318 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



country parsonages, but in thinkers and workers like Darwin, 

 Huxley, Kelvin, Cecil Rhodes, the strenuous men who rule 

 Egypt and India, or the argonauts who seek the way to the 

 North or South poles ; the men who have become a name, 

 " For always roaming with a hungry heart," to whom 



" All experience is an arch wherethro' 

 Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades 

 Forever and forever." 



503. The model followed in our upper-class schools is, in 

 fact, the monkish not the classical one. The classical 

 method was ideally scientific. Comparatively little strain 

 was placed on the memory, for the knowledge of the time 

 was limited, and, except in the case of the later Romans, no 

 alien language was taught. The reflective powers were 

 developed to the utmost. The individual was taught, not so 

 much what to think, as how to think. The mind was left 

 free from prejudice, open to every fresh experience. The 

 appeal to verifiable evidence was constant. Whatever science 

 was in existence was acquired by every educated individual. 

 The monks, on the other hand, ignored science, but received 

 a more or less thorough education in the words of at least 

 one classical tongue, which, indeed, with religion, constituted 

 almost the whole of their formal mental training. Now what- 

 ever the merits of a training by means of a study of words, at 

 least it did not confer on the monks that mental receptivity, 

 that readiness to utilize fresh experience, that intellectual 

 enterprise and daring, which characterized the ancients, and 

 which is the first requisite for individual and national success 

 in modern times. It did not free their minds from prejudice. 

 It has not made the Hindoos and Chinese receptive and pro- 

 gressive. There is little reason to believe it confers these 

 characteristics on the modern school-boy. 



504. We cannot reach sure conclusions as to the value 

 of a system of education by observing individuals. The 

 modern civilized individual, however rigorously he may have 

 been trained in any system, has a number of other influences 

 acting on him. Consequently it is always possible for the 

 adherents or opponents of this or that system to maintain of 

 any given person that his characteristics have arisen because 

 of his formal education, or in spite of it (e. g. through innate 

 capacity). As in similar problems connected with heredity 

 we must seek confirmation of our opinions by comparing 

 masses of individuals with other masses differently trained. 

 Probably the instinctive or play-ground education of the 



