for
the exhibition of special talent; and there are many other walks in life
where mental superiority is sadly needed, and which should therefore
provide ample work and remuneration for those who show capability and
resource. But in spite of all these openings some of our scholars are
driven to eke out a miserable pauper's existence in the common
lodging-house, or even in extreme cases to solicit parish relief.

The explanation of this strange anomaly lies simply in the fact that the
educational mill not only manufactures dummies, but makes them all
exactly alike. In the higher types of schools and colleges there is
generally a choice of three patterns--the classical dummy, the modern
language dummy, and the scientific dummy. But each pattern is very like
the other, for all the practical purposes of this life; that is to say,
they are all equally useless and equally unfitted for the task of moving
forward with the times.

The result of fitting out everybody with a common stock of knowledge is
to institute a disastrous form of intellectual competition. Thousands of
young men are being equipped annually by our schools and universities
for the performance of precisely the same functions. Intelligence
brought wholesale to the market in this stereotyped form is in much the
same unhappy condition as unskilled labour. There is a supply far in
excess of the demand, and consequently employment cannot be found for
all.

Perhaps the profession of literature and journalism affords the aptest
illustration of the utter folly and uselessness of producing these
machine-made scholars, all filled chock-full with the same ideas, facts,
figures, and dates. Here, as in reality everywhere else, there is need
of originality, intellectual independence, insight, judgment, and
imagination. Journalism wants ideas; facts are amply provided by the
news agency and the reporter. The gates of literature are opened wide
for striking and vigorous thought, trenchant criticism, and imaginative
flights of fancy.

What has the average academically-trained man to offer? He has an
assortment of second-hand ideas borrowed from Plato and Socrates, from
Ovid and Virgil and Horace; he can echo Voltaire, Goethe, Kant,
Shakespeare, Dante; he can dish up Aristotle, Pythagoras, Bacon,
Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Davy, Faraday and Darwin. He can borrow
illustrations from classical mythology; he knows the Dynasties of
ancient Egypt; and he is able to furnish, with