plants as well as animals; even these functions, as every other manifestation of vital force, being directly ministered to by the nervous organism, and affording ground for inferential hypothesis that plants themselves may not be without so much of a nervous organisation yet these functions of the nervous system have to be performed by the most imperfect, the least complete, and the last matured part of the nervous organism; and may well be supposed to embrace a large proportion of its earlier capabilities. The degree of its powers, and the balance of its functions, are so easily expended and disturbed in the earlier periods of life, that the infancy is largely consumed in sleep; by which any derivation of vital force from the vegetative functions is obviated, and the due balance of its endowments is maintained. Slowly and gradually, the nervous organism becomes capable of more and more exercise, and the balance of its powers can be maintained during a longer and longer period; and the sleep is interrupted by longer intervals; and more and more of the higher endowments of the nervous system begin to be displayed. The motor powers, the organs of sense, the propensities, and the dawnings of the moral nature, and of the intellectual faculties, gradually but slowly, become apparent, acquire development, are more strongly manifested, and continue to become

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stronger and more matured, until the meridian of existence.

The vital forces of the animal system, however exercised and displayed, involve and require the use of so much of the nervous organism as corresponds to such display. Although the whole of the nervous organism may be assumed to be very imperfectly developed, and by so much less fitted for its general duties, at the time of birth, there is sufficient reason to believe, that, inasmuch as the organic nerves are necessarily more competent to their duties than the other parts of the nervous system, so the motor nerves may be developed the next to those in point of time, then the perceptive faculties, then the propensities, then the moral sense, and, finally, the reflecting and comparing faculties. It can hardly be necessary to add to this, that, although this may be the usual order of the successive commencing development of the different orders of nervous capability, their relative after-development varies considerably, under different circumstances. In fact, upon this showing, depends much of the principle, by which the results of moral and intellectual education may be explained.

There is an important inference to be drawn from the mutual relation of the different kinds of vital force, and their common dependence on the nervous organism, in its different parts, for their respective manifestation. As regards the mind, indeed, with all its mighty capacities, and instinctive hopes,-with all its grasp of time, and space, and size,—with all its creative powers, with all its keen appreciation of