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next spoke of the good work being done by the 

 league through their courses of lectures, and inci- 

 dentally referred to gratuitous teaching in a way 

 that reminds one of the Athenian opponents of the 

 sophists. This principle, Mr. Harrison insi£,ted, is 

 essential to any high standard of educational 

 good. 



It is practically impossible to give any adequate 

 remuneration for really good teaching. True 

 knowledge is priceless ; the teacher must have been 

 taught by a thousand influences and long genera- 

 tions of teachers ; and who would say whence 

 came that idea, or what that particular- thought 

 was worth, or how much per hour ought to be paid 

 for good advice? The forming of a mind, the 

 fortifying of a human soul, has no market-price, 

 and is best when freely bestowed. Those who 

 have been taught, ought, by the laws of the 

 chivalry of culture, to teach. It is said that peo- 

 ple are apt not to value that for which they do 

 not pa}' ; that the work which is not paid for is 

 not well done. There are no doubt cases where 

 this statement holds good ; but no money will buy 

 a competent prime minister or an Archbishop of 

 Canterbury, or can really , compensate a good 

 teacher. Mr. Harrison had no objection to paid 

 lecturers in their proper place ; but all knew how 

 strong was the inducement for a paid lecturer to 

 amuse rather than to instruct. The teacher ought 

 to be in the position of the higher and wiser helj)- 

 ing the weaker and less instructed ; and no soph- 

 istry or convention could obscure that truth. It is 

 the very first duty of the teacher to make the 

 learner feel his shortcomings, and press him to use 

 his mind more strenuously than before. He hoped 

 that the league would hold on to the gratuitous 

 principle as its very life-blood. The central idea 

 of the league was that politics could be made a 

 subject of systematic education. This idea was 

 the most important discovery of the age ; it was 

 the most potent advance made in the history of 

 human thought. Down to the close of the last 

 century it had been thought that the immutable 

 lavvs of science were possible only in the physical 

 "world ; and it was only in our present century that 

 a general but vague impression had filled the pub- 

 lic mind that there was some such thing as a social 

 science, no less than a physical science. By com- 

 mon consent the science had two great sides, — in 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer's langiiage, the statical and 

 the dynamical. The study of institutions and the 

 study of history, the knowledge of the perma- 

 nent elements in any society and of the course 

 which that society had taken in its evolution, — 

 these were the two great instruments, going side 

 by side, of their educational work, — the analysis 

 of institutions on the one hand, and the philosophy 



of history on the other. The history of England 

 had been studied scientifically only within the 

 present generation, and the effect on the politics 

 of our time was now very visible and profoundly 

 active. Looking at the legislation of the last fifty 

 years, we should find that it had been in a marked 

 and increasing degree based upon something which 

 might be called euphemistically history, social 

 science, and political philosophy. Turn whichever 

 way we would, in legislation we found that states- 

 men made an effort to get guidance and inspira- 

 tion from those principles. The idea that they 

 ought to do so, distinguished the nineteenth cen- 

 tury from the eighteenth, and the sixteen preced- 

 ing centuries ; and our children in the twentieth 

 century might see the idea fully developed. It 

 was still in an infant, even an embryo, state, and 

 was not a science constituted and systematized. It 

 would be, however, a complete misconception to 

 assume that we could not bring science to bear 

 upon society until it was fully constituted. To 

 bring habits of scientific training to bear on things 

 social is a modest aim enough, but is one which 

 might be of exceeding usefulness in the din of 

 party and the daily battle of bills, clauses, and per- 

 sonal ccmbats. Such lectures as the syllabus of 

 the league comprised, carefully handled by men 

 able to discriminate between knowledge and prej- 

 udice, must clear the air and sober the excitement 

 of political debate. We have now arrived at such 

 a stage that we have committed the destinies of 

 races in the aggregate more numerous than those 

 which obeyed Xerxes, or Alexander, or Caesar, to 

 the millions of electors of these islands, and the 

 place of England in mankind rested on the event of 

 that great problem. The board schools, halfpenny 

 newspapers, and cheap literature are not enough 

 for the education of our masters. Mr. Harrison 

 said that he knew something of working-men, and 

 he felt pretty sure that they would never take 

 their opinions from any one, but form them for 

 themselves ; and the league, at any rate, did not 

 seek to give them opinions. It was to help in 

 forming and training their minds that the league 

 offered to put them in the path of thinking 

 broadly, cautiously, and with system, and to feel 

 how subtle and orderly a thing was the organiza- 

 tion of any human society ; and all this might be 

 done without being supposed to have mastered 

 social science, or without wishing to impose upon 

 men indisputable dogmas of any kind. The best 

 education of the present day was very far from 

 reaching a high standard in method, completeness, 

 or coherence ; but, such as it was, it must be ac- 

 cepted and used. It would be the unwisest course 

 of all to be forever disputing what a good educa- 

 tion ought to be, instead of using the imperfect 



