rative that measures should be taken to preserve the Anglo-Saxon
race.

The thing to avoid at this moment is imitation of tactics that will send
every nation adopting them backward in evolution. To secure a temporary
commercial triumph at the enormous sacrifice of the natural development
of the individual, would be a fatal and short-sighted policy that could
only end in national ruin. We have not yet reached the worst depths of
the education fallacy, but we are complacently drifting in that
direction.

State interference in educational matters may be an excellent thing when
the whole energies of the central authorities happen to be exerted in
mitigation of the evils of the national system. But it must be borne in
mind that political parties and the heads of departments are constantly
changing in this country. The reformer of to-day may to-morrow be
superseded by a retrogressive-minded mediocrity; and there would be no
guarantee that the beneficial influence of the one would not be
annihilated afterwards by the pernicious intermeddling of the other.

Instead of casting about for means of securing a State monopoly of the
ruinous type of education supplied by our schools and colleges, it would
be more conducive to the salvation of the country if the whole energies
of the nation were directed towards revolutionizing the system of
instruction itself.

If schoolmasters can accomplish nothing better than the manufacture of
set types of humanity, the progress of mankind would be promoted more
rapidly without their assistance.

What is, after all, the main object of education?

It is to assist everybody to develop his faculties and talents, so that
he may be fitted for the position in life which Nature intended him to
occupy.

Nobody can assert for an instant that the conventional methods of
instructing youth either achieve, or even appear to aim at achieving,
this end. The school does not pretend to discover or to encourage
individual talents. It offers to pound so much Latin grammar,
mathematics, history, geography, etc., into each pupil, and to turn him
out at the end of the process with exactly the same mental equipment as
that acquired by the rest of his school-fellows.

The principal aim of this book has been to draw attention to the
incongruities and evils brought about by this sham and worthless system
of education. That the world contains many illustrious examples of
culture and genius is no proof that the sli