CHARACTER AND INTELLECT
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—The article in your issue of August 24th on " Character and Intellect " raises questions of vital interest to the nation, but to say that the keenly intelligent man is sufficiently rare to appear strange and uncommon in most communities or that he is disturbing and distrusted is surely absurd, except in spheres of the narrowest orthodoxy. Nor is there any confusion in the world at large between intelligence and character. The term " intelligence " is used somewhat loosely.
The difficulty the country is up against is that our educational system, with its stress upon examinations, tends to produce a type of man with some intellectual training but without any high order of intelligence or character. The orthodoxy of the Public School training produces a type disinclined to diverge from orthodox ideas and too often incapable " of grasping an idea—often a new idea—and its implications." What people are shy of is the intellectually-trained man who has no understanding of the world about him, no power to observe accurately, no vision, no real humanity.
The leader of men must have all of these and an understand- ing of men. Not only an intellectual understanding, but an understanding that comes from experience and sympathy. The ever-recurring problem in filling positions is not to get men of sufficient intellectual training but to find men of intelligence and understanding. The finer intelligence," the clearer and nobler vision " the writer speaks of can only be developed by a new order of educational ideals. That they should be developed is of the utmost importance to the
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