But some one may say, all men are not geniuses, and accordingly the majority without distinct talent need the school. Is it possible that the connection between originality and irregular attendance at school is merely accidental? How often does the school sin in its watering down of originality! As for unoriginal people, the argument urged here is an application of the biblical axiom, that from him who has nothing even the little will be taken away. I mean the individual who has no distinct personality will be forced in the school to give up the little that he can call his own. The old-fashioned school where a few subjects were learnt by heart, where the teachers were often badly prepared, where the students could go to sleep or pretend to learn, where the courses were simple and attention concentrated on Latin, seems barbarous to us. But it had less danger for the personality than the present-day school with its thorough preparation, its interest in readings, its perfected methods, its capital instructors who take every little stone out of the student's road, and prepare as much delightful intellectual nourishment as possible, sometimes even in a cooked-up form. This "good school" with its over-insistence on versatility is responsible for the nervousness of our day. Its general intellectual apathy has caused the negativeness of our times. The quietest, most obedient child is thought the best pupil, that is, the most impersonal individual is the model. So we see how the school confuses its conception of values. The more the soul and body are passive, are willing to be controlled and receptive, so much the better are the results from the school standpoint. Mischievous children, obstinate characters, one-sided and original natures, are always martyrs at school because of their desire for action, their spirit of opposition, their so-called "stupidity." Only the easy-going, amiable, commonly endowed natures can keep some of their own individual tendencies, slip through the school, and at the same time get good certificates of industry, moral character, order, and progress. In the first-class modern school, the mobile structure of personality is forced into shape--or rather it is knocked about by wind and waves, like a pebble on the seashore. It is struck by one wave after another, day by day, term by term; on they come--forty-five minutes for religious instruction, the same period for history, then French, then sloyd, then natural history; the next day new subjects in new, small doses. In the afternoon, there is preparation at home, and writing exercises, previously arranged and marked out, then corrected with care, and the prepared readings made the basis of questioning by the most approved methods, the mother having at home first gone over them with the child. These powerful billows stupefy the brain, and take the edge off the souls of both teacher and scholar. Even the most active teachers move