I remember how old Dayton fretted in his chair, and tushed and pished
at that, even as I gave it, and afterwards we were treated to one of his
platitudinous harangues, he sitting back in his chair with that small
obstinate eye of his fixed on the ceiling, and a sort of cadaverous glow
upon his face, repeating--quite regardless of all my reasoning and all
that had been said by others in the debate--the sacred empty phrases
that were his soul's refuge from reality. "You may think it very
clever," he said with a nod of his head to mark his sense of his point,
"not to Trust in the People. I do." And so on. Nothing in his life or
work had ever shown that he did trust in the people, but that was
beside the mark. He was the party Liberal, and these were the party
incantations.

After my preliminary attack on vague democracy I went on to show that
all human life was virtually aristocratic; people must either recognise
aristocracy in general or else follow leaders, which is aristocracy in
particular, and so I came to my point that the reality of human progress
lay necessarily through the establishment of freedoms for the human best
and a collective receptivity and understanding. There was a disgusted
grunt from Dayton, "Superman rubbish--Nietzsche. Shaw! Ugh!" I sailed on
over him to my next 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 human