Its ideal is the educational ladder. Now there would be no objection to the educational ladder if people went down it as well as up, if, that is to say, men of small ability and character always sank in the social scale and men of great ability and character always rose. But so long as you have social classes maintained in their position, not by ability and character alone, but by the mere accident of possession, so long it will be true that to lift a man by education from one social stratum to another is to expose him to a terrible temptation—the temptation to despise his own people. And when once a man’s native sympathies have been rooted up, it is hard for any more to grow. There is real danger that the more modern type of education may serve to produce a race of self-seekers. But this modern type has great advantages. It is alive and in touch with the world at the moment; and the people who receive education of this kind will probably be very vitally aware of most of the living interests of their own time. But it fails to supply standards of judgment. Now, of course, no existing institution belongs purely and entirely to either of these types; but we can all think easily of institutions in which one or the other is the predominant characteristic. And one of our troubles is that most parents like the faults and dislike the virtues of both types. They like the aristocratic and exclusive tone of the traditional type; and they like the pushfulness and "get-on-in-the-world" tone of the modern type.