INTRODUCTORY 5 



higher education — in short, for religious, semi-reh'gious, 

 and non-rehgious movements of all types. Out of this 

 chaos ought at least to come some good ; but how shall 

 we set the good against the evil which too often arises 

 from ill-defined, or even undefined, appropriation of those 

 resources which the nation has spared by the hard labour 

 of the past, or can obtain by drawing on the future's 

 credit ? 



The responsibility of individuals, especially with regard 

 to wealth, is great, so great that we see a growing tendency 

 of the state to interfere in the administration of private 

 charities and to regulate the great educational institutions 

 endowed by private or semi-public benefactions in the 

 past. But this tendency to throw back the responsibility 

 from the individual upon the state is really only throwing 

 it back on the social conscience of the citizens as a body 

 — the " tribal conscience," as Professor Clifford was wont 

 to call it. The wide extension of the franchise for both 

 local and central representation has cast a greatly in- 

 creased responsibility on the individual citizen. He is 

 brought face to face with the most conflicting opinions 

 and with the most diverse party cries. The state has 

 become in our day the largest employer of labour, the 

 greatest dispenser of charity, and, above all, the school- 

 master with the biggest school in the community. Directly 

 or indirectly the individual citizen has to find some reply 

 to the innumerable social and educational problems of the 

 day. He requires some guide in the determination of his 

 own action or in the choice of fitting representatives. He 

 is thrust into an appalling maze of social and educational 

 problems ; and if his tribal conscience has any stuff in it, 

 he feels that these problems ought not to be settled, so 

 far as he has the power of settling them, by his own 

 personal interests, by his individual prospects of profit or 

 loss. He is called upon to form a judgment apart, if it 

 possibly may be, from his own feelings and emotions — a 

 judgment in what he conceives to be the interests of 

 society at large. It may be a difficult thing for the large 

 employer of labour to form a right judgment in matters of 



