I was struck by the similarity between her thoughts and my own upon this matter; but after all, there was nothing surprising in that; it was what everyone thought who had speculated at all on the problem. She was silent for a time; then she continued: “It’s just like the thing we were speaking of to-night. A child’s mind is like a box of bricks; and each child has a different box with bricks unlike those of any other child. Our educational system has been arranged to force each child to build a standard pattern of house from its bricks, whether the bricks were suitable or not. The whole training has been drawn up to suit what they call ‘the average child’--a thing that never existed. So you get each child’s mind cramped in all sorts of directions, capacities stifled, a rooted distaste for knowledge engendered--a pretty result to aim at!” “I don’t think you realise the difficulties of the thing,” I said. “The younger generation isn’t a handful; it’s a largish mass to tackle: and one must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. The number of possible instructors is limited by the labour market.” “Hearken to the voice of the ‘practical man.’” She laughed, but not unkindly. “You don’t seem to realise, Mr. Flint, that things _can_ be done if one is determined to do them--physical impossibilities apart, of course. When a conjurer devises a trick, do you think that he sets out by considering his available machinery? Not at all. He first thinks of the illusion he wants to produce; and he fits his machinery to that. What we need to do is to fix on our aim and then invent machinery for it. You seem to me always to put the cart before the horse and to work on the lines: ‘What can we do with the machinery we have?’ That’s all wrong, you know. We’re on the edge of a new time now; and we can do as we please. The old system is gone; and we can set up anything we choose. What we have to be sure is that the end we work toward is the right one.” We discussed education from various points of view, I remember; but what struck me most in her ideas was the emphasis which she laid on the faculty of wonder. One of her fears was that, in the stress of the new time, life would become machine-made and that the human race might degenerate into a mere set of engine-tenders to whom the whole world of imagination was closed.