EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 297 



problem, as it always has been and always will be. 

 Modern society, rendered more and more self-con- 

 scious and analytical through the intervention of 

 science, is growing slowly and very certainly to recog- 

 nize the gravity of its problem. Very slowly, too, 

 it is learning to solve it, not as a problem in its 

 entirety, but fractionally, one-sidedly, with much 

 painful experimentation, with many rebuffs, and a 

 few permanent successes. If it be true that the 

 future of any nation may be profoundly influenced 

 for good or for evil by the deliberate strivings and 

 aims of its people, it must follow that these strivings 

 and aims afford at any period a reliable index of the 

 general trend of progress or regression. So, too, if 

 we would give direction to human progress, we must 

 do so by the slow and moulding processes of educa- 

 tion of the nervous system rather than by the super- 

 ficial and time-serving legislation to which resort 

 is often made for the purpose of correcting evils or 

 evoking virtues. But the mass of any nation is made 

 up of persons little given to thought, eager to secure 

 quick results, impatient of the slow methods of nature 

 and education. They are thus a ready prey to the 

 quackery of legislation as to the quackery of drugs, 

 as we see only too plainly in democratic countries, 

 where the ignorant and the intelligent, the vicious 

 and the good, have votes of equal value. 



If the processes of education were simple and eas- 

 ily apprehended, educators and philosophers would 

 doubtless have succeeded better than they have in 



