[Interposed query: Where are these discoverers of talent, and how do they prove their own talent? There was a good opportunity for them in a case which I must here mention. Einstein told me in another connexion that, as early as 1907, that is, when he was still very young in years, he had not only succeeded in successfully representing the Principle of Equivalence, one of the main supports of the General Principle of Relativity, but had even published it; yet it made not the slightest impression on the learned world. No one suspected the far-reaching consequences, and no one pointed out this flaming up of a new talent of the highest order. And just as this was able to remain concealed from the learned Areopagus of the world at that time, so a similar lack of understanding may easily be possible on a smaller scale at school. We know actually that among the recognized great men of science, there were many who did only moderately well at school; as, for example, Humphry Davy, Robert Mayer, Justus Liebig, and many others. Wilhelm Ostwald goes so far as to affirm: "Boys ordained to be discoverers later in life have, almost without exception, been bad at school! It is just the most gifted young people who have resisted most strongly the form of intellectual development prescribed by the school! Schools never cease to show themselves to be the bitter, unrelenting enemies of genius!"--in spite of all efforts at selection which have always been in vogue in the guise of advancement into higher forms.] But the new mode of selection is intended to prevent mistakes and oversights. Is this possible? Do not the traces of previous attempts inspire distrust? There was once a very ideal selection that had to stand the test of one of the most eminent bodies in existence, the French Academy. Its duty was to discover geniuses on an incomparably higher plane. It, however, repudiated or overlooked: Molière, Descartes, Pascal, Diderot, the two Rousseaus, Beaumarchais, Balzac, Béranger, the Goncourts, Daudet, Emile Zola, and many other extremely gifted people, whom it should really have been able to find. The only true, and at the same time necessary as well as sufficient, breeding is carried out by Nature herself in conjunction with social conventions, which promise the more success the less they assume the character of incubators and breeding establishments. If you wish to apply tests to discover pupils of genius in any class, examine as much as you like, excite interest and ambition, distribute prizes even, but not for the purpose of separating at short intervals the shrewd and needle-witted heads from the rest; and do not lose sight of the fact that among those who appear as the sheep as a result of these systematized tests to discover ingenuity there are many who, ten or twenty years later, will take up their positions as men of eminent talent.