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Rh of a prominent educator who in the strongest terms makes the same charge against systems like that of President Eliot. Professor Weissenfels of Berlin wrote in 1901: "In our times the moment comes relatively early when the special gifts and abilities of the individual try to assert themselves. But let it not be forgotten that there are brilliant abnormities. The talent for a special science, particularly mathematics, or for a special art, particularly music, even in childhood, gets a tyrannical ascendancy over everything else. Shall we give free play to it and foster it? Or shall we at first endeavor to counteract it, or at least keep from it all that could stimulate still more the inclination which is in itself too strong? Among the tolerably intelligent there is but one opinion: they distrust precociousness. ... It is justly considered want of common sense, nay more, a sin against the child's soul, to make advances to the impatience with which the special aptitude is trying to assert itself, and thus to add fuel to the fire." The author further calls this system a criminal mutilation of the soul, and maintains that the special talent, if unduly and prematurely fostered will be like a rank weed that stifles every other inclination and thus destroys all harmony of mind and character.

We hear now-a-days so much about the "sanctity of the individual's will" that one's idea of human nature may easily get confused. True, there is something sacred in human nature, because it is the image and likeness of its Maker. Still, that sanctity of man is not pure and unalloyed, that image is not altogether