lves, in the
face of inadequate wages, is exemplary, and yet, somehow the results are
disappointing. The truth is, the development of _character_ is not in
proportion to the development of public and private education. The moral
standing of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; in
business, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards of
value have been confused, the line of demarcation between right and
wrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty,
service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controlling
motive, or at least the conscious aspiration, of active men.

This is not to say that these do not exist; the period that has seen the
retrogression has recorded also a reaction, and there are now perhaps
more who are fired by the ardent passion for active righteousness, than
for several generations, but the average is lower, for where, many times
in the past, there has been a broad, general average of decency, now the
disparity is great between the motives that drive society as a whole,
and its methods of operation, and the remnant that finds itself an
unimportant minority. Newspapers are perhaps hardly a fair criterion of
the moral status of a people--or of anything else for that matter--but
what they record, and the way they do it, is at least an indication of a
condition, and after every possible allowance has been made, what they
record is a very alarming standard of public and private morality, both
in the happenings themselves and in the fashion of their publicity.

No one would claim that the responsibility for this weakening of moral
standards rests predominantly on the shoulders of the educational system
of today; the causes lie far deeper than this, but the point I wish to
make is that the process has not been arrested by education, in spite of
its prevalence, and that therefore it is unwise to continue our
exclusive faith in its remedial offices. The faith was never well
founded. Education can do much, but what it does, or can do, is to
foster and develop _inherent possibilities,_ whether these are of
character, intelligence or aptitude: it cannot put into a boy or man
what was not there, _in posse,_ at birth, and humanly speaking, the
diversity of potential in any thousand units is limited only by the
number itself. Whether our present educational methods are those best
calculated to foster and develop these inherent possibilities, so varied