Begin with the humblest examples of humanity who have for some reason, had the fewest chances of cultivating their minds, or none at all. Take the Miaotze, who came under Christian influences through that true Apostle of Christ, the Rev.! Samuel Pollard. Here was a nation or a number of tribes up to 5,000,000, in the rawest possible state, with no written language, and hence no books, no knowledge of anything in the great world, to "enlarge the mind" as we fondly think it has ours. Yet when Mr. Pollard learnt their language, made them an alphabet out of the' signs of Pitman's shorthand and Braille type, they took as kindly to reading the New Testament as children in our schools. ~I read in Pollard's "Life," that "the chief cause of the spiritual revolution among the aborigines was the trans. lation and distribution of the Scriptures. The gift to the Miao of the New Testament was followed by consequences that beggar all description. It brought spiritual emancipation and @ new vision of tribal life. The stirring of the light in their minds opened the gates of imagination. Parents did all the work on the farms that their children might go to school."
There is no complaint of any difficulty in getting these children to learn. Their fathers might have been university men for generations. So it has been in the South Seas, where the grandfathers of the present children were actually can-nihals. So in Central Africa and other raw places. This makes 1 clear enough, that if the Miao are not happy, it is not for want of brains anyhow, but for the presence of quite other things that David notes, Consider China. Educationists say that the Chinese method of education has tended to ossify the Chinese mind. Also that for ages "the government of China was carried on by cutting off the ablest heads." But there is any amount of ability in China to-day. Coolies become big business men as elsewhere. The trouble with China is not want of brains, but the want of something else.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.