112 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



from developing, only because forbidden by the tyrant Time. Summing 

 up the more important of these, I would say that the biologist would like 

 to see a movement of our whole educational system away from the merely 

 literary, doctrinaire, academic regions, in which it is apt to be out of 

 touch with the reality of biological fact and practical affairs. He would 

 like to see a far more general recognition of the fact that the primary 

 object of education is to make the individual able rather than learned. A 

 learned individual may be, and often is, a stupid one. And in any case 

 the development and the training of general brain-power fits biologically 

 into the earlier years of life in a way that is not the case with the acquire- 

 ment of mere learning. 



He would regard as another prime object in the training of the citizen 

 the getting him back towards the primitive habit of thinking constantly. 

 The primitive savage is kept constantly alert by ever-present danger. He 

 is constantly thinking about the meaning of what he sees and hears. 

 Civilised man, freed from the stress of savage life, gets into the habit of 

 not thinking. His actions become automatic. He gulps down whatever 

 is served up to him. If he were only to think he would promptly dis- 

 criminate as to what is worthy of acceptance and what is not. 



The biologist would like to see still another reawakening of ancient, 

 custom, namely, the more effective shackling of personal liberty in the: 

 bonds of duty towards the community. Amongst primitive men one 

 finds a high degree of personal freedom, but this is bounded strictly by the: 

 interests of the community. These interests are regarded as sacred, and' 

 the offender against them receives prompt and severe punishment. 

 Throughout the long ages of social evolution, the traitor^the blackleg ta 

 his country — has ever been regarded as the most despicable of men, and it. 

 is a new and strange development of modern times that toleration is. 

 extended to those who deliberately work an injury to their country and 

 kindred — it may be on the grounds of their own material interest. A 

 biologically educated community, while according to the individual in. 

 his ordinary affairs the widest range of personal freedom, would take 

 measures to prevent effectively its interference with the public welfare 

 whatever might be the form of this interference. 



There is one other argument I would use for the biological factor in 

 training the citizen. As social evolution progresses, the natural differences 

 between men become more and more marked, as does also the material 

 expression of these differences. One individual — say, a Lister — is worth- 

 to the community many millions of pounds ; another is worth little or 

 nothing, or in some cases his value may be expressed by a negative 

 quantity. And along with this increase of inequality there comes,, 

 unhappily, the deteriorating nervous balance which accentuates dis- 

 content and social friction. 



The biological outlook I believe to furnish a most potent aid towards, 

 the smoothing away of such social difliculties and the lubrication of the- 

 social mechanism, for it enables us to see with clear vision through the- 

 obscuring veil of superficiality that separates class from class, and shows- 

 us how our fellow-citizens beyond, in spite of their differences in manners- 

 and clothes and language, are, after all, on the average, merely human, 

 beings like ourselves, fitted out with the same strengths and trammelled 

 by the same weaknesses as our own. 



