The poor idiot (the word being derived from the Greek ιδιοτης[4]) is alone in the world; isolated as it were from the rest of nature, he sees but does not perceive, he hears but does not understand or appreciate; the organs of sight and hearing may be perfect and yet useless; the impressions formed upon the optic and auditory nerves are duly transmitted to the sensorium, but no idea is there excited; he cares for nothing, and is alike indifferent to the grandeur as to the beauties of Nature; he stands unmoved at the thunder clap, the foam of the rushing cataract, or the roar of the mighty ocean; he heeds not the hum of the insect world or the song of the early lark, that winged chorister of the air; the star-bejewelled canopy of heaven, the mountain landscape lighted up with all the purple splendour of the setting sun, all these are nothing to him--he is a soul shut up in imperfect organs. FOOTNOTES: [1] See an interesting article on Idiocy, by Dr. Langdon Down, "Quain's Dictionary of Medicine." Vol. I., p. 926. [2] "Idiocy and Imbecility," by W.W. Ireland, M.D. P. 36. [3] I am glad to find that this question of the depletion of our workhouses is engaging the attention of Boards of Guardians, as shown by a meeting lately held in Norwich, to consider the propriety of reducing the number of workhouses in the district. At this conference, which was attended by delegates from various unions, Mr. Bartle H.T. Frere stated that the Aylsham workhouse, originally built for 619 persons, had never had more than 117 inmates during the past eleven years; and that in other unions, not more than a quarter of the actual workhouse accommodation was utilized, although a complete staff of officials was kept in each union. Mr. Frere pointed out the folly of keeping up such elaborate machinery, for such totally inadequate results, and that an enormous saving would be effected by the amalgamation of two or more unions for the purpose of housing their pauper population. [4] This term is applied by the Greek writers to a person unpractised or unskilled in anything--one who has no professional knowledge, whether of politics or any other subject, and it seems to have corresponded with our word layman; thus, Thucydides, in describing the plague that broke out at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, in speaking of a physician and a layman, uses the phrase ιατρος καἱ ἱσιωτης; Plato also uses the word in the same sense (Legg. 933 D), and the same author, in contrasting a poet with a prose-writer, uses the phrase, "εν μéτρω ὡς ποιητης, ἡ ἁνευ μéτρου ὡς ιδιωτης" (Phaedr. 258 D). I doubt very much the appropriateness of the word idiot as applied to these unfortunate creatures, and I think the American term of Feeble-minded more correctly represents their condition. CAUSES OF IDIOCY.