=We trust blindly to Disciplinary Subjects.=—We trust perhaps a little blindly to the training which certain subjects give in certain mental habits. The classics, we consider, cultivate in one direction, the mathematics, in another, science, in a third. So they do, undoubtedly, so far as each of these subjects is concerned; but possibly not in forming the general habits of intellectual life which we expect to result. Remove the mathematician from his own field and he is not more exact or more on the spot than other men; indeed he is rather given to make a big hole for the cat and a little hole for the kitten! The humanities do not always make a man humane, that is, liberal, tolerant, gentle, and candid, as regards the opinions and status of other men. The fault does not lie in any one of these or in any other of the disciplinary subjects, but in our indolent habit of using each of these as a sort of mechanical contrivance for turning up the soil and sowing the seed. There is no reprieve for parents. It rests with them, even more than with the schoolmaster and his curriculum, to form those mental habits which shall give intellectual distinction to their children throughout their lives. =Some Intellectual Habits.=—I need not refer again to the genesis of a habit; but perhaps most of us set ourselves more definitely to form physical and moral than we do to form intellectual habits. I will only mention a few such, which should be matters of careful training during the period of childhood:—_Attention_, the power of turning the whole force of the mind upon the subject brought before it: _Concentration_, which differs from attention in that the mind is actively engaged on some given problem rather than passively receptive: _Thoroughness_, the habit of dissatisfaction with a slipshod, imperfect grasp of a subject, and of mental uneasiness until a satisfying measure of knowledge is obtained;—this habit is greatly encouraged by a reference to an encyclopædia, to clear up any doubtful point, when it turns up: _Intellectual Volition_, the power, that is, of making ourselves think of a given subject at a given time;—most of us know how trying our refractory minds are in this matter, but, if the child is accustomed to take pleasure in the effort as effort, the man will find it easy to make himself think of what he will: _Accuracy_, which is to be taught, not only through arithmetic, but through all the small statements, messages, and affairs of daily life: _Reflection_, the ruminating power which is so strongly developed in children and is somehow lost with much besides of the precious cargo they bring with them into the world. There is nothing sadder than the way we allow intellectual impressions to pass over the surface of our minds, without any effort to retain or assimilate.