THE BATTALION
7
who has planted cotton and nothing else, knows a great deal
about it. He was almost born with a knowledge of all the
eccentricities of the plant. He is a specialist of the most ex
treme type; and, now that cotton planting has ceased to pay,
he is totally at sea; he knows no other style of agriculture.
It is the same with the modern factory system. A man may
work for years and become the most expert brass-moulder,
or iron melter in the factory, yet he is not a practical man.
He knows nothing about anything else. His mind is devel
oped in only one direction ; and, thrown suddenly on the
world with no chance of practising his one trade, he in a truly
deplorable situation.
Such men have not seen that the rational idea of
specialism, as exemplified in the careers of the most truly
successful men, is a specialism that does not usurp so large a
part of our time and energy that general culture may be neg
lected. A famous author says : “This world is a school for
the education, not of a faculty, but of a man, Just as in the
body, if I resolve to be a rower, the chances are that I shall
have, indeed, strong arms, but weak legs, and be stricken with
blindness from the glare of the water, so in the mind, if I care
but for one exercise, and do not consult the health of the
mind altogether, I may, like George Moreland, be a wonder
ful painter of pigs and pig-sties, but in all else, as a human
being, be below contempt—an ignoramus and a drunkard !”
Many people seem to think that for a man to do his best
in one branch of industry he should know nothing of any
others. That is, that broad and general learning is a hin
drance to success in some special branch of industry.
They iorget that the brain of man is not a store room
that can hold just so much learning and no more, but is a.
part of his body, developed like his muscle by every course of
exercise it goes through, and ( with a properly varied course )
continually approaching the limit of perfection. The leg-
muscles of a potter, who from morn to night works the treadle
of his potter’s wheel, are not symmetrically developed as
those of the man who has used his not nearly so much, but in
a varied and more natural way. Just so the mind of a man