in nature and degree, is the question, and it is a question the answer
to which depends largely on whether we look on intelligence, capacity or
character as the thing of greatest moment. For those who believe that
character is the thing of paramount importance--amongst whom I count
myself--the answer must be in the negative.

Nor is an affirmative reply entirely assured when the question is asked
as to the results in the case of intellect and capacity. There are few
who would claim that in either of these directions the general standard
is now as high as it was, for example, in the last half of the last
century. The Great War brought to the front few personalities of the
first class, and the peace that has followed has an even less
distinguished record to date. We may say with truth, I think, that the
last ten years have provided greater issues, and smaller men to meet
them in the capacity of leaders, than any previous crisis of similar
moment. The art of leadership, and the fact of leadership, have been
lost, and without leadership any society, particularly a democracy, is
in danger of extinction.

Here again one cannot charge education with our lack of men of
character, intelligence and capacity to lead; as before, the causes lie
far deeper, but the almost fatal absence at this time of the
personalities of such force and power that they can captain society in
its hours of danger from war or peace, must give us some basis for
estimating the efficiency of our educational theory and practice, and
again raise doubts as to whether here also we shall be well advised if
we rely exclusively upon it as the ultimate saviour of society, while we
are bound to ask whether its methods, even of developing intelligence
and capacity, are the best that can be devised.

Another point worth considering is this. So long as we could lay the
flattering unction to our souls that acquired characteristics were
heritable, and that therefore if an outcast from Posen, migrating to
America, had taken advantage of his new opportunities and so had
developed his character-potential, amassed money and acquired a measure
of education and culture, he would automatically transmit something of
this to his offspring, who would start so much the further forward and
would tend normally to still greater advance, and so on _ad infinitum,_
so long we were justified in enforcing the widest measure of education
on all and sundry, and in waiting in hope for a f