University education should therefore be regarded as a privilege for special ability, and those who possess the skill but no money should be maintained at the public expense during their course. No one should be admitted unless he satisfies the tests of ability, and no one should be allowed to remain unless he satisfies the authorities that he is using his time to advantage. The idea of the university as a place of leisure where rich young men loaf for three or four years is dying, but, like Charles II, it is an unconscionable time about it. When I say that a young man or woman at the university should not be allowed to be idle, I must hasten to add that the tests of work must not consist in a mechanical conformity to system. In the newer universities in England and America there is a regrettable tendency to insist upon attendance at innumerable lectures. The arguments in favour of individual work, which are allowed to be strong in the case of infants in a Montessori school, are very much stronger in the case of young people of twenty, particularly when, as we are assuming, they are keen and exceptionally able. When I was an undergraduate, my feeling, and that of most of my friends, was that lectures were a pure waste of time. No doubt we exaggerated, but not much. The real reason for lectures is that they are obvious work, and therefore business men are willing to pay for them. If university teachers adopted the best methods, business men would think them idle, and insist upon cutting down the staff. Oxford and Cambridge, because of their prestige, are to some extent able to apply the right methods; but the newer universities are unable to stand up against business men, and so are most American universities. The teacher should, at the beginning of the term, give a list of books to be read carefully, and a slight account of other books which some may like and others not. He should set papers, which can only be answered by noticing the important points in the books intelligently. He should see the pupils individually when they have done their papers. About once a week or once a fortnight, he should see such as care to come in the evening, and have desultory conversation about matters more or less connected with their work. All this is not very different from the practice at the older universities. If a pupil chooses to set himself a paper, different from that of the teacher but equally difficult, he shall be at liberty to do so. The industry of the pupils can be judged by their papers.