be it the priest, the doctor, the teacher, or any other It cannot be in the interest of science or progress that any one of these should usurp power, for then the mere love of this power, and the tyrannical use of it, would take the place (as has been seen before) of the higher hunger after knowledge, and the desire for the conquest of disease. So the old phrase, " We must educate our master," may be amended so as to run, "We must all, for our own safety and freedom, allow the people to educate themselves in the only new way in which they can be educated—that is, by accepting responsibility."[1]
"But are they, the people, fit for it?" some voice may cry; and the thought may occur to thousands of plain and humble folks, "Are we indeed fit for it? Do we know anything at all of education? " This book serves no purpose at all, if it does not serve to show that work, the rough labour of tillers of the ground,
- ↑ "For some years before the invention of electric telegraphy," writes Sir James Paget, M.D., "Professor Cummings of Cambridge, when describing to his class the then recent discovery by Dersted of the power of an electric current to deflect a magnet used to say, 'Here are the elements which would excellently serve for a system of telegraphy.' Our successors will wonder at us," says Sir James Paget, but perhaps they will not wonder, perhaps they will understand why the brain loses power, and becomes active only in a very limited degree when the stimulus of real work is withdrawn. It is possible that all this lack of readiness and resource will be clear to them as noonday, and that some kinds of cleverness will go out of fashion.
