David Jack, an online friend of mine, has done an amazing job of editing McDonald's work here. You can read (or try to read) the original dialogue when GM used "Scots"/or you can look at the parallel for the english translation. George McDonald is my all time favorite author. Read anything of his that has been edited by Michael Phillips (who wrote the intro to David Jack's work) and be blessed, taught, encouraged and challenged.
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"It is good that children of faculty, as distinguished from capacity, should not have too many books to read, or too much of early lessoning. The increase of examinations in our country will increase its capacity and diminish its faculty. We shall have more compilers and reducers and fewer thinkers; more modifiers and completers, and fewer inventors."
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So, yeah... this was first published in 1868. As a family of educators watching children pushed earlier and earlier to "get lessoned" rather than to play and explore at an early age... well, MacDonald was spot on.
But hey! It is a fun novel, in the meantime!
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