companions? And what, lastly, is to be done with children retarded in their studies by an unrecognised myopia? It is evident that the question ceases to seem simple and easy when regarded closely. We may rigorously exclude from the class of defectives the child who is simply ignorant, but there is a whole series of complex cases intermediate between the ignorant and the defective. The inspector, let us say in anticipation, will consult his colleague the doctor with advantage about all these border-line cases. No breach of principle is involved here. It is necessary to be guided by circumstances. _The essential point is to mark distinctly upon the child's schedule the special reasons for his admission, in order to prevent ultimate deception in the shape of presenting the child as an average defective who has been improved by tuition in the special class._ * * * * * We now come to the normal, the really normal cases. There can evidently be no doubt as to what is to be done with them. They are provided for. They have only to remain in the ordinary school. We hope they will be kept there. We hope it; we even demand it with all our power. But we are not certain that it will be possible to save them from the special schools. How many vital interests are leagued against the keeping of that rule! And interests, when they are not looked after, are like the millions of ship-worms which slowly and silently corrode the most solid barriers. In the first place, there is the interest of the parents. When it is a question of secondary education, of rich or middle-class parents, there is nothing to fear. The bourgeois do not love their defectives; they are ashamed of them. They send them to a distance, to some private institution. They never speak of them to anyone; they do not visit them; they abandon them. But the common people have more heart or less prejudice. They will not be afraid of the special school for defectives any more than they are of the hospice. When they have a really defective child in the hospice, they never cease to visit him. We can imagine the results which such a state of mind will bring about. If these fathers and mothers of the working class were to hear of the existence of a boarding-school where children receive board, lodging, and clothing, they would flock to obtain admission even for their normal children, although it were well known that the school admitted only the feeble-minded, defectives, and fools. If necessary, they would get municipal councillors to back up their demands. This abuse was practised recently in the case of a reformatory, which was rapidly filled with ordinary children, whose sole characteristic was this--that their parents had political backing.