life for the animal are not profoundly altered, if the environment is
natural or approximately natural, it is as a rule necessary to care
only for its physical needs, and we need not fear that the results
will be spoiled by the reaction of the mind upon the body. But with
the child it is different; airy nurseries, big gardens, visits to the
seaside, and every advantage that money can buy cannot achieve success
if the child's mind is not at rest, if his sleep is broken, if food is
habitually refused or vomited, or if to leave him alone in the nursery
for a moment is to evoke a fit of passionate crying.

The grown-up person comes eventually to be able to control this
tremendous organ, this brain, which is the predominant feature of his
race. In the child its functions are always unstable and liable to be
upset. Evidence of mental unrest or fatigue, which is only rarely met
with in grown persons and which then betokens serious disturbance of
the mind, is of comparatively common occurrence in little children.
Habit spasm, bed-wetting, sleep-walking, night terrors, and
convulsions are symptoms which are frequent enough in children, and
there is no need to be unduly alarmed at their occurrence. In adult
age they are found only among persons who must be considered as
neuropathic. To make the point clear, I have chosen examples from the
graver and more serious symptoms of nervous unrest. But it is equally
true that minor symptoms which in adults are universally recognised to
be dependent upon cerebral unrest or fatigue are of everyday
occurrence in childhood. Broken and disturbed sleep, absence of
appetite and persistent refusal of food, gastric pain and discomfort
after meals, nervous vomiting, morbid flushing and blushing, headache,
irritability and excessive emotional display, at whatever age they
occur, are indications of a mind that is not at rest. In children, as
in adults, they may be prominent although the physical surroundings of