t is true that
individuals differ widely as to the capabilities of their mental
machinery; but it does not follow that the intellectual fibre of one
person is more delicate than that of another.

The difference is not mental, but physical. It is because a boy is
healthy, and not because his intellectual fibre is coarse, that he is
better able to withstand the strain of an educational training than a
weaker and more nervous boy.

Until the discovery is made that all minds are sensitive, when they have
been actually reached, people will go on ignorantly destroying the
finer faculties under the impression that genius or talent is a very
rare thing, and can always shift for itself.

Yet, as I have attempted to show, the evidence of history points
conclusively to the fact that the contrary is the case.

Is it really supposed that the great names that have been handed down to
posterity represent all the genius to which the world has given birth?

The idea is preposterous.

For every man of genius or talent who has been permitted to survive,
education systems have killed a hundred.

If it had not been for Dr. Rothmann, there would probably have been no
Linnaeus to revolutionize the system of botanical classification. Had
tyrannical parents and schoolmasters compelled Watt and Newton to give
up mechanics and scientific study for a thorough cramming in Latin
grammar and Greek roots, we might to-day be without a steam-engine or a
theory of the law of gravitation. Even the genius of Napoleon and
Wellington might easily have been crushed under the auspices of a modern
competitive examination.

Would stupid Oliver Goldsmith have written his immortal 'Vicar of
Wakefield' and 'She Stoops to Conquer,' or would idle Sheridan have
penned the exquisite comedies that have not to this day been approached
by any subsequent writer, if their idleness and stupidity had been
submitted to the test of an enforced academic training for classical or
mathematical honours?

Surely the evidence of history points to only one conclusion--namely,
that all the genius in the world cannot survive the hopeless imbecility
of educational methods, except by successfully dodging them through
stupidity and idleness, whilst the faculties develop themselves at
stolen intervals.

CHAPTER XIII

THE APOTHEOSIS OF CRAM

We have reached a point at which it is advisable to take a broad survey
of the direction in which education systems are hurrying