272 Heredity. 



edge widens in all directions, as society becomes more 

 complex, and as the points of contact between man and 

 his inorganic environment multiply, the amount of gen- 

 eral education which each individual must receive before 

 he is in a position to hold his own, and to guide himself 

 rationally in all the emergencies of life, and to enjoy his 

 share of the benefits which our intellectual advancement 

 has placed within his reach, increases in a geometrical 

 progression, and the amount of time demanded for gen- 

 eral liberal education increases in the same ratio. Mean- 

 while the amount of special preliminary training which 

 must be undergone in order to fit a person for new and 

 original work in any department of knowledge or art in- 

 creases at the same rate, and makes greater and greater 

 inroads upon the time which is needed for general educa- 

 tion. At present the most important, delicate, and com- 

 plicated of educational problems, the problem which each 

 individual must meet and decide upon, and the problem 

 which engrosses most of the thought of educational bod- 

 ies, is where to draw the line between general culture and 

 practical or technical training. 



Culture in its widest sense is, I take it, thorough 

 acquaintance with all the old and new results of intel- 

 lectual activity in all departments of knowledge, so far 

 as they conduce to welfare, to correct living, and to 

 rational conduct; that is, culture is to the intellectual 

 man what heredity has been to the physical man. Cul- 

 ture is concerned only with results, not with demonstra- 

 tions, and it does not look to new advances; while tech- 

 nical training is concerned with methods and proofs; 

 and it values the results of the methods and investiga- 

 tions of the past only as they contribute to new advances. 

 Technical training looks to progress in some one definite 

 line, one radius of the growing circle of the domain of 



