blished
principles of education are absolutely false. These principles will
never be questioned. It is good enough for the average man that his
fellow-creatures have been contented with them since time immemorial,
and that they are diligently practised in the schools and colleges whose
names have been household words for generations past.

Next to this antiquated conservatism of the least intelligent and most
dispiriting type, comes the false shame that the majority of people
exhibit when caught displaying ignorance of any of the facts which
cramming systems have pronounced to be indispensable to a general
education. Probably more real culture is nipped in the bud by the
ridiculous assumption that everybody must be a walking encyclopaedia,
than by all the Philistine conventions and stupidities put together.

In the course of a recent conversation with an exceptionally brilliant
woman of my acquaintance, it transpired that she believed Winchester and
Cambridge to be in the same county. This lack of geographical knowledge
did not appear, however, to have impaired her intellectual faculties.
There are many persons who can accurately locate any town in England,
and yet are vastly inferior in mental capacity to the lady who thought
that Cambridge was in Hampshire.

Why should an individual know more than it is useful and convenient for
him to know? For the student of foreign politics it is essential to be
aware of the geographical difference between Tokio and Peking; but of
what earthly use would this knowledge be to a man who devoted the whole
of his life to inquiring into the domestic routine of the extinct dodo,
or to the improvement of agriculture by the application of scientific
manures?

Life is short, and it is only possible within the limits of the brief
span allotted to us upon earth to acquire a certain number of facts. It
is monstrously absurd to sacrifice our best years in stuffing so many
facts into the brain, in order to avoid being laughed at by a few
thin-minded pedants as an ignoramus. Some consolation, at least, might
surely be derived from the reflection that many of the greatest geniuses
whom the world has produced were profoundly ignorant as to ninety per
cent. of the things which are considered to be indispensable knowledge
at the present day.

Nobody can hope to read all the books that are popularly supposed to
have been digested by the well-educated man. It would be impossible to
get through a t