236 CAPACITY FOE EDUCATION. 



But incapacity for education or improvement is not con- 

 fined to the African negro, nor to savage races of man ; it 

 occurs also amidst our highest civilisation for instance, in 

 the idiot, or at least in certain kinds or classes of idiots, at 

 certain stages or in certain states of idiocy (Browne, Ire- 

 land, De Vitre). It occurs also in many other forms of men- 

 tal defect or derangement, in many criminals, perhaps in 

 whole classes of our criminals, and in certain wild children. 



Incapacity for civilisation would also appear to be a cha- 

 racteristic of certain classes among ourselves who belong to 

 none of the categories just above enumerated. There are in 

 various parts of our own country, even in the hearts of our 

 great cities, whole ranks or classes of the community who 

 may fitly be denominated white savages, the savages of our 

 boasted civilisation. Of a specimen or type of these savages, 

 dwelling in our midst, within hearing or easy reach of count- 

 less churches and other agencies of Christianisation and 

 civilisation certain cave inhabitants of Caithness, Scotland 

 Dr. Mitchell, of Edinburgh, reports as follows : c The low 

 and sedimentary [intelligence and morals] were not due to 

 the want of cultivation so much as to the inability to receive 

 culture. Indeed, speaking of this class as a whole, it might 

 be said they were not so much uncivilised as uncivilisable 9 l 

 And as to this Dr. Mitchell is a competent judge, for as one 

 of H.M. Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland he is familiar 

 with all the phases of human idiocy, and with the extent to 

 which certain idiots even may be educated or civilised. 



Incapability of improvement by education is seen also in 

 certain animals with defective or disordered mental faculties. 

 The subject is treated of in the chapters on ' Stupidity, 9 

 6 Error J and ' Mental Derangement. 9 



In other cases the capacity for learning, for profiting by 

 tuition of whatever kind, is curiously limited, many animals, 

 like many men, being able to learn only certain things or 

 kinds of things. There are apparently special kinds or direc- 

 tions of intelligence, that require a correspondingly special 

 education for their due development. In certain dogs and in 



1 * Daily Keview ' report of a lecture delivered in Edinburgh in February 

 1877. 



