i68 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



true happiness, but the use we make of our time ; thus if we 

 have acquired wealth by murder or theft or corrupt practices, 

 the thought that we are criminals in the eyes of God or our 

 neighbours soon destroys our happiness, unless we are so 

 degenerate as to be past redemption. So again, you see, it is 

 circumstances and surroundings that decide right and wrong. 

 Thus it always comes about that too liberal a distribution of 

 literary knowledge will, unless the person receiving it is pre- 

 viously educated as above described, always tend to increase 

 crime, not virtue, by making vice easy and attractive and work 

 disagreeable and distasteful, and so degenerate instead of 

 raising a nation. 



But in illustrating virtue and crime I have got into the sub- 

 ject of education, which is much too big for the space I intend 

 to allow to any one subject that does not necessarily belong to 

 the hypothesis of this treatise. But before leaving the subject 

 I must call the reader's attention to the fact that, now that we 

 are relinquishing past control by means of ignorance, the only 

 means left by which we can hope to supplant the use of this 

 force we are endeavouring to destroy, and that can in any way 

 efficaciously replace its actions, must be to substitute more 

 practical principles of education in place of those at present in 

 vogue. As I have already remarked, culture is the manure 

 of the mind, and the tendency of the present day is to put on 

 too much of the manure of culture, and to devote too little 

 attention to the groundwork of education, which is habits of 

 work and utility. We give too much knowledge and too little 

 wisdom or commonsense and technical instruction ; too much 

 liberty of action and too little freedom of competition ; too 

 much veneration to genius and cant, and too little veneration 

 to hereditary qualifications and individual energy ; and too 

 much attention to levelling down society by aiming at equal 

 elective numeral representation, and too little consideration to 

 building up national efficiency by making its social advance- 

 ment the reward of labour, skill and thrift, and failure in ex- 

 tending a helping hand to industrious and sensible men to rise 

 in the social scale ; too much time to converting the sinner, 

 and too little attention to preventing the criminal breeding 

 fresh criminals ; too much attention to modest observances 

 and too little condemnation of immoral behaviour. 



We send our children to school, where they are taught to 



