198 Instinct and Intelligence 



nervous centres of the brain. The efforts of 

 our elementary school teachers should be 

 directed, not so much towards cramming their 

 pupils with bookwork, but in fitting them to 

 carry on with satisfaction to themselves and 

 their future employers, the various kinds of 

 work they are likely to have to perform during 

 their subsequent lives. The test of efficiency 

 on leaving school should be to demonstrate 

 what a lad or girl can do rather than what he 

 knows. We are told that the ancient Irish 

 people were in the habit of handing their 

 children over for instruction to foster-parents, 

 who had legal charge of their pupils until they 

 were seventeen years of age, when a lad was 

 compelled to return home ; and if it was then 

 found that he had not become efficient in his 

 calling, obedient, and otherwise properly in- 

 structed, the foster-father was heavily fined; 

 the amount of the fine was given to the pupil, 

 because, as the Brehon Law states, it was " upon 

 the pupil the injury of want of learning 

 has been inflicted." This practice is never 

 likely to be revived, but there is something 

 very refreshing in the idea of making the 



