[27] A method, it may be added, which can very usefully be practised now. Those of us who "rub-up" our French or German a little before a summer holiday by reading a novel or two, would always find the results of this rubbing-up process to be greatly more effective, when presently utilised abroad, if we would read always aloud instead of in silence according to the usual procedure. [28] Over-civilised, if one please, but I do not admit for an instant that man can be over-civilised. [29] Ante, Chapter III. [30] Ante, Chapter II. [31] Against some methods of securing this object no doubt the unintelligent sentimentality of the present time would rebel; but if any inconsistency be detected in my suggestion that the next century, which is expected to be even milder than this, will accept them, it only needs to be replied that the gentleness of our descendants will be a reasonable and ordered gentleness, not a mere effect of morbid sentimentality. They will not hesitate before an apparent and temporary cruelty which is capable of preventing much greater suffering in a much greater number of persons. The crime of permitting children to be born with brains abnormally predisposed to evil of any sort will more greatly revolt an intelligent age than any conceivable measure adopted for its prevention. [32] It may, perhaps, be thought that the disuse of trial by jury would be liable to perpetuate a somewhat glaring abuse of our present jurisprudence--the disproportionately severe repression of offences against property as compared with the disproportionately light repression of offences against the person. But the mere fact that the "unlearned" bench is conspicuously inept in this particular is no reason for thinking that "learned" courts would be so: and meantime, as judges, like other men, are children of their epoch, we may suppose that the increased mildness of the new age will be reflected here as elsewhere, and that extenuating circumstances will be allowed more weight in determining a sentence for larceny, and less weight in determining a sentence for assault. [33] Study of Sociology, Chapter XV. [34] At least this was the opinion of the editors of the Clarendon Press edition of the Plays. [35] While actually correcting the proof sheets I read in a London evening newspaper, The Star, that gramophones had been utilised in certain schools for the teaching of foreign languages, a device I had suggested in the chapter on Education as likely to be adopted in the schools of the future. THE END COLSTON AND COMPANY, LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH End of Project Gutenberg's A Hundred Years Hence, by T. Baron Russell