The gain to the whole nation if the mental development of the highest social stratum could be raised as much above its normal level as the mental development of youthful Utopia has been raised above the normal level of an English rural village, would be incalculably great.

But greater still--incalculably greater--would be the gain to the nation if the rank and file of its children could be led into the path of self-realisation, and therein rise to the high level of brightness, intelligence, and resourcefulness which has been reached in Utopia.
Nor is this dream so wildly impracticable as some might imagine.

So far as the natural capacity of the average child is concerned, there is no bar to its realisation.

Egeria has taught me that the mental capacity of the average child, even in a rustic village belonging to a county which is proverbial for the slow wits of its rustics, is very great.

It is sometimes said that of the children who have been trained in our elementary schools, not one in twenty is fit to profit by the education given in a secondary school: and if by this is meant that in nineteen cases out of twenty the elementary scholar, _educated as he has probably been_, is unlikely to profit by the education given in a secondary school, _conducted as those schools usually are_, I am not prepared to say offhand that the statement is untrue.