The Daily News. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1912. THE SPECIALISTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 214, 8 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1912. THE SPECIALISTS.

No individual does many things well, but thousands of individuals can do one thing well if they try. There have been very few celebrities celebrated in more than one branch of science or art or outstanding usefulness. There is no place in the world for "Jacks-of-all-trades." The other day a famous specialist, Sir 'Henniker Heaton, spoke to young men in Sydney and said some wise words. He said that as far as politics were concerned everyone could not be a Gladstone," a Palmerston, or a Disraeli, but he would advise every young fellow ambitious for good, everyone who had not the all-round great qualities of these statesmen, to try-, to become a sort of Paganini and play perfectly on one string. He hoped to live to see the day ( when Australia would send a young fellow to be Prime Minister of England, to win the Derby, or a .young fellow to be Archbishop of Canterbury or Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, though he: was, told that these ecclesiastical appointments would be the more difficult because of the great absence of veneration among the young people. But lie would warn every aspirant for distinction that one quality was necessary, and that without it a young man was doomed to failure. This quality was not knowledge, though this was absolutely necessary; it was not eloquence, though this was most helpful; it was not force of character and the hide of a rhinoceros, though it was essential —it was belief in one's cause. Without this faith or belief wholly engrossing one's mind, concluded Sir Henniker Heaton, the critics of the great men and the simple would soon find one out. A man (or a woman) cannot become engrossed in a dozen specialties, for no human mind is capable of grasping and retaining a very large quantity of knowledge. The world is calling for specialists; not the men who believe they know everything, but the men who are so convinced they know very little about any one subject that they intend to learn all that is to be learned about that one subject. We are apt to regard as ignorant the people who do not know the small .matters that we are acquainted with. ,We have heard a man declare his disgust for a person who could not milk cows. The engineer who is putting through the Panama Canal would probably be an arrant failure on a dairy farm. In our system of what we call "education," for want of a better word, we endeavor to stuff into small heads a mixture that makes it impossible for the small heads to specialise until their owners are free

from the stultifying trammels of the ordinary cut-and-dried mechanical school. •We assume tliat a youngster who has grabbed all the prizes for all the subjects to be a smart youngster. We have .only to watch this small human sponge ,being squeezed by the workaday world to understand that his power of concentration on any one useful object has been fractured. It is much more useful to the world that a man shall be a good navvy than that he should be a bad mathematician. The choice of an occupation in life is, as far as the average parent is concerned, merely a matter of parental ambition. A parent may believe that it is eminently respectable to be a lawyer or an engineer or any other kind of professional person. Too often | the inclinaion or ability of youngsters is left out of the question altogether. The belief that one may take a mass of human material and mould it as you ; will is at the basis of the wretched system which supplies misfits to the world. Ideas about schooling dies slowly. There are people yet alive who believe that a child of artistic tendencies, who is simply incapable of being mathematical or precise, should have mathematics flogged into him with a cane, or that he should ■;be worried to death by stupid people who conceive everyone to be dull because they do not know the things the stupid people take a pride in. The men who have believed in their cause are the specialists of the world. The specialist is frequently what the world calls a "crank." The crank is so engrossed in his belief that he does not notice that the world is "guying" him. The inventor of the railway engine was guyed. He was a crank, but he stuck to his belief. If a "crank" had been disheartened by stupid persons we should have had no telephones. It is the man who has faith in his cause who wins through, and it is the man who does . not mix his knowledge who is able to have faith. When national reforms take place, when a country is stirred to its depths, when history is being made, do not look at the people. The people are the flock. They follow the specialist. You must look for the man in all great undertakings, whether it be a war, an engineering triumph, a revolution or a religious revival. None of these things is spontaneous, or national or general. Master minds move nations and the master minds are the specialists who have "belief in the cause." Wherever you find a man who is proud, of the variety of his attainments, be sure he knows no single thing very well. He will be in the rear and not in the van when there is a forlorn hope to be led. The hallmark of eminence is humility and there never was a great leader who was not convinced of the paucity of his knowledge.