Should we not at least try the effect of varying amount of control by the central board, the local council, and the teacher himself? May not some latitude in subject be allowed to a teacher, to follow lines which his own mind is best capable of making useful? Should not a great difference be made between the town, where an infant school is needed, to keep children safe while parents are at work, and the country where they can be left to play in the open? Should not country teaching be adapted to making agriculturists? Might it not be possible to leave children entirely in the fields till sixteen, provided that they could pass in reading at nine, and in figures at twelve, however it was learned? A solid two years' half-timing from sixteen to eighteen, when they valued knowledge, might be worth all they gain in the present way. Such are a few of the questions to which answers are necessary, before we can begin to provide for the diversity of education, which is certainly requisite if we are to make it successful—a help instead of a detriment in after life. And in more detailed education is it not possible to let a child's mind grow on what is of interest to it—to further it on whatever subjects are most attractive and easy to that type of mind, until the habit of learning is so developed that it can be more easily levelled up on the subjects which have been neglected? The mere habit of learning and applying knowledge has to be acquired to begin with, and surely the easier subjects are the best on which to practise the power of concentration of mind. The trainer knows that his monkeys cannot be taught unless they can concentrate attention on the subject in hand. In every direction we need to gain diversity—in types of society, in customs, in varieties of mind; and to gain this basis for useful variation we must begin by cultivating diversity and providing for its success, in place of attacking and crushing it wherever it appears. CHAPTER VI. LINES OF ADVANCE. Before we can imagine what may be lines of possible advance, for the individual or the community, we should base our ideas on observing what have been the means of advance in the past. Many of the Utopian visions which have been sketched by different writers are in flagrant contradiction of all history and human nature. It is at least far more likely that gain in the future will be on similar lines to those which have been successful in the past, rather than on lines opposed to all previous growth.