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3. We need also the comparative physiology of different social positions. As a rule, the daughters of the wealthy in America, who are sent to private schools, or taught by governesses, are far less severely taxed, as to their brains, than the daughters of the middle classes, who go to the public schools. Is Dr. Clarke prepared to show that those of the former class are decidedly more healthy? If so, this is another point that would have a direct bearing on his argument. My own impression is that he would find it hard to prove this.

4. But there is still a fourth class of facts, only to be obtained by an extensive record of individual instances. Letting go all discriminations of locality, race, and social position, and looking only at individuals under similar conditions, is Dr. Clarke prepared to assert that, as a rule, it is the hardest students in the school who become invalids? He would say, on a priori grounds, that it must be so. But do facts show it? Looking over families and schools that I have known, I certainly cannot say that the young girls who have lost their health were the most studious, -- quite as often the contrary. I have asked teachers of wide experience, "Have you observed that your best scholars have furnished the larger propor tion of invalids? "and they have always said "No." Yet who that knows the affection with which teachers are apt to follow the later career of their pupils will deny that this evidence has much value. Here is a fourth class of facts which have a direct bearing upon the subject, and the ignoring of which weakens the value of our author's statements.

5. I am struck with the farther point, that Dr. Clarke seems to have entered on his inquiry in the spirit of an advocate, not of a judge, and to have taken absolutely no account of the physiological benefits of education for women. There certainly are many instances -- all teachers have known them of great benefit to health, in case of girls, under the stimulus given by study. Either Dr. Clarke knows such instances, or he does not. If 'he knows them, he is bound to state them in such an argument; and, if possible, to arrange and tabulate them, in order to set them against the instances on the other side. If he does not know them, it simply shows that, while the facts of disease impress the physician, the facts of health may elude him. This beneficial influence has been well analyzed by a woman of great sense and judgment, herself a college graduate, Miss Mary E. Beedy, now residing in London. I have lately had the pleasure of reading an essay of hers, about to appear in "Scribner's Monthly," on "The Health of English and American Women." In this she incidentally gives reasons why the health of studious girls is often better than that of any others, -- because their minds are happily occupied, -- because they are thus kept from social excesses, far more prejudicial than study, -- because their mental training improves their judgment and self-control, -- and because they are less reckless about their health in proportion as they have an object to gain. I quote these points from memory. Coming from a graduate of Antioch College, they are surely entitled to consideration; and yet all the thought and observation of Dr. Clarke had not suggested one of these points to his mind. If he had thought of them, he would surely have mentioned them; for they were essential to the justice of his statement.

It seems to me fair to point out, also, the insufficient way in which Dr. Clarke presents his authorities, when he goes outside of his own observations. The single statement which I have seen cited from his book, by the newspapers, twice as often as all others put together, is his citation of the opinion of "a philanthropist and an intelligent observer," that "the coeducation of the sexes is intellectually a success, physically a failure." Yet Dr. Clarke does not give the name of this informant, nor any thing but the vaguest hint as to the extent or value of his observations. The gentleman to whom the remark has been, I fired, popularly attributed, Rev. C. H. Brigham, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, expressly disclaims it in a private letter to me, and he has recently published a statement looking quite the other way. Dr. Clarke also states that "another gentleman, more closely connected with a similar institution of education than the person just referred to, has arrived at a similar conclusion." (p. 144.) I must say, with due deference to Dr. Clarke, that this does not seem to me a scientific way of adducing evidence. During the hurry and excitement of the first days of our civil war, it was considered worth while to telegraph all over the country the opinions of "a reliable gentleman "or the statements of "an intelligent contraband "but we do not find such authorities gravely cited in the official reports of the "Surgical Results of the War."

It seems to me, therefore, that Dr. Clarke, by no means comes up td the recognized standard of science either in the quantity or the quality of the facts on which he bases his argument. But, granting his premises sufficient, is his conclusion just?