refer to live with to-day, one must go very far to find a cultivated
man who has not violated himself in his knowledge, who has not given up
his last chance at distinction--his last chance to have his knowledge
fit him closely and express him and belong to him.

The time was, when knowledge was made to fit people like their clothes.
But now that we have come to the point where we pride ourselves on
educating people in rows and civilising them in the bulk, "If a man has
the privilege of being born by himself, of beginning his life by
himself, it is as much as he can expect," says the typical Board of
Education. The result is, so far as his being educated is concerned, the
average man looks back to his first birthday as his last chance of being
treated--as God made him,--a special creation by himself. "The Almighty
may deal with a man, when He makes him, as a special creation by
himself. He may manage to do it afterward. _We_ cannot," says The Board,
succinctly, drawing its salary; "It increases the tax rate."

The problem is dealt with simply enough. There is just so much cloth to
be had and just so many young and two-legged persons to be covered with
it--and that is the end of it. The growing child walks down the
years--turns every corner of life--with Vistas of Ready-Made Clothing
hanging before him, closing behind him. Unless he shall fit himself to
these clothes--he is given to understand--down the pitying, staring
world he shall go, naked, all his days, like a dream in the night.

It is a general principle that a nation's life can be said to be truly a
civilised life, in proportion as it is expressive, and in proportion as
all the persons in it, in the things they know and in the things they
do, are engaged in expressing what they are.

A generation may be said to stand forth in history, to be a great and
memorable generation in art and letters, in material and spiritual
creation, in proportion as the knowledge of that generation was fitted
to the people who wore it and the things they were doing in it, and the
things they were born to do.

If it were not contradicted by almost every attribute of what is being
called an age of special and general culture, it would seem to be the
first axiom of all culture that knowledge can only be made to be true
knowledge, by being made to fit people, and to express them as their
clothes fit them and express them.

But we do not want knowledge in our civilisation to fit peopl