But here,--take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere--the question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline than the true geniuses whose wings we clip. I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do not count. An original spirit strangled is a loss which is not compensated by the rescue of ten fools from worse excesses of folly. An original spirit left free to be himself is worth more than ten fools whose folly is partially restrained. Nietzsche has well said: "Modern education consists in smothering the exceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mind away from the exceptional into the channel of the average." This ought not to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of all this. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to look for exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional genius is born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even less is it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror, and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and most detailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light. Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and to respect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turn mediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level of mediocrity. And how can all this be done? By an intervention that is always discreet, and sometimes by non-intervention. At the present moment its policy is equally distant from non-intervention and from an intervention that is discreet. It is in this way that the very institution which we have invented to safeguard efficiency contributes not a little to the triumph of its opposite. These victims of examination are competent in respect of knowledge, instruction and technical proficiency. They are incompetent in respect of intellectual value, often, though perhaps not so often as formerly, in respect of moral value. As far as their intellectual value is concerned, they have very frequently no mental initiative. It has been cramped, hidden away, and trampled down. If it ever existed, it exists now no longer. They are all their days merely instruments. They have been taught many things, especially intellectual obedience. They continue to obey intellectually, their brain acts like well made and well lubricated machinery. "The difference between the novel and the play," said Brunetiere, "is that in the play the characters act, in the novel they are acted." I do not know if this be true, but of the functionary we might say as often as not, he does not think, he is thought.