Such is also the process which, still at the present day (1890),
in England and in America secures future ability in the various
professions. In the hospital, in the mine, in factories, with the
architect, with the lawyer, the pupil, taken very young, goes through
his apprenticeship and subsequent stages about the same as a clerk
with us in an office or an art-student in the studio. Preliminarily and
before entering it, he has attended some general seminary lecture which
serves him as a ready-made basis for the observations he is about to
make. Meanwhile, there are very often technical courses within reach,
which he may attend at his leisure in order to give shape to his daily
experiences as these happen to accumulate. Under a regime of this stamp
practical capacity grows and develops of itself, just to that degree
which the faculties of the pupil warrant, and in the direction which his
future aims require, through the special work to which he wishes for the
time being to adapt himself. In this way, in England and in the United
States, the young man soon succeeds in developing all he is good for.
From the age of twenty-five and much sooner, if the substance and
bottom are not wanting, he is not only a useful subordinate, but again a
spontaneous creator, not merely a wheel but besides this a motor force.
In France, where the inverse process has prevailed and become more and
more Chinese at each generation, the total of the force lost is immense.

The most productive period of human life extends from fifteen or sixteen
up to twenty-five or twenty-six; here are seven or eight years of
growing energy and of constant production, buds, flowers and fruit;
during this period the young man sketches out his original ideas. But,
that these ideas may be born in him, sprout, and flourish they must,
at this age, profit by the stimulating or repressive influence of the
atmosphere in which they are to live later on; here only are they formed
in their natural and normal environment; their germs depend for their
growth on the innumerable impressions due to the young man's sensations,
daily, in the workshop, in the mine, in the court-room, in the studio,
on the scaffolding of a building, in the hospital, on seeing tools,
materials and operations, in talking with clients and workmen, in doing
work, good or bad, costly or remunerative; such are the minute and
special perceptions of the eyes and the ears, of touch and even smell
which, inv