THE NATIONAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION. 53 



a child to earn its living should in the interest of the community receive 

 prompt attention and the most skilful treatment available. Special 

 schools for children who are crippled, blind, deaf, feeble-minded or 

 otherwise afflicted should be provided at the public cost, from motives, 

 not of mere philanthropy, but of enlightened self-interest. So far as 

 they improve the capacity of such children they lighten the burden on 

 the community. 



I make no apology for having dwelt thus long upon the necessity of 

 a sound system of primary instruction: that is the only foundation 

 upon which a national system of advanced education can be built. 

 Without it our efforts and our money will be thrown away. But while 

 primary instruction should be provided for, and even enforced upon, 

 all, advanced instruction is for the few. It is the interest of the com- 

 monwealth at large that every boy and girl showing capacities above 

 the average should be caught and given the best opportunities for 

 developing those capacities. It is not its interest to scatter broadcast 

 a huge system of higher instruction for any one who chooses to take 

 advantage of it, however unfit to receive it. Such a course is a waste 

 of public resources. The broadcast education is necessarily of an in- 

 ferior character, as the expenditure which public opinion will at 

 present sanction is only sufficient to provide education of a really high 

 calibre for those whose ultimate attainments will repay the nation for 

 its outlay on their instruction. It is essential that these few should 

 not belong to one class or caste, but should be selected from the mass 

 of the people, and be really the intellectual elite of the rising genera- 

 tion. It must, however, be confessed that the arrangements for select- 

 ing these choice scholars to whom it is remunerative for the community 

 to give advanced instruction are most imperfect. jSTo ^capacity-catch- 

 ing machine' has been invented which does not perform its function 

 most imperfectly: it lets go some it ought to keep, and it keeps some 

 it ought to let go. Competitive examination, besides spoiling more or 

 less the education of all the competitors, fails to pick out those capable 

 of the greatest development. It is the smartest, who are also some- 

 times the shallowest, who succeed. 'Whoever thinks in an examina- 

 tion,' an eminent Cambridge tutor used to say, 'is lost.' Nor is 

 position in class obtained by early progress in learning an infallible 

 guide. The dunce of the school sometimes becomes the profound 

 thinker of later life. Some of the most brilliant geniuses in art and 

 science have only developed in manhood. They would never in their 

 boyhood have gained a county scholarship in a competitive examina- 

 tion. 



In primary schools, while minor varieties are admissible, those, 

 for instance, between town and country, the public instruction pro- 

 vided is mainly of one type ; but any useful scheme of higher education 



