iscussed by about fifteen hundred delegates in a huge tent, and in the
presence of a crowd of nearly ten thousand spectators. I am afraid that
it is not unlikely that the London County Council may also despise the
quantitative method of reasoning on such questions, and may find
themselves in 1912 provided with a new hall admirably adapted to
illustrate the dignity of London and the genius of their architect, but
unfitted for any other purpose.

Nor is the essence of the quantitative method changed when the answer is
to be found, not in one, but in several 'unknown quantities.' Take, for
instance, the question as to the best types of elementary school to be
provided in London. If it were assumed that only one type of school was
to be provided, the problem would be stated in the same form as that of
the size of the Debating Hall. But it is possible in most London
districts to provide within easy walking distance of every child four or
five schools of different types, and the problem becomes that of so
choosing a limited number of types as to secure that the degree of
'misfit' between child and curriculum shall be as small as possible. If
we treat the general aptitude (or 'cleverness') of the children as
differing only by more or less, the problem becomes one of fitting the
types of school to a fairly exactly ascertainable polygon of
intellectual variation. It might appear then that the best results would
come from the provision, say, of five types of schools providing
respectively for the 2 per cent, of greatest natural cleverness, the
succeeding 10 per cent., the intermediate 76 per cent., the
comparatively sub-normal 10 per cent., and the 2 per cent, of 'mentally
deficient.' That is to say the local authority would have to provide in
that proportion Secondary, Higher Grade, Ordinary, Sub-Normal, and
Mentally Deficient schools.

A general improvement in nutrition and other home circumstances might
tend to 'steepen' the polygon of variation, i.e. to bring more children
near the normal, or it might increase the number of children with
exceptional inherited cleverness who were able to reveal that fact, and
so 'flatten' it; and either case might make a change desirable in the
best proportion between the types of schools or even in the number of
the types.

It would be more difficult to induce a committee of politicians to agree
on the plotting of curves, representing the social advantage to be
obtained by the successive i