Shall we, then, in our gymnasiums fill out the hours of study which stand at our disposal, or are still to be wrested from the classicists, with as great and as varied a quantity of mathematical and scientific matter as possible? Expect no such proposition from me. No one will suggest such a course who has himself been actively engaged in scientific thought. Thoughts can be awakened and fructified as a field is fructified by sunshine and rain. But thoughts cannot be juggled out and worried out by heaping up materials and the hours of instruction, nor by any sort of precepts: they must grow naturally of their own free accord. Furthermore, thoughts cannot be accumulated beyond a certain limit in a single head, any more than the produce of a field can be increased beyond certain limits. I believe that the amount of matter necessary for a useful education, such as should be offered to _all_ the pupils of a preparatory school, is very small. If I had the requisite influence, I should, in all composure, and fully convinced that I was doing what was best, first greatly curtail in the lower classes the amount of matter in both the classical and the scientific courses; I should cut down considerably the number of the school hours and the work done outside the school. I am not with many teachers of opinion that ten hours work a day for a child is not too much. I am convinced that the mature men who offer this advice so lightly are themselves unable to give their attention successfully for as long a time to any subject that is new to them, (for example, to elementary mathematics or physics,) and I would ask every one who thinks the contrary to make the experiment upon himself. Learning and teaching are not routine office-work that can be kept up mechanically for long periods. But even such work tires in the end. If our young men are not to enter the universities with blunted and impoverished minds, if they are not to leave in the preparatory schools their vital energy, which they should there gather, great changes must be made. Waiving the injurious effects of overwork upon the body, the consequences of it for the mind seem to me positively dreadful. I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of that sound powerful judgment which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles, and formulæ, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to produce confusion.