170 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



feet system of education, we must seek to find a system that 

 will combine common-sense or wisdom with utility as well as 

 with skill and culture. We teach our children writing from 

 9 to 9.30, arithmetic from 9.30 to 10, music from 10 to 10.30, 

 singing from 10.30 to n, and so on, and it is time to leave 

 school before we have found time to teach them common-sense, 

 or how to work hard ; to be contented, or the rudiments of 

 moral rectitude, respect to authority, and to grant social 

 veneration to those above them, and condescension to those 

 beneath them, obedience and humility to those in command, 

 which are the more important qualities which our grandfathers 

 made the basis of their system of education. We bring our 

 children up arrogant and useless, and call it independence ; 

 idle, extravagant and insolent, and call it liberty, instead of 

 restricting their independence that we may increase the free- 

 dom of the community. 



And it is only by teaching them the lessons of evolution 

 and by showing them that God is not a mythical being in the 

 sky, but an absolute essential of their existence, and that 

 society and its distinctions are necessary evolutions to permit 

 of freedom, not arbitrary and unnecessary enactments of 

 selfish oppressors, and that time well used, not wealth, creates 

 comfort, that acts well performed, not worldly assets, create 

 happiness, and that efficiency and success can alone merit 

 wealth and respect, and that idleness, waste and intemperance 

 bring the just punishment of poverty, ill-health and crime 

 in their wake, and that success as a nation must be achieved, 

 not by trying to fix the distribution of wealth by Acts of Par- 

 liament, but by educating the people to labour with prompt- 

 ness, skill and co-operation, justice, mercy and obedience, so 

 that they may make of themselves a well-disciplined army of 

 commerce to fight the struggle of love of production as effici- 

 ently as in the past our military army has fought the struggle 

 for national existence, by wars that have made empires and 

 cities. That it is not by knowledge but by discipline and self- 

 control, co-operation and efficient management that a nation 

 will in the future have to prove its superiority ; not by duties 

 and trade restrictions, or tariff warfare will it be possible to 

 win the battles of commercial enterprise, which in the future 

 are to replace the bloody battles for territorial aggrandisement 

 which in the past have been the means of deciding national 



