MATTER AND MIND 13 



causes the student to lose perspective and 

 deny the importance, or even the existence, 

 of other knowledge. Such a person is merely 

 uneducated or it may be is incapable of 

 education through some natural defect. He 

 resembles some one with a lack of appreciation 

 of harmony who cannot understand why 

 another person enjoys music, or one who, 

 short of actual colour blindness, cannot appre- 

 ciate pictures, or the glorious beauty of Nature 

 in scenery, or in the forms of living plants or 

 animals. The assertions of such a person 

 should not irritate the man who has been 

 gifted with higher sense, he is rather to be 

 pitied, helped as far as possible, and taught 

 like one who is partially blind or deaf. It is 

 also to be remembered that such a defective 

 person in one direction may be so endowed 

 as to be a genius in another, and that the true 

 action of average humanity ought to be to 

 accept his genius while discounting and par- 

 doning his eccentricity. The world has lost 

 much invaluable service in all realms of thought 

 and action, and some of its brightest geniuses 

 have been outlawed or slain as martyrs, simply 

 because of the associated eccentricity accom- 

 panying genius which the average mortal 

 regards as madness or crime. 



As an example of the effects of narrow 



