interesting varieties perhaps--by the hundred thousand. We cannot destroy
the unfit, nor do we desire to do so, for from the educational point of
view unfitness is merely bad adjustment. There is a place for every man in
the world and it is the educators business to see that he reaches it, if
not by formative, then by selective processes. This selection is badly
made in our present state of civilization. It depends to a large extent
upon circumstances remote from the training itself--upon caprice, either
that of the person to be trained or of his parents, upon accidents of
birth or situation, upon a thousand irrelevant things; but in every case
there are elements present in the training itself that aid in determining
it. A young man begins to study medicine, and he finds that his physical
repulsion for work in the dissecting-room can not be overcome. He abandons
the study and by doing so eliminates an unfit person. A boy who has no
head for figures enters a business college. He can not get his diploma,
and the community is spared one bad bookkeeper. Certainly in some
instances, possibly in all, technical and professional schools that are
noted for the excellence of their product are superior not so much because
they have better methods of training, but because their material is of
better quality, owing to selection exercised either purposely, or
automatically, or perhaps by some chance. The same is true of colleges. Of
two institutions with the same curriculum and equally able instructors,
the one with the widest reputation will turn out the best graduates
because it attracts abler men from a wider field. This is true even in
such a department as athletics. To him that hath shall be given. This is
purely an automatic selective effect.

It would appear desirable to dwell more upon selective features in
educational training, to ascertain what they are in each case and how they
work, and to control and dispose them with more systematic care. Different
minds will always attach different degrees of importance to natural and