384 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxv 



schoolmasters- — that important business of teaching the 

 teachers that they might set about scientific instruction in 

 the right way.* He attended the British Association at 

 Edinburgh, and laid down his Presidency; he brought out 

 his " Manual of Vertebrate Anatomy," and wrote a review 

 of " Mr. Darwin's Critics " (see p. 391, sq.), while on Octo- 

 ber 9 he delivered an address at the Midland Institute, 

 Birmingham, on " Administrative Nihilism " (Coll. Ess. i.). 

 This address, written between September 21 and 28, and 

 remodelled later, was a pendant to his educational cam- 

 paign on the School Board ; a re-statement and justification 

 of what he had said and done there. His text was the vari- 

 ous objections raised to State interference with education; 

 he dealt first with the upholders of a kind of caste system, 

 men who were willing enough to raise themselves and their 

 sons to a higher social plane, but objected on semi-theo- 

 logical grounds to anyone from below doing likewise — 

 neatly satirising them and their notions of gentility, and 

 quoting Plato in support of his contention that what is 

 wanted even more than means to help capacity to rise is 

 " machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity 

 from the higher strata to the lower." He repeats in new 

 phrase his warning " that every man of high natural ability, 

 who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a danger 

 to society as a rocket without a stick is to people who fire 

 it. Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an 

 explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow: and if know- 

 ledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, 

 the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run 

 a-muck among friends and foes." 



Another class of objectors will have it that government 

 should be restricted to police functions, both domestic and 

 foreign, that any further interference must do harm. 



J- 



Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that we accept 

 the proposition that the functions of the State may be properly 

 summed up in the one great negative commandment — " Thou 

 shalt not allow any man to interfere with the liberty of any 



* See pp. 389, 405, sf. 



