That this lack of personality does not affect only the Indian Civil Service is a matter of notoriety. It is exactly what our generals deplored after the Boer War--that the ordinary officer had no personality. It is a matter of common remark nowadays how exactly alike all the young men are, echoing sentiments that are not theirs. It is what the Germans say of us and the Americans, who especially admire and try to cultivate personality. We once stood before the world as a nation of personalities. We do so no longer. To what is this due? Not to natural deficiency, because all children abound in personality. It is due to what is called "education." That too is no new discovery of mine, but a matter of common knowledge and publicity. Read, for instance, Harold Gorst's _The Curse of Education_. In Paine's _Life of Mark Twain_, systematic training is called "a blight." Neither is it a new thing. The Duke of Wellington said Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton--not in the schools, be it noted. Yet in those days education was nothing like so rigid as it is now. Then take the notable Englishmen of the last fifty years; how few have been University men--many not public school men. Cobden and Bright, Chamberlain, Beaconsfield, Dickens and Kipling, Stanley, Captain Scott, and other pioneers of Empire, Huxley and Kelvin, all the great captains of industry. The two most prominent members of the Government to-day are not University men. Even where notable men were University men they did not attain their stature till they had thrown off its bonds. Gladstone was, for instance, the hope of the stern, unbending Tories till he had achieved his liberty, when he could think for himself. Yet even then he only achieved political, and never spiritual, freedom. Cecil Rhodes said that University dons were as children in some matters; meaning, however, ignorant and not ready to learn, which is not a child's attitude. Therefore the fault lies with the "education." What is Education? There are two things that go to the proper upbringing of a child, and though they overlap in places they are distinct and even sometimes contradictory; one is Instruction, and the other is Education. Reading and writing, arithmetic, and all information obtained from books or lectures or teachers is instruction; the bringing out of the powers of the child's own mind is education. The object of instruction is to enable the child to better his education. In itself it has no value. The mere acquirements of reading and writing--the mere accumulation of book knowledge--are in themselves worthless. "The learned fool is the biggest fool." They are only good insomuch as they help education.