Los Angeles daily herald., 1873-11-08
yus An9el~ Aerald.
MENTAL DjETETlCS.
A Lecture Delivered Thursday Ewnfag, No.
vember 6, 1873, before the Teachers As.
SOCiati0n.

The mind grows by what it feeds up
on. The abundance or poverty of nu-
triton in the mental food, man as
similates, builds up, or dwarfs his in
tellectual stature. The differences
among mankind, are the results of the
differences in the nOurishment on
which their minds feed. All civiliza-
ton is an illustration of what can be
accomplished by feeding the human
mind. All barbaric and savage life
is an illustration of mental and moral
starvation. Education is process of
man tanning by means of careful and
nutritious mental feeding. There is a
little Of the original savage left in
every one of us. Successive ages of
mental and moral accretions have
covered this primitive barbarism with
cOncentric layers of civilization
and it is only when some
the crust of culture and refine
ment, that this smoldering saw
age comes to the surface.
Let the integuments of conventional,
artificial, and acquired gentleness, be
thrown off and we stand revealed as
savage, and as rude as the veriest pir-
ate among our Saxon ancestors, who
hurtled down against the white shore
of Britain 1900 years ago. The re-
finement, the amenities, the benevO-
lence, the purities of civilized life, are
accretions grown by q generous sys-
tenn of mental and moral dietetics-
cut off from all intellectual aliment,
and the eliminated product Of ages of
civilization would be starved into the
deepest barbarism, in a single genera
alton. Do you doubt my propositions?
Take him in his infancy, the off
spring of the bluest blood, of Puritan
or Cavalier, nurture him from child
hood to manhood, amid the savagery
of an Indian camp-and when he takes
the war-path he will swing the tOma-
hawk, or fly the scalping knife amid
the auburn locks of his Caucasian
brother, with as keen a gustO as the
tawniest son of an abOriginee, to the
forest born. s
Retrogression is simple-progressiOn
compile. From civilization to harbar-
ism is down grade. From barbar-
ism to civilization steep and diff
cult ascent. Do these assertions SAVIOR
of the barbarian? Possibly they do.
The latent savage within me at times
aWakes and takes qualification in
tomahawking old beliefs, and glOats
with wild ferocity over the scalp
lock of slaughtered myth. But for
all that, this is not to be the war
whoop of my savage, but instead, q
plaintive plea for suffering humanity.
1t is not of the 5000 women of BOs-
ton, starving over the needle; it is
~ hnf
unsavory dens in New York; it is not
of the famine stricken or the hunger
pressed of any land, that / write; l in
tend no learned discussion on the de-
creasing ratio of supply to demand; |
enter upon no dreary Malthusian cal
culations of how many units of poor
humanity must perish that the tens
may live. 1t is mental hunger not
bodily shall discourse. l shall try to
the best of my ability to answer that
homely question, with what shall we
feed them, the teachers, the caterers,
the purveyOrs to the mental wants OF
the thousands Of school boys and school
girls who look up to us for their daily
dole of intellectual food, with that we
shall feed these hungry little minds.
And how shall we the Soyers and
Professor BlOts of the cuisine of in
Vulnerable scholastic Kitchens, pre-
pare that food SO as to make it
most palatable, and at the same time
most nutritious, and most conducive to
their mental growth. All! how often
have our hearts sunk within us as we
have looked upon the scanty store in
our mental larders, and how sincerely
have we wished at such times that
some miraculous power might be Civ
Ell us to make our five lOaves, and two
little fishes to feed the multitude. With
what shall we feed them? Where is the
teacher whose conception of his work
rises above the per diem of his pay,
who has not asked himself the ques-
tiOn in some form or other.
For five days in the week through
ten months in the year we make our
scanty bills of fare. For five days in
the week through ten months in the
year we dish out little dOles of arith-
metic, grammar and geography. We
sweeten them with fiattery or spice
them with reproof, and alack! that it
must be so; sometimes hasten degluti-
ton by the aid of the birch, and II the
juvenile bOarders in our scholastic
dining hall do not grow mentally fat
upon such regimen, surely the fault
lies:nOt in the cuisine nor in the cook.
If the latent savage i'm their natures
does sometimes break through the
thin accretions grown by such lusty
feeding, and yells against your methods
of tanning, subjugate him with a
rule of syntax or crush him down with
formula of arithmetic. And here a
perverse fancy seizes newly would
it not be good plan to settle the In
dian questiOn--nOw that the Quaker
policy of Meeiny and thOuing the noble
red men into behavior has failed, to
let the schOOlmaster have tilt at him
with the rules of syntaX, and the
theory of inverting the divisor But
to return Ito our question, with what
kind of food shall we teachers, feed
the minds of the rising generation.
With that mental food which will
promote the healthiest growth, NOR
ally and intellectually, that will give
the thoughts intellectual fiber--that
will insure the brOadest develop
ment; that will unfold their indivual-
tiles to the full; that will prepare
them to live the life before them not in
the mere material sense, but In the
widest sense, the fullest and noblest.
DO our existing systems OF culture
and education give this? Only to
limited extent. Passing by oui
common schools, in which the intel
lectual food the ugh not as good as 1t
might be, is ls,perior to that OF the
more pretepE'ps carayansaries OF