re
Committees, by the institution of schools with a special 'bias', to meet
the needs of different kinds of young people and to set them in the path
on which they are best fitted to travel.

In doing this the modern State is only trying to carry out the
principle laid down in the greatest book ever written on
education--Plato's _Republic_. Plato's object was to train every citizen
to fill the one position where he could lead the best life for the good
of the State. His aim was not to make his citizens happy but to promote
goodness; but he had enough faith in human nature--and who can be an
educational thinker without having faith in human nature?--to be
convinced that to enable men to 'do their bit', as we say to-day, was to
assure them of the truest happiness. We of this generation know how
abundantly that faith has been confirmed. And indeed we can appeal in
this matter not only to the common sense of Education Authorities or to
the philosophy of the ancients, but to the principles of the Christian
religion. The late Professor Smart, who was not only a good economist
but a good man; has some very pertinent words on this subject. 'If for
some reason that we know not of,' he remarks,[70]

this present is merely the first stage in being; if we are
all at school, and not merely pitched into the world by
chance to pick up our living as best we can ... it seems to
me that we have reason enough to complain of the existing
economic system.... I imagine that many of our churchgoing
people, if they ever get to the heaven they sing about, will
find themselves most uncomfortable, if it be a place for
which they have made no preparation but in the 'business' in
which they have earned their living.... A man's daily work
is a far greater thing towards the development of the God
that is in him than his wealth. And, however revolutionary
the idea is, I must say that all our accumulations of wealth
are little to the purpose of life if they do not tend
towards the giving to all men the opportunity of such work
as will have its reward _in the doing_.

And of his own particular life-work, teaching, he remarks, in words that
testify to his own inner peace and happiness, that 'some of us have got
into occupations which almost seem to guarantee immortality'.

Let us, then, boldly lay it down that the best test of progress in
industry and the best measure of succe