n though pretenders to originality come to grief, a
thing that matters very little. Minds that are truly original will
develop themselves and find room for the expansion of all their powers.

But here,--take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere--the
question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are
the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline
than the true geniuses whose wings we clip.

I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do not
count. An original spirit strangled is a loss which is not compensated
by the rescue of ten fools from worse excesses of folly. An original
spirit left free to be himself is worth more than ten fools whose folly
is partially restrained.

Nietzsche has well said: "Modern education consists in smothering the
exceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mind
away from the exceptional into the channel of the average." This ought
not to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of all
this. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to look
for exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional genius
is born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even less
is it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror,
and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and most
detailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light.

Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and to
respect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turn
mediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level of
mediocrity.

And how can all this be done? By an intervention that is always
discreet, and sometimes by non-intervention.

At the present moment its policy is equally distant from
non-intervention and from an intervention that is discreet.

It is in this way that the very institution which we have invented to
safeguard efficiency contributes not a little to the triumph of its
opposite. These victims of examination are competent in respect of
knowledge, instruction and technical proficiency. They are incompetent
in respect of intellectual value, often, though perhaps not so often as
formerly, in respect of moral value.

As far as their intellectual value is concerned, they have very
frequently no mental initiative. It has been cramped, hidden away, and
trampled down. If it