The same argument holds good in relation to other professions and occupations. The university graduate has no practical accomplishments. He may be an ornamental, but he is certainly not ipso facto a useful, member of society. The only thing for which he is pre-eminently fitted is to assist others, by means of extension lectures and cramming, to be his companions in misfortune. But this can hardly be designated a beneficial sphere of activity, and he is handicapped in all he undertakes by the fact that thousands of others possess the same educational equipment as himself.
Why should every educated man be like the other? There is absolutely no reason for it. The similarity is purely artificial. Nature never intended all men to be cast in the same mould, and it is only the perversity of man himself that has brought the human race down to such a level. The stupidity of giving every scholar the same mental outfit is so self-evident as scarcely to need further comment. Even following the modern plan of stuffing minds instead of developing them, one would have thought that common sense would dictate the necessity of manufacturing as much variety as possible.
The whole trend of evolution is to differentiate; and if natural laws were not completely disregarded by education systems, the absurdity of filling the world with two or three human species instead of a hundred thousand would never have been perpetrated. As long as this arbitrary interference with Nature is continued, educated men will not cease to be a drug in the market. Its immediate effect is not to endow the individual with special qualities, but to handicap him heavily for the real business of life.
Competition amongst the 'well-educated' is not the result of over-population or of a too liberal supply of competent men. It is caused by uniformity of attainment; and until this is generally realized, one of the most pressing social problems cannot hope to find a solution.
CHAPTER IX
WOMAN'S EMPIRE OVER MAN
Men have always been reluctant to acknowledge the truth about woman's real position in the world. They keep up a beautiful kind of masculine myth about the mastery of the sterner sex and their mental superiority, and they talk of woman in a patronizing way as man's helpmate.
There is no doubt—it is a physiological fact—that man possesses more brain-power or capacity than woman. But woman has, on the other hand, an enormous advantage in the use to which she has put her mental machinery from time immemorial. The truth is that women think out things for themselves a great deal more than does the average man. As, however, they concentrate their attention for the most part on what are called the minor interests of life, whilst men are occupied with bigger and more important things, it has come to be accepted that the mind of woman is inferior to the mind of man.
In one sense this is true. Potentially, woman's mind has not the capacity of man's. One has only to look for female Shakespeares, Newtons, Bismarcks, Raphaels, and Beethovens, to verify the fact beyond dispute. But we are dealing here with existing circumstances, not with potentialities. Therefore I have no hesitation in saying that, as a general rule, women use what brain power they have to much better advantage than men; which amounts to a confession that woman, apart from intellectual specialization, is, on the average, man's mental superior.
This is a sweeping statement to make, but it is made only in the interests of truth, and it admits of a great deal of plausible explanation.