EARLY YOUTH 35 



our tortured children learn only half what they do, 

 but learn it better, and the next generation will be 

 twice as sound as the present one in body and soul. 

 The reform of education, which, we trust, will be 

 brought about by introducing the idea of evolution, 

 must apply to the mathematical and scientific, as 

 well as the philological and historical sections, 

 because there is the same fault in them all, that 

 far too much material is injected, and far too little 

 attention is paid to its digestion." Seventeen 

 years later again, in the Riddle of the Universe, the 

 elementary schools are severely handled. Science 

 is still the Cinderella of the code. Our teachers 

 regard it as their chief duty to impart " the dead 

 knowledge that has come down from the schools of 

 the Middle Ages. They give the first place to their 

 grammatical gymnastics, and waste time in im- 

 parting a c thorough knowledge ' of the classical 

 tongues and foreign history." There is no question 

 of cosmology, anthropology, or biology ; instead of 

 these " the memory is loaded with a mass of philo- 

 logical and historical facts that are quite useless 

 either from the theoretical or the practical point 

 of view." In these expressions, which recur con- 

 stantly throughout the whole of a thoughtful life, 

 we can clearly see a very intense general experience 

 of youth, and this is a more valuable document 

 than any individualised complaint against this or 

 that bad teacher in particular. 



However, Haeckel (who, in point of fact, took 

 everything seriously and would have all in the 

 clearest order) made a very thorough appropriation 



