“These facts,” it is not surprising to find him saying in comment, “unanimously witness to the importance of early interests. They are shown to be far from fickle and evanescent.... It would indeed be hard to find any feature of a human being which was a more permanent fact of his nature than his relative degree of interest in different lines of thought and action.” What this means, unquestionably, is that every parent, in planning the education of his children or in assisting them to choose a vocation, should make a real effort to gain some insight into their special interests. Not only so, but there is reason for adding that he should also endeavour to ascertain and cultivate those interests while his children are still quite young. Otherwise he is likely to find them growing to manhood and womanhood—as, under present conditions, most children do grow—with the strongest of their “worth while” interests so attenuated that really effective mental effort is next to impossible. In these circumstances—unless they chance, as Charles Darwin did, to come under the influence of a personality able to rouse their dormant powers into exceptional activity—the likelihood is that they will achieve only mediocre results, muddling along through life even when they happen to hit on vocations truly suited to them. Are we to infer that children, at a tender age, should be encouraged to think seriously about serious subjects? Assuredly, provided the subjects be made sufficiently interesting to them. It is not without significance that a large majority of men of genius have been distinguished for their precocity; or, if not precocious in the ordinary sense of the term, they have busied themselves in childhood with mental activities allied to those for which they afterward attained eminence. Napoleon’s interest in military problems dates from his boyhood. Lord Kelvin, the foremost physicist of the nineteenth century, was making electrical machines when only nine years old, and played with them as other children play with dolls and marbles. Thomas Hobbes translated the “Medea” of Euripides into Latin iambic verse before he was fourteen. Cicero at thirteen is credited with having written a treatise on the art of oratory. Fénelon preached his first sermon when only fifteen years old. Grotius at the age of fourteen was widely known for his learning. Hallam, the famous historian, could read well before he was five, and had turned author four years later. Galileo, like Lord Kelvin, constructed mechanical toys in his childhood.