EDUCATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF FUNCTION. 5 



that every kind of the genus " Homo " has not the same 

 capacity for education, and even among members of the same 

 families of men there are great variations so far as these 

 possibilities are concerned. Manifestly then, as in the case of 

 the lower classes of animals, human beings present varying 

 capacities of understanding, so that, as the old students of 

 metaphysic would have put it, we may say that there is 

 knowledge of which some individuals are incapable and it is 

 possible that there is knowledge of which most, if not all, may 

 be incapable. 



Knowledge, then, is an attribute of life, and in the case of 

 the human being we have the very highest organisation for its 

 inception, storage and utilisation ; but that organisation is 

 subject to variations in its qualities, and I want to try and 

 suggest how these qualities may be modified through varying 

 influences, and how education, in its restricted or scholastic 

 sense, not only advances the possession of intellectual and 

 physical acquirements, but also when properly employed may 

 have a therapeutic value. 



When a child is born, the functions which mainly concern 

 it are those which have to do with its nutrition. It feeds, it 

 sleeps, and it has lusty powers of signalling with its lungs and 

 voice when its tissues, having burnt up the supply of fuel, 

 demand more. It has little, if any intelligence, and no know- 

 ledge beyond the instinctive. It immediately proceeds to grow 

 at a great pace, and before many weeks have passed some signs 

 of intelligence begin to show. Its ignorance becomes replaced 

 by a very little knowledge which is gained through its senses ; 

 in fact, its education has commenced, and as time goes on its 

 development and growth and knowledge increase in relation to 

 one another, until at last, when the period of childhood comes 

 and with it the further development of the higher faculties, 

 education takes place rapidly through the channels of every 

 sense and the hitherto ignorant centres become invaded by a 



