for-the-best claptrap about
adaptation, but a sure remedy is the strong tonic of agnosticism,
teaching one of the best lessons science has to offer, the resolute
rejection of authority.

Some take comfort in the hope that all subjects may be taught as
branches of science, but the fact that must permanently postpone
arrival at this educational Utopia is that a great proportion of
teachers are not and can never be made scientific. Nothing proceeding
from such persons will by the working of any schedule, regulation, or
even Order of the Board be ever made to bear any colourable
resemblance to science. Moreover as has already been indicated, there
are plenty of pupils also who will flourish and probably reach their
highest development taught by unscientific men, pupils whose minds
would be sterilised or starved by that very nourishment which to our
thinking is the more generous. Were we a homogeneous population one
diet for all might be justifiable, but as things are, we should offer
the greatest possible variety.

From Rousseau onwards educationists, deriving their views, I suppose,
from some metaphysical or theological conception of human equality,
speak continually of the "mind of the child" as if the young of our
species conformed to a single type. If the general spread of
biological knowledge serves merely to expose that foolish assumption
there would be progress to record. Dr Blakeslee[4], a well-known
American biologist, lately gave a good illustration of this. In a
paper on education he showed photographs of two varieties of maize.
The ripe fruits of both are colourless if their sheaths be unbroken.
The one, if exposed to the light before ripening, by rupture of its
sheath, turns red. The second, otherwise indistinguishable, acquires
no red colour though uncovered to the full sun. If these maizes were
two boys, not improbably the one would be caned for failing to respond
to treatment so efficacious in the case of the other. When we hear
that such a man has developed too exclusively one side of his nature,
with what propriety do we assume that he had any other side to
develop? Or when we say that such-and-such a course of study tends to
make boys too exclusively literary, or scientific, or what not, do we
not really mean that it provides too exclusively for those whose
aptitudes are of these respective kinds? Living in the midst of a
mongrel population we note the divers powers of our fellows and we
thoughtlessly