n if the
mental development of the highest social stratum could be raised as
much above its normal level as the mental development of youthful
Utopia has been raised above the normal level of an English rural
village, would be incalculably great. But greater still--incalculably
greater--would be the gain to the nation if the rank and file of its
children could be led into the path of self-realisation, and therein
rise to the high level of brightness, intelligence, and
resourcefulness which has been reached in Utopia.

Nor is this dream so wildly impracticable as some might imagine. So
far as the natural capacity of the average child is concerned, there
is no bar to its realisation. Egeria has taught me that the mental
capacity of the average child, even in a rustic village belonging to
a county which is proverbial for the slow wits of its rustics, is
very great. It is sometimes said that of the children who have been
trained in our elementary schools, not one in twenty is fit to profit
by the education given in a secondary school: and if by this is
meant that in nineteen cases out of twenty the elementary scholar,
_educated as he has probably been_, is unlikely to profit by the
education given in a secondary school, _conducted as those schools
usually are_, I am not prepared to say offhand that the statement
is untrue. But if it means that the average mental capacity of the
children of our "lower orders" is hopelessly inferior to that of
the children of our middle and upper classes, I can say without
hesitation that it is a slander and a lie. Whether there is any
difference, in respect of innate mental capacity, between level
and level of our social scale, may be doubted; but the Utopian
experiment has proved to demonstration that in the lowest level of
all the innate mental capacity is so great that we cannot well expect
to find any considerable advance on it even in the highest level of
all.

But where, it will be asked, are we to find Egerias to man our
elementary schools? For the moment this problem does not admit of a
practical solution. But that need not discourage us. I admit that in
far too many of our schools the teachers, through no fault of their
own, are what I may call machine-made, and that they are engaged in
turning out machine-made scholars, some of whom in the fullness of
time will develop into machine-made teachers. But there is a way of
escape from this vicious circle,--the path of self-realisatio