If heredity means so much, if, as would seem at the first glance, the child comes into the world with his character ready-made, what remains for the parents to do but to enable him to work out his own salvation without let or hindrance of their making, upon the lines of his individuality? The strong naturalism, shall we call it, of our day, inclines us to take this view of the objects and limitations of education; and without doubt it is a gospel; it is the truth; but it is not the whole truth. The child brings with him into the world, not character, but disposition. He has tendencies which may need only to be strengthened, or, again, to be diverted, or even repressed. His character--the efflorescence of the man wherein the fruit of his life is a-preparing--character is original disposition, modified, directed, expanded by education, by circumstances, later, by self-control and self-culture, above all, by the supreme agency of the Holy Ghost, even where that agency is little suspected, and as little solicited. How is this great work of character-making--the single effectual labour possible to human beings--to be carried on? We shall rest our inquiries on a physiological basis; the lowest, doubtless, but therefore the foundation of the rest. The first-floor chambers of the psychologist are pleasant places, but who would begin to build with the first floor? What would he rear it upon? Surely the arbitrary distinction between the grey matter of the brain and the “mind” (or thoughts or feelings) which plays upon it, even as the song upon the vocal chords of the singer, is more truly materialistic than is the recognition of the pregnant truth that the brain is the mere organ of the spiritual part, registering and effecting every movement of thought and feeling, whether conscious or unconscious, by appreciable molecular movement, and sustaining the infinite activities of mind by corresponding enormous activity and enormous waste; that it is the organ of mind, which, under present conditions, is absolutely inseparable from, and indispensable to, the quickening spirit. Once we recognise that in the thinking of a thought there is as distinct motion set up in some tract of the brain as there is in the muscles of the hand employed in writing a sentence, we shall see that the behaviour of the grey nerve-substance of the cerebrum should afford the one possible key to certitude and system in our attempts at education, using the word in the most worthy sense--as its concern is the formation of character. Having heard Dr. Maudsley on the subject of heredity, let us hear him again on this other subject, which practically enables us to define the possibilities of education.