stimulating, and that all unconnected knowledge is at best mechanical.
Perhaps one of the most fruitful of all subjects is vivid biography,
and no serious educator could perform a more valuable task than in
providing a series of biographies of great men, really intelligible to
youthful minds. As a rule, biographies of the first order require an
amount of detailed knowledge in the reader which puts them out of the
reach of ill-stored minds. But I have again and again found with boys
that simple biographical lectures are among the most attractive of all
lessons. At one time, with my private pupils, I would take a book at
random out of my shelves, read an interesting extract or two, and then
say that I would try to show why the author chose such a subject, why
he wrote as he did, and how it all sprang out of his life and
character and circumstances.

Of course the difficulty in all this is that the field of knowledge is
so vast and various, while the capacities of boys are so small, and
the time to be spent on their education so short, that we quail before
the attempt to grapple with the problem. We have moreover a vague idea
that the well-informed man ought to have a general notion of the world
as it is, the course of history, the literature of the ages; and at
the same time the scientists are maintaining that a general knowledge
of the laws and processes of nature is even more urgently needed. I
cannot treat of science here, but I fully subscribe to the belief that
a general knowledge of science is essential. But the result of our
believing that it is advisable to know so much, is that we attempt to
spread the thinnest and driest paste of knowledge over the mind, and
all the vivid life of it evaporates in the process. The thing is,
frankly, far too big to attempt; and, we must henceforth set our faces
against the attainment; of mere knowledge as either advisable or
possible. What we must try to do is to educate the faculties of