As to the other chimera, fame, those who trouble about it must surely have a twist in their brains somewhere. The thing is a mere delusion of our own. Let us consider how far our greatest English writer, William Shakespeare, is known to the world. Of the vast populations of Africa, Arabia, India, China, Japan, and Polynesia, to say nothing of the inhabitants of Northern Asia, the native races of Australia and the Americas, and the peasantry of the Continent, few have so much as heard his name. And out of the small minority who have heard of it, how many have read a line of him? Even to the mass of our own population he is little known. Yet he lived but a couple of centuries ago and wrote as few men have written. The earliest historical record takes us back only four thousand years or so--about a hundred generations--a mere flash of time compared to the ages during which our planet must have endured; and of all who lived before this brief period we know absolutely nothing. For what, then, are we sacrificing our health, strength, and happiness? CHAPTER IX. _AN IMPERFECT SYSTEM OF EDUCATION._ We mould the clay while it is soft, that it may not be chipped or pulverised when it is hard by contact with obstacles which it has not been fitted to overcome. Is the process usually effectual? With how little destruction to life, with how little injury to character, do we graduate the sieves of our younger members? Do we succeed in moulding them into sane, capable citizens, or are we so careful to impart special kinds of instruction, to develop the part at the expense of the whole, that our interference is positively detrimental to the individual, and consequently to the community at large also? I fear we can hardly be acquitted of this grave charge. The physiological demands made by growth and development on the vitality of the child are so great, that not only are abundant fresh air and nutrition required for the work, but also a considerable supply of surplus nervous energy. To use up this surplus energy for purposes other than that for which it is intended, is to stunt growth, or to limit the development of the mental faculties, or to diminish nerve-power; one of the three inevitably. And the diminution of nerve-power must bring with it physical, mental, or moral atrophy, according to the part on which the greatest strain has been put and the conditions in which the victim has been placed. Moreover, children of large natural capabilities, whose complex nervous systems require an exceptional amount of nutriment, and whose sensitiveness and plasticity cause them to respond readily to instruction, are just those who will first break down under prolonged strain; and thus we may easily weed out the finer organisations, and continue the race from the less highly developed types.