90 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 



knowledge as they can assimilate and organise into a 

 basis for action ; give them more and it may become 

 injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and 

 stupid from undigested learning as others are from over- 

 fulness of meat and drink. But a small percentage of 

 the population is born with that most excellent quality, a 

 desire for excellence, or with special aptitudes of some 

 sort or another ; Mr. Galton tells us that not more than 

 one in four thousand may be expected to attain distinc- 

 tion, and not more than one in a million some share of 

 that intensity of instinctive aptitude, that burning thirst 

 for excellence, which is called genius. 



Now, the most important object of all educational 

 schemes is to catch these exceptional people, and turn 

 them to account for the good of society. No man can 

 say where they will crop up ; like their opposites, the 

 fools and knaves, they appear sometimes in the palace, 

 and sometimes in the hovel ; but the great thing to be 

 aimed at, I was almost going to say the most important 

 end of all social arrangements, is to keep these glorious 

 sports of Nature from being either corrupted by luxury 

 or starved by poverty, and to put them into the position 

 in which they can do the work for which they are spe- 

 cially fitted. 



Thus, if a lad in an elementary school showed signs 

 of special capacity, I would try to provide him with the 

 means of continuing his education after his daily work- 

 ing life had begun ; if, in the evening classes, he devel- 

 oped special capabilities in the direction of science or of 



