BRAIN-POWER IN EDUCATION. 543 



strengthened. We may know what Caesar did under certain condi- 

 tions ; how Alfred the Great organized his police so that he could 

 hang bracelets of value on sign-posts without fearing that highwaymen 

 would steal them ; and a multitude of other similar facts may have 

 been stored in our minds ; but any quantity of such stores would not 

 enable an individual to solve the present Irish difficulty, unless he 

 could find in the past an exactly similar case which had been treated 

 successfully by some particular system. 



It is even now considered that by making a boy pass through a 

 long course of mathematics or classics, and then testing his acquired 

 knowledge by an examination, we adopt the best method of obtaining 

 the greatest brain-power. We may derive an advantage, supposing 

 mathematics or classics are requisite in the future career of the boy ; 

 but, as a test of brain-power and perseverance, we would much sooner 

 select the boy who could the most rapidly and most certainly solve a 

 three-move chess problem. And, if mathematics are not required in 

 the future career of a boy, it would be equally as unreasonable to de- 

 vote three years to the solution of chess problems as it is to devote a 

 like period to the solution of the higher branches of mathematics. In 

 both instances, the mental exercise is supposed to be for the purpose 

 of strengthening the mind, and the chess problems are certainly as 

 efficient as the mathematical. It is not unusual to find a profound 

 mathematician who is particularly dull in all other subjects, and who 

 fails to comprehend any simple truth which can not be presented to 

 him in a mathematical form ; and, as there are a multitude of truths 

 which can not be treated mathematically, a mere mathematician has 

 but a limited orbit. 



A chess-player, again, or a solver of chess problems, has always to 

 deal with pieces of a constant value ; thus, the knight, bishop, pawn, 

 etc., are of constant values, so that his combinations are not so very 

 varied. A whist-player, however, has in each hand not only cards 

 which vary in value according to what is trump, but, during the play 

 of the hand, the cards themselves vary in value ; thus, a ten may, 

 after one round of a suit, become the best card in that suit. Brain- 

 power independent of stored knowledge is therefore more called into 

 action by a game of whist than it is by mathematics, chess, or classics ; 

 consequently, while mathematicians and classical scholars may be 

 found in multitudes, a really first-class whist-player is a rarity ; and, 

 if we required an accurate test of relative brain-power, we should be 

 far more likely to obtain correct results by an examination in whist 

 than we should by an examination in mathematics. In the latter, 

 cramming might supply the place of intelligence ; in the former, no 

 amount of cramming could guard against one tenth of the conditions. 

 A first-rate mathematician may on other subjects be stupid ; a first- 

 class whist-player is rarely if ever stupid on original matters requiring 

 judgment. 



