All the same, I concede that the Scotch really do love learning. I gather, too, from unbiassed sources that they starve their mothers and make gin-mules of their fathers to get it. And when it is gotten, what a monstrous and unlovely possession it usually turns out to be. For your Scotchman always takes knowledge for wisdom. His learning consists wholly of “facts and figures,” all grouped methodically round that heaven-sent date, A.D. 1314,[9] and if you cannot tell him off-hand the salary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the population of Otaheite and the names of the fixed stars, he votes you a damned ignorant Southron, and goes about telling his friends that he shouldn’t wonder if you never went to “the schule.” It may rejoice him to know that his readiness to answer all manner of questions involving book learning is in point of fact the beginnings of a species of idiocy. Persons of whom this idiocy has got properly hold are styled by the medical profession “idiot _savants_.” “In all asylums,” says Professor Vivian Poore, “you will find idiot _savants_.… There used to be at Earlswood—and I saw him when I visited Earlswood—an idiot quite incapable of taking care of himself, but who had a most extraordinary memory. When I went to the asylum the superintendent said to me: ‘Ask that man anything you like.’ It was rather a strange thing to be told to do; I said: ‘What kind of thing shall I ask about?’ And he said: ‘Any ordinary bit of knowledge.’ I said: ‘Tell me about Socrates.’ The idiot then drew himself up like a child would who was about to repeat a lesson, gave a cough, and told me about Socrates.… He knew a great deal more about Socrates than I did; he knew when he was born, why he was condemned, the name of his wife, and everything that was essential to be known. This he repeated without difficulty. The superintendent gave a grin and said: ‘Would you like to ask him anything else?’ I was afraid that the man might ask me something. I said: ‘What do you know about comets?’ Immediately he gave me—I presume correctly—all the facts about the chief comets, their periods of revolution, the names of the best known, and so on. Nothing that had ever been read by this patient did he seem to forget. The words which had been read to him seemed to have stuck to the cells of his brain like so much superior glue, and nothing would eradicate it.”[10]