uture when the
cumulative process should have accomplished its perfect work. Now,
however, we are told that this hope is vain, that acquired
characteristics are not transmitted by heredity, and that the old
folk-proverb "it is only three generations between shirtsleeves and
shirtsleeves," is perhaps more scientifically exact than the
evolutionary dictum of the nineteenth century. Which is what experience
and history have been teaching, lo, these many years.

The question then seems to divide itself into three parts; (a) are we
justified in pinning our faith in ultimate social salvation to free,
secular, and compulsory education carried to the furthest possible
limits; (b) if not, then what precisely is the function of formal
education; and (c) this being determined, is our present method
adequate, and if not how should it be modified?

It is unwise to speak dogmatically along any of these lines, they are
too blurred and uncertain. I can only express an individual opinion.

It seems to me that life unvaryingly testifies to the extreme disparity
of potential in individuals and in families and in racial strains,
though in the two latter the difference is not necessarily absolute and
permanent, but variable in point of both time and degree. In individuals
the limit of this potentiality is inherent, and it can neither be
completely inhibited by adverse education and environment nor measurably
extended by favourable education and environment. Characteristics
acquired _outside_ inherent limitations are personal and non-heritable,
however intimately they may have become a part of the individual
himself.

If this is true, then the question of education becomes personal also;
that is to say, we educate for the individual, and with an eye to the
part he himself is to play in society. We do not look for cumulative
results but in a sense deal with each personality in regard to itself
alone. I think this has a bearing both on the extent to which education
should be enforced and on the quality and method of education itself,
and though the contention will receive little but ridicule, I am bound
to say that I hold that _general_ education should be reduced in
quantity and considerably changed in nature.

If the limit of development is substantially determined in each
individual and cannot be extended by human agencies (I say "human"
because God in His wisdom and by His power can raise up a prophet or a
saint out of the lowest dep