Note 7 — Chapter I · EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY.

There is an argument for caste in the modern fiction of a “beautiful economy of Nature,” which plants human beings in society as it does trees in the earth, and thus makes education consist in the action of environment upon man and in the reaction of man upon his environment. To support existence, man needs certain endowments; but the force of circumstances creates these very endowments. One man is predestined to be a Red Indian, another a Bushman, and still another an accountant; and in each case the function of education is to adapt the man to the place where Nature has fixed him. This modern justification of caste is adroitly worked out by Mr. Spencer in the first chapter of his Education. (P.)