Thus we find the facts to be such as might have been inferred a priori.  The training of children—­physical, moral, and intellectual—­is dreadfully defective.  And in great measure it is so because parents are devoid of that knowledge by which this training can alone be rightly guided.  What is to be expected when one of the most intricate of problems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought to the principles on which its solution depends?  For shoe-making or house-building, for the management of a ship or a locomotive engine, a long apprenticeship is needful.  Is it, then, that the unfolding of a human being in body and mind is so comparatively simple a process that any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever?  If not—­if the process is, with one exception, more complex than any in Nature, and the task of ministering to it one of surpassing difficulty; is it not madness to make no provision for such a task?  Better sacrifice accomplishments than omit this all-essential instruction.  When a father, acting on false dogmas adopted without examination, has alienated his sons, driven them into rebellion by his harsh treatment, ruined them, and made himself miserable; he might reflect that the study of Ethology would have been worth pursuing, even at the cost of knowing nothing about AEschylus.  When a mother is mourning over a first-born that has sunk under the sequelae of scarlet-fever—­when perhaps a candid medical man has confirmed her suspicion that her child would have recovered had not its system been enfeebled by over-study—­when she is prostrate under the pangs of combined grief and remorse; it is but a small consolation that she can read Dante in the original.

Thus we see that for regulating the third great division of human activities, a knowledge of the laws of life is the one thing needful.  Some acquaintance with the first principles of physiology and the elementary truths of psychology, is indispensable for the right bringing up of children.  We doubt not that many will read this assertion with a smile.  That parents in general should be expected to acquire a knowledge of subjects so abstruse will seem to them an absurdity.  And if we proposed that an exhaustive knowledge of these subjects should be obtained by all fathers and mothers, the absurdity would indeed be glaring enough.  But we do not.  General principles only, accompanied by such illustrations as may be needed to make them understood, would suffice.  And these might be readily taught—­if not rationally, then dogmatically.  Be this as it may, however, here are the indisputable facts:—­that the development of children in mind and body follows certain laws; that unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree conformed to, there must result serious physical and mental defects; and that only when they are completely conformed to, can a perfect maturity be reached.  Judge, then, whether all who may one day be parents, should not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are.