THE WIDER VIEW. 36! 



ments in its environment, as represented by better 

 exercise and more generous nourishment. 



It is a fair question to ask, though one hardly possible 

 to answer, whether the best capacities of the best men 

 have increased within historic times. We should hope 

 that they had, and yet a demonstration is at present 

 impossible. But if this is so, and if these exercises 

 leave no structural modifications to the advantage of 

 the next generation, what then is gained by painful 

 study and mental gymnastics throughout a laborious 

 lifetime ? 



The statement in this form, however, begs the 

 question, for the enormous difficulty of measuring 

 differences of human faculty makes it quite impossible 

 for us to record slight changes, thus leaving the question 

 really in the balance. In forming an opinion, the fact 

 should not be lost from sight that education by rational 

 methods and applied on a large scale is a very modern 

 achievement. Results, too, may be attained quite aside 

 from increase in the number of the nerve cells or 

 marked alterations in their size. 



The individual stands related to the world of ideas 

 about him as a race previously isolated does to the 

 civilisation brought to it from without. In some cases 

 such a race may in a few years assume the culture of its 

 visitors, yet it can hardly be supposed that this is 

 accompanied by corresponding anatomical changes on 

 the part of the imitators. It is rather that they find in 

 their visitors a new stimulus, a variation in their 

 surrounding conditions able to excite latent powers 

 which are at that time prepared to be aroused. In the 

 same way the education of one generation forms a 

 more favourable environment for those in the next, and 

 so the efforts of those who precede return to the 

 advantage of those who follow. The possibility, how- 



