e youth who told me that for fourteen years the hypothetical language
had been almost the only thing that he had been taught, although he had
never (to his credit, as it seemed to me) shown the slightest proclivity
towards it, while he had been endowed with not inconsiderable ability for
several other branches of human learning. He assured me that he would
never open another hypothetical book after he had taken his degree, but
would follow out the bent of his own inclinations. This was well enough,
but who could give him his fourteen years back again?

I sometimes wondered how it was that the mischief done was not more
clearly perceptible, and that the young men and women grew up as sensible
and goodly as they did, in spite of the attempts almost deliberately made
to warp and stunt their growth. Some doubtless received damage, from
which they suffered to their life's end; but many seemed little or none
the worse, and some, almost the better. The reason would seem to be that
the natural instinct of the lads in most cases so absolutely rebelled
against their training, that do what the teachers might they could never
get them to pay serious heed to it. The consequence was that the boys
only lost their time, and not so much of this as might have been
expected, for in their hours of leisure they were actively engaged in
exercises and sports which developed their physical nature, and made them
at any rate strong and healthy.

Moreover those who had any special tastes could not be restrained from
developing them: they would learn what they wanted to learn and liked, in
spite of obstacles which seemed rather to urge them on than to discourage
them, while for those who had no special capacity, the loss of time was
of comparatively little moment; but in spite of these alleviations of the
mischief, I am sure that much harm was done to the children of the sub-
wealthy classes, by the system which passes current among the Erewhonians
as education. The poorest children suffered least--if destruction and
death have heard the sound of wisdom, to a certain extent poverty has
done so also.

And yet perhaps, after all, it is better for a country that its seats of
learning should do more to suppress mental growth than to encourage it.
Were it not for a certain priggishness which these places infuse into so
great a number of their _alumni_, genuine work would become dangerously
common. It is essential that by far the greater part of