In appealing for a progress from the general to the particular I am not blind to the dangers.  Biology for the young readily degenerates into a mawkish “nature-study,” or all-for-the-best claptrap about adaptation, but a sure remedy is the strong tonic of agnosticism, teaching one of the best lessons science has to offer, the resolute rejection of authority.

Some take comfort in the hope that all subjects may be taught as branches of science, but the fact that must permanently postpone arrival at this educational Utopia is that a great proportion of teachers are not and can never be made scientific.  Nothing proceeding from such persons will by the working of any schedule, regulation, or even Order of the Board be ever made to bear any colourable resemblance to science.  Moreover as has already been indicated, there are plenty of pupils also who will flourish and probably reach their highest development taught by unscientific men, pupils whose minds would be sterilised or starved by that very nourishment which to our thinking is the more generous.  Were we a homogeneous population one diet for all might be justifiable, but as things are, we should offer the greatest possible variety.

From Rousseau onwards educationists, deriving their views, I suppose, from some metaphysical or theological conception of human equality, speak continually of the “mind of the child” as if the young of our species conformed to a single type.  If the general spread of biological knowledge serves merely to expose that foolish assumption there would be progress to record.  Dr Blakeslee[4], a well-known American biologist, lately gave a good illustration of this.  In a paper on education he showed photographs of two varieties of maize.  The ripe fruits of both are colourless if their sheaths be unbroken.  The one, if exposed to the light before ripening, by rupture of its sheath, turns red.  The second, otherwise indistinguishable, acquires no red colour though uncovered to the full sun.  If these maizes were two boys, not improbably the one would be caned for failing to respond to treatment so efficacious in the case of the other.  When we hear that such a man has developed too exclusively one side of his nature, with what propriety do we assume that he had any other side to develop?  Or when we say that such-and-such a course of study tends to make boys too exclusively literary, or scientific, or what not, do we not really mean that it provides too exclusively for those whose aptitudes are of these respective kinds?  Living in the midst of a mongrel population we note the divers powers of our fellows and we thoughtlessly imagine that if something different had happened to us, we can’t say what, we should have been able to rival them.  A little honest examination of our powers shows how vain are such suppositions.  The right course is to make some provision for all sorts, since unscientific teaching and unscientific persons will remain with us always.