2 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



to maintain a discreet silence on the subject. These 

 enlightened ones, however, cannot remain altogether 

 dumb. But they speak, in the veiled language, of Art 

 and Poetry, Literature and the Drama. They talk 

 round the subject rather than of it. Love, Hate, 

 Jealousy, and Envy, are but attributes thereof. We 

 profess to believe that " Knowledge is Power " and 

 to desire to increase its force among us by raising the 

 standard of our system of education. But education 

 which does not, of set purpose, reveal the sources of 

 oi^r being and of our emotions, good and evil, is no more 

 than a travesty of education ; and they who seek to 

 foist upon the community Knowledge thus emasculated, 

 are unworthy to wield the power which has been placed 

 in their hands. If social well-being be the aim of the 

 high-priests of Education, then something more than 

 copybook maxims like " Be good and you will be happy " 

 must henceforth be preached. Of what avail is it to 

 exalt the name of Knowledge, while the straightest road 

 thereto is barred across and marked " No thoroughfare ! " 

 These blind leaders of the blind seem to imagine that the 

 social well-being they profess to desire can only be attained 

 by side roads, leading anywhere, save in the direction of 

 this Pool of Siloam. -^ 



The stuff of which living things are made is called 

 " Protoplasm." Text-books of Physiology give its 

 chemical constituents with fearsome accuracy, and each 

 of these constituents can be isolated in the laboratory, 

 but " all the king's horses and all the king's men " cannot 

 build these up again into living matter. Its consistent 

 inconsistency defies us ; every statement we make of it 

 has to be qualified by reservations and saving clauses. 

 Its permanency is attested by the fact that it has endured 



