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Here the question naturally arises: When inert children are, year after year, provoked to vitality in all its modes from without within; when, by this slow process, they are progressively made to act, to feel, to speak, to will -- some a little, some more, some like ordinary men -- what part has the brain taken in this transfiguring revolution? It received the impressions, it acted on the spur of external stimuli, it remained for a variable time as passive as a muscle whose contraction shall depend upon the excitation to contractility either of a centripetal or of a centrifugal nerve. But, so far the encephalon did not give any evidence of spontaneity, its functional development took effect by continued impulsion from the periphery to the centre; a centripetal process, during which the cerebrum sent nothing to the outer world, but the outer world sent every thing to it from the peripheric feelers through the nerve-cords. This attitude does not look like the supreme autocracy assumed for the brain. The nervous system would seem rather like an informal republic, where the presiding officer is vested with great powers, which he exercises when he has learned what they are and when he can assume them, but mean time any one is at liberty to take the initiative who possesses the ability. Thence might be concluded that, at least practically, the centre of the nervous system, at any time, is at that point, be it where it may, in which its concentrated irritability produces its principal action.

This conclusion, deduced from the physiological training of idiots, corroborates the position taken by several recent anatomists and physiologists, whose discoveries and experiments tend to increase our estimation of the role played in the human organism by the pneumo-gastric and sympathetic systems and by the minor ganglia and peripheric nervous element, lowering to some extent the assumed omnipotence of the brain proper in the psychical domain. In this respect, as in several others, the treatment of idiots has proved that its fundamental doctrine lay deep in positive knowledge, and that, even in its infancy, it can be called to offer valuable and important testimony in questions relative to the progress of the correlation of sciences.

I began this paper as I entered the institutions for idiots, thinking only of their modes of improvement; but the philosophy of the subject has carried me far from the more particular description I had intended of the method adopted for the regeneration of these unfortunate creatures, the offspring of our sufferings or our excesses; let me, in closing, recur for a moment to these institutions.

I have endeavored to convey an idea of the differences which do and must exist between a public and a private school for idiots. Both have been opened for the same class of children, and treat them by the same method, applied in both by the choicest women. In this they are alike; in every thing else they differ. Let us see:

A. The State institution is but a school where idiots are received, if they can improve, and kept as long as they do improve.

B. In it, the physiological treatment is applied mostly to groups, the children, constantly in contact, being raised up from idiocy by the incessant action of the whole on each.

C. The sexes are completely separated in the dormitories and gymnasium -- not always at recess. They take together their meals, lessons, walks, musical exercises, dancing, and other evening entertainments.

On the other hand:

A. The private institution is a school for the young and improving idiot, and a life-long retreat for the hopeless cases.

B. In it, the physiological method is applied to a pupil by a teacher, who carries him (with exclusive regard for his individuality) from instinctive to intellectual operations, through personal imitation, etc.

C. The inmates live in separate buildings; boys and girls have their grounds, schools, teachers, matrons, attendants, etc., apart. Some even eat and are taught in their own rooms; the best of them only take their meals with the doctor's family, and enjoy evening games.

To sum up, it is difficult to understand, unless by sight, how the same thing can be done so well, and yet so differently, as it is at Syracuse and at Barre. It is a pleasure and a duty to bestow upon them both, in their present condition of efficiency, unreserved praise. Had it been my good fortune to visit the training schools for idiots in other States, I have no doubt that I should have found them equally worthy of commendation. Did space permit, I should have desired also to speak of the services rendered to the cause of the physiological training of idiots by organizers like Dr. Joseph Parrish and his accomplished wife; by teachers like Misses Young and Wood, who count at least sixteen years of active service in Syracuse; and by authors like Dr. L. P. Brockett, whose essays and cyclopaedic articles on idiocy have diffused more sympathy for idiots and more knowledge of the best modes of training them, throughout this country, than has been attempted in Europe.