ch. All opportunities ought to be
considered as opportunities for service. As my brother David regarded
the possession of honours and wealth as demanding sacrifice for the
common good, so I regarded special knowledge and special culture as
means for advancing the culture of all. It is said to be human nature
when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic
ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that
altruistic ideas should also be cultivated. We see that in China an
aristocracy of letters--for it is through passing difficult
examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are
appointed--is no protection to the poor and ignorant from oppression or
degradation. It is true that the classics in China are very old, but so
are the literatures of Greece and Rome, on which so many university
degrees are founded; and it ought to be impressed upon all seekers
after academic honours that personal advantage is not the be-all and
end-all of their pursuits. In our democratic Commonwealth, although
there are some lower titles bestowed by the Sovereign on colonists more
or less distinguished, these are not hereditary, so that an aristocracy
is not hereditary. There may be an upper class, based on landed estate
or one on business success, or one on learning, but all tend to become
conservative as conservatism is understood in Australia. Safety is
maintained by the free rise from the lower to the higher. But all the
openings to higher education offered in high school and university do
not tempt the working man's children who want to earn wages as soon as
the law lets them go to work. Nor do they tempt their parents to their
large share of the sacrifice which young Scotch lads and even American
lads make to get through advanced studies. The higher education is
still a sort of preserve of the well-to-do, and when one thinks of how
greatly this is valued it seems a pity that it is not open to the
talents, to the industry, to the enthusiasm of all the young of both
sexes. But one exception I must make to the aloofness of people with
degrees and professions from the preventible evils of the world, and
that is in the profession that is the longest and the most
exacting--the medical profession. The women doctors whom I have met in
Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney have a keen sense of their
responsibility to the less fortunate. That probably is because medicine
as now understood and practised is the