the
same state of things, and the problem will one day have to be faced:
'How is the burden of the cost of education to be returned to the
shoulders of those who are responsible for it?' In this paper we are
concerned with a smaller question. A very inconsiderable section of the
people really want the Free Library; the question at the polls is
generally treated with apathy, and only a very small proportion of the
ratepayers record their votes one way or the other. As a matter of fact
the Free Library is forced upon the public by a number of doctrinaire
believers in the superhuman value of a mere literary education. It is
not a popular want. The vast majority of people have still a greater
faith in the training which results from practical contact with the real
facts of life, and still only regard book-learning as a useful
supplement, easily obtainable by those who really desire it and are
likely to profit by it.

The history of the Education Acts is very analogous. The literary
classes became alarmed at the ignorance of the poor, and instead of
allowing the efforts of philanthropists, aided by the growing
appreciation of education amongst the labouring class--already giving
great promise of providing a true and voluntary remedy for the supposed
evil--to work out a system of education on natural and healthy lines of
spontaneous evolution, a course which would have added dignity and
stability to the domestic life of the parents and given a real and
technical system of education to the children--instead of this, the
hasty politician rushed forward crying. 'The people do not want
education, so we must compel them.' The compulsory and demoralizing
character of the means reacts on the otherwise advantageous nature of
the end, and the result is a mind-destroying system of cram for the
children; summons, fines, and police for the parents. This is how the
politician makes education a lovely and desirable thing. It is almost
impossible to over-estimate the evils resulting from the State not
allowing teachers and parents to adjust the educational arrangements so
as to meet the felt requirements of the case. This communal despotism
strikes at the very foundation of personal virtue, viz. the home, the
instrument by which nature lifts human character above the non-moral
sensuousness of the animal world. Let us never forget that the human
mind is made up of lower and higher elements, and that the removal of
personal duties--the pract