work--two seemingly antagonistic tendencies, equally deleterious in
their action, and ultimately combining to produce their results: a
striving to achieve the greatest possible _expansion_ of education on
the one hand, and a tendency to _minimise and weaken_ it on the
other. The first-named would, for various reasons, spread learning
among the greatest number of people; the second would compel education
to renounce its highest, noblest and sublimest claims in order to
subordinate itself to some other department of life--such as the
service of the State.

"I believe I have already hinted at the quarter in which the cry for
the greatest possible expansion of education is most loudly raised.
This expansion belongs to the most beloved of the dogmas of modern
political economy. As much knowledge and education as possible;
therefore the greatest possible supply and demand--hence as much
happiness as possible:--that is the formula. In this case utility is
made the object and goal of education,--utility in the sense of
gain--the greatest possible pecuniary gain. In the quarter now under
consideration culture would be defined as that point of vantage which
enables one to 'keep in the van of one's age,' from which one can see
all the easiest and best roads to wealth, and with which one controls
all the means of communication between men and nations. The purpose of
education, according to this scheme, would be to rear the most
'current' men possible,--'current' being used here in the sense in
which it is applied to the coins of the realm. The greater the number
of such men, the happier a nation will be; and this precisely is the
purpose of our modern educational institutions: to help every one, as
far as his nature will allow, to become 'current'; to develop him so
that his particular degree of knowledge and science may yield him the
greatest possible amount of happiness and pecuniary gain. Every one
must be able to form some sort of estimate of himself; he must know
how much he may reasonably expect from life. The 'bond between
intelligence and property' which this point of view postulates has
almost the force of a moral principle. In this quarter all culture is
loathed which isolates, which sets goals beyond gold and gain, and
which requires time: it is customary to dispose of such eccentric
tendencies in education as systems of 'Higher Egotism,' or of 'Immoral
Culture--Epicureanism.' According to the morality reigning here, the