PHYSIOLOGICAL 271 



such facing, for most, is mainly of understanding and remembering, 

 with at first but little of serious sharing. But when that — in what 

 are still too few cases — once clearly begins, are not the waking 

 moments, the early hours, of most value ? Despite all the difficulties 

 which social life tends to impose, is there not much evidence for 

 this in the biographies of the past, and even among the productive 

 lives of our surely peculiarly difficult present ? Let whoever doubts 

 this submit the matter to fair experiment— difficult, of course, since 

 involving the change from preponderance of nocturnal acquisition 

 to that of waking and morning thought-habits. For, like the man 

 who first said, "Honesty is the best policy", and who, when asked 

 how he discovered this, answered, "I've tried both!" so in this 

 present matter can we, and so before long may he. It is, at any rate, 

 well worth trying. 



Some of the really good "coaches" — who so often teach better, 

 because more psychologically, than do we professors, apt to be 

 too intent upon our subject merely — ^have among their devices 

 that of exercising their pupils in given subjects at the hour fixed 

 for the coming examination; so as to form the habit beforehand of 

 thinking mathematically, or linguistically, or otherwise technically, 

 at the given time of day; and this is naturally found "to pay". The 

 matinal habit above pled for is surely no less deserving of fair 

 experiment ; indeed, far more, since aimed towards the free and full 

 encouragement of each and all the individual's latent powers, and 

 even to the habitualising of these towards their increasing develop- 

 ment — so at once encouraging each latent aptitude in its needed 

 growth, and backing it with that steadiness of habit which brings 

 also the patience, so needed even for genius. 



With the nowadays customary notion of "the rarity of genius" 

 we have no patience. The "average man", "the average boy", "girl", 

 and so on, is but a modern m3^th, of pedantised routine, and this 

 now so much bureaucratised and industrialised, mechanised and 

 mammonised as well. For as not only every human face is unique, 

 but even thumb-mark as well, so with every mind. The best teachers 

 are now beginning to know the literal truth of de Vigny's verse, 

 and even to warn against its tragic close — 



II existe en effet, chez les trois quarts des hommes, 

 Un poete — mort jeune, a qui rhomme survit. 



And again — 



Qu'est-cequec'est qu'une grandevie? C'est une pensee de la jeunesse, 

 executee dans I'age mur. 



So now that our long prevalent mis-instruction, with its obsession 

 of "the three R's" as the one gateway of knowledge, is giving way 



