BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1375 



mainly palseotechnic world so largely must — let us turn again to 

 education; for at least some possibilities of development are obvi- 

 ously latent in each and every individual not wholly defective; 

 and other possibilities may still be there, but undiscovered. The 

 kindly care and skill of woman has increasingly been demonstrating 

 this; for the new advance with Montessori is but one of the recent 

 triumphs we might cite of feminine sympathetic insight, skill, and 

 patience. The improved defective is thus henceforward a superman 

 compared with his former too merely animal self; hence that 

 exclamation of the school-inspector which went round the press of 

 the world and suddenly made her famous: "You, madam, are 

 making defective children normal, while in the schools we are 

 making normal children defective!" How this latter statement is 

 but too true, and how development is so comprehensively arrested 

 (see Tagore's Parrot's Training) we may consider elsewhere. Enough 

 to note that it largely explains the present scarcity of supermen, 

 on primar}^ secondary, and even higher education levels, and 

 whether as teachers or products. But as we imagine, and make, 

 somiC experimental endeavour — or at least observe the methods 

 and results of the real educators who are often struggling in the 

 most conventional schools, colleges, and homes — we come to see 

 how reasonable the hope of releasing the superman — of whom ele- 

 ments are still latent, even in the most "well-educated" into con- 

 ventionality (the real meaning of "ordinary" and "average"). 

 But for this we need also — far beyond even current eugenics — the 

 help of sociology, and with all its psychology and ethics, and so here 

 again leave this hope to further elucidation. Let us foresee and aid, 

 not discourage, the fuller arousal of the generous ardour of youth's, 

 woman's, and man's emotion, ideation, and imagination, towards 

 collective and individual achievements, upon the deeper and higher 

 levels of true and constructive peace; for which the Superman in 

 each is so urgently needed; and indeed thereby so far realised. 



THE BEAUTY OF DEATH.— So far as we know, even the great 

 funeral preachers have seldom spoken of this; painters have seldom 

 portrayed it, save as in Pieta; and poets seldom too; yet who can 

 forget B^Ton's true and moving lines: "What rapture and repose!"? 

 Not these invariably, alas; yet it seems frequently; and these 

 exaltations may be of very varied kinds, and sometimes extremely, 

 even amazingly, developed. Thus one remembers a face which in 

 last illness seemed but that of worn-out, withered, and wrecked 

 senility, transformed to sublime ; and another formerly plain, wearj^ 

 old woman rejuvenesced by forty years and more, to happily 

 sleeping young bride; so that her own brother, family, and friends 

 could hardly believe their eyes. In hospitals, too, one sees kindred 

 change ; and in our (admittedly not great) experience, it seems fre- 



