propositions. The prime essential in a progressive civilisation was

the establishment of a more effective selective process for the

privilege of higher education, and the very highest educational

opportunity for the educable. We were too apt to patronise

scholarship winners, as though a scholarship was toffee given as a

reward for virtue. It wasn't any reward at all; it was an

invitation to capacity. We had no more right to drag in virtue, or

any merit but quality, than we had to involve it in a search for the

tallest man. We didn't want a mere process for the selection of

good as distinguished from gifted and able boys-"No, you DON'T,"

from Dayton-we wanted all the brilliant stuff in the world

concentrated upon the development of the world. Just to exasperate

Dayton further I put in a plea for gifts as against character in

educational, artistic, and legislative work. "Good teaching," I

said, "is better than good conduct. We are becoming idiotic about

character."

Dayton was too moved to speak. He slewed round upon me an eye of

agonised aversion.

I expatiated on the small proportion of the available ability that

is really serving humanity to-day. "I suppose to-day all the

thought, all the art, all the increments of knowledge that matter,

are supplied so far as the English-speaking community is concerned

by-how many?-by three or four thousand individuals. ('Less,' said

Thorns.) To be more precise, by the mental hinterlands of three or

four thousand individuals. We who know some of the band entertain

no illusions as to their innate rarity. We know that they are just

the few out of many, the few who got in our world of chance and

confusion, the timely stimulus, the apt suggestion at the fortunate

moment, the needed training, the leisure. The rest are lost in the

crowd, fail through the defects of their qualities, become

commonplace workmen and second-rate professional men, marry

commonplace wives, are as much waste as the driftage of superfluous

pollen in a pine forest is waste."

"Decent honest lives!" said Dayton to his bread-crumbs, with his

chin in his necktie. "WASTE!"

"And the people who do get what we call opportunity get it usually

in extremely limited and cramping forms. No man lives a life of

intellectual productivity alone; he needs not only material and

opportunity, but helpers, resonators. Round and about what I might

call the REAL men, you want the sympathetic cooperators, who help by

understanding. It isn't that our-SALT of three or four thousand is

needlessly rare; it is sustained by far too small and

undifferentiated a public. Most of the good men we know are not

really doing the very best work of their gifts; nearly all are a

little adapted, most are shockingly adapted to some second-best use.

Now, I take it, this is the very centre and origin of the muddle,

futility, and unhappiness that distresses us; it's the cardinal

problem of the state-to discover, develop, and use the exceptional

gifts of men. And I see that best done-I drift more and more away

from the common stuff of legislative and administrative activity-by

a quite revolutionary development of the educational machinery, but

by a still more unprecedented attempt to keep science going, to keep

literature going, and to keep what is the necessary spur of all

science and literature, an intelligent and appreciative criticism

going. You know none of these things have ever been kept going

hitherto; they've come unexpectedly and inexplicably."

"Hear, hear!" from Dayton, cough, nodding of the head, and an

expression of mystical profundity.

"They've lit up a civilisation and vanished, to give place to

darkness again. Now the modern state doesn't mean to go back to

darkness again-and so it's got to keep its light burning." I went

on to attack the present organisation of our schools and

universities, which seemed elaborately designed to turn the well-

behaved, uncritical, and uncreative men of each generation into the

authoritative leaders of the next, and I suggested remedies upon

lines that I have already indicated in the earlier chapters of this

story…

So far I had the substance of the club with me, but I opened new

ground and set Crupp agog by confessing my doubt from which party or

combination of groups these developments of science and literature

and educational organisation could most reasonably be expected. I

looked up to find Crupp's dark little eye intent upon me.

There I left it to them.

We had an astonishingly good discussion; Neal burst once, but we

emerged from his flood after a time, and Dayton had his interlude.

The rest was all close, keen examination of my problem.

I see Crupp now with his arm bent before him on the table in a way