364 THE GROWTH OF THE BRAIN. 



easier. The physiological hindrance to increase of 

 function seems to He in the difficulty of effecting a 

 recognition by the nervous system of the stimuli that 

 act upon it. The world about us is not so different for 

 those in the same community, yet how unlike are the re- 

 sponses ! Further, when an individual more perfectly 

 constituted has been penetrated by some new sensation, 

 how efficient such a one becomes in awakening in his 

 neighbours similar responses, and thus putting into the 

 .possession of the community at large that which was 

 previously the experience of one alone ! 



Herein lies the significance of those members of 

 society who deviate from the average of their fellows : 

 these deviations are in all directions, conservative and 

 destructive, and while not both have an equal chance 

 of perpetuity, they both have great power to modify 

 communal life. 



To-day, as in the past, it is permitted to a member of 

 the great majority to grasp only a fragment of the 

 knowledge of his time, with a suggestion of its past 

 connections and something of its present bearing, and 

 to illumine this with so much of foresight as a parsi- 

 monious fate has meted out to him. To improve these 

 powers the effort must be made in that direction where 

 response is most ready, and so the formation of habit 

 and reduction of mental friction, by means of concen- 

 tration, must ever remain the chief objects of a formal 

 training. 



Wider knowledge makes us accessible to a larger 

 number of ideas, but it is a preparation for occasional 

 stimuli, rather than for the continuous difficulties, while 

 the manner of reaction, the control and method of per- 

 formance, are the means by which the welfare of a 

 community at large is most directly influenced through 

 educational endeavour. 



