thority of the State in the establishment and distribution
of the means of education. The local authority by its more intimate
knowledge of local circumstances is the most competent to judge of the
nature of the education suited to serve its own particular needs, and is
best qualified to undertake the distribution of the means.

But the obligation to take advantage of the means for the future benefit
of his children is a moral obligation placed upon the shoulders of the
individual parent. It becomes a legal obligation only when, and in so
far as, the moral obligation is not realised by a certain number of the
community. Certainly one reason for the making of the education of a
man's children a legal obligation is the protection of society against
the ignorance and wickedness of the minority, but the other and
principal aim is to endeavour to secure that what at first was imposed
as a merely external or legal obligation may pass into a moral and
inherent obligation, so that the individual from being governed by
outward restraint may in time be governed by an inward and self-imposed
ideal.

It is no doubt difficult in any particular case to determine exactly
what precise part of the cost should be allocated to each of the three
benefiting parties, but in any national organisation of the means of
education this threefold distribution of cost should somehow or other be
undertaken.

From this it follows, that while it may legitimately be laid down that
upon the State must fall the obligation of securing the adequate
provision and the due distribution of the means of education, yet the
further duty of the State in this respect is limited to the removing of
obstacles which stand in the way of the fulfilment of the parent's
obligation to educate his children, and to the securing to each child
equality of opportunity to obtain an education in kind and quality which
will serve to fit him hereafter to perform his special duty to society.

Although since 1891 elementary education has been practically free in
this country and the whole cost of its provision is now undertaken at
the public expense, yet except from the socialistic position that the
provision of education is a communal and not a personal and moral
obligation, this public provision of the funds for elementary education
can be upheld from the individualistic point of view only on two
grounds. In the first place, it might be maintained that the protective
benefit deri