healthy -
so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad
and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and
honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool,
and no fool who is not also a genius.
    When I talked about originality and genius to some gentlemen whom I met at a
supper party given by Mr. Thims in my honour, and said that original thought
ought to be encouraged, I had to eat my words at once. Their view evidently was
that genius was like offences - needs must that it come, but woe unto that man
through whom it comes. A man's business, they hold, is to think as his
neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad. And
really it is hard to see how the Erewhonian theory differs from our own, for the
word idiot only means a person who forms his opinions for himself.
    The venerable Professor of Worldly Wisdom, a man verging on eighty but still
hale, spoke to me very seriously on this subject in consequence of the few words
that I had imprudently let fall in defence of genius. He was one of those who
carried most weight in the university, and had the reputation of having done
more perhaps than any other living man to suppress any kind of originality.
    »It is not our business,« he said, »to help students to think for
themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well
should encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we
do, or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do.« In some respects,
however, he was thought to hold somewhat radical opinions, for he was President
of the Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge, and for the Completer
Obliteration of the Past.
    As regards the tests that a youth must pass before he can get a degree, I
found that they have no class lists, and discourage anything like competition
among the students; this, indeed, they regard as self-seeking and unneighbourly.
The examinations are conducted by way of papers written by the candidate on set
subjects, some of which are known to him beforehand, while others are devised
with a view of testing his general capacity and savoir faire.
    My friend the Professor of Worldly Wisdom was the terror of the greater
number of students; and, so far as I could judge, he very well might be, for