st-instanced one, I
lend her my books, and give her, for what they are worth, my time and
most careful teaching, because she at present paints butterflies better
than any other girl I know, and has a peculiar capacity for the
softening of plumes and finessing of antennae. Grant me to be a good
teacher, and grant her disposition to be such as I suppose, and the
result will be what might at first appear an indefensible iniquity,
namely, that this girl, who has already excellent gifts, having also
excellent teaching, will become perhaps the best butterfly-painter in
England; while myriads of other girls, having originally inferior
powers, and attracting no attention from the Slade Professor, will
utterly lose their at present cultivable faculties of entomological art,
and sink into the vulgar career of wives and mothers, to which we have
Mr. Mill's authority for holding it a grievous injustice that any girl
should be irrevocably condemned.

181. There is no need that I should be careful in enumerating the
various modes, analogous to this, in which the Natural selection of
which we have lately heard, perhaps, somewhat more than enough, provokes
and approves the Professorial selection which I am so bold as to defend;
and if the automatic instincts of equity in us, which revolt against the
great ordinance of Nature and practice of Man, that "to him that hath,
shall more be given," are to be listened to when the possessions in
question are only of wisdom and virtue, let them at least prove their
sincerity by correcting, first, the injustice which has established
itself respecting more tangible and more esteemed property; and
terminating the singular arrangement prevalent in commercial Europe that
to every man with a hundred pounds in his pocket there shall annually be
given three, to every man with a thousand, thirty, and to every man with
nothing, none.

182. I am content here to leave under the scrutiny of the evening my
general statement, that as human development, when moral, is with
special effort in a given direction, so, when moral, it is with special
effort in favour of a limited class; but I yet trespass for a few
moments on your patience in order to note that the acceptance of this
second principle still leaves it debatable to what point the disfavour
of the reprobate class, or the privileges of the elect, may advisably
extend. For I cannot but feel for my own part as if the daily bread of
moral instruction mig