3/0 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



greater than the number of children in whom ability is inbred. 

 The ideal to be aimed at is, of course, that the most should 

 be made of all the ability of each generation, and, thus, the 

 ability-catching net must be thrown far and wide and not 

 confined to the best fishing grounds. This is the scientific 

 justification, from the point of view of the community, and apart 

 altogether from questions as to the happiness or success of 

 individuals, which justifies large expense in helping ability 

 which might otherwise never overcome the initial difficulties 

 of want of money or of social position. Thus wider experience, 

 wider knowledge, and, last but not least, the greater intensity 

 of the struggle for existence have led to the general approval 

 of methods of endowment and State and municipal support 

 which our author condemned. 



But, if the fact that this great economic revolution has taken 

 place in the conditions under which University education is 

 provided be admitted — and few of us would either deny or 

 disapprove it — various consequences follow, which are fatal to 

 many of Adam Smith's contentions. 



He regarded it as desirable that the student or his friends 

 should control education by the power of giving to or with- 

 holding from particular individuals or institutions the fees which 

 they themselves paid, and that, in this way, the teacher should 

 be made responsible to the student and his friends only. 



It is unnecessary to enter into a lengthy a priori discussion 

 of this principle ; but it may be pointed out in passing that, if 

 endowments led to the deplorable condition of the older Uni- 

 versities in the eighteenth century, they are not inconsistent 

 with the enormously enhanced efficiency and activity which 

 those great institutions display in the twentieth. 



If free competition permitted the establishment of many 

 excellent private schools, it is responsible for the evils of 

 cramming. If the wretched condition of poor " Biler, the 

 Charitable Grinder," was caused by endowments, free com- 

 petition was responsible for Dr. Blimber and Mr. Whackford 

 Squeers. 



But, a priori arguments apart, and for reasons I have given, 

 education is now, and probably always will be, largely sup- 

 ported by endowments and subventions, and the more important 

 question is how this custom affects the relations of teacher and 

 pupil. Teachers are no longer paid, or solely paid, by their 



