“172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to vulgar pride, is this--that all its gains are at compound interest; so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page a-head, two pages, ten pages--and evermore, though each toils equally, the interval enlarges--at birth nothing, at death infinite.” So much for one relation of this question to Socialism. Quite lately (_The New Age_, April 11th, 1908) Mr. Havelock Ellis has summed the matter up as follows:-- “Education has been put at the beginning, when it ought to have been put at the end. It matters comparatively little what sort of education we give children; the primary matter is what sort of children we have got to educate. That is the most fundamental of questions. It lies deeper even than the great question of Socialism versus Individualism, and indeed touches a foundation that is common to both. The best organised social system is only a house of cards if it cannot be constructed with sound individuals; and no individualism worth the name is possible, unless a sound social organisation permits the breeding of individuals who count. On this plane Socialism and Individualism move in the same circle.” We cannot agree with Socialism when, as we think, it assumes that all evil is of economic or of educational origin. The student of heredity finds elements of evil abundant in poisoned germ-plasm and not absent from the best. Surely, surely, the products of progress are not mechanisms but men; and surely no economic system as such can be the only mechanism worth naming--which would be one that made men. The germ-plasm is such a mechanism, indeed; and hence its quality is all important. But if Socialism, sooner than any other party, is going to identify itself with the economic principle of Ruskin that “there is no wealth but life”; and if in its discussion of the conditions of industry it will concern itself primarily with the culture of the racial life, which is the vital industry of any people (and basis enough for a New Imperialism, or at least a New Patriotism, that might be quite decent); if so, then it seems to me that we must look to the socialists for salvation. But books which describe future externals, books which assume that education is a panacea, forgetting that education can educate only what heredity gives, turn us away again when we are almost persuaded. The _economic_ panacea must fail (at least as a panacea); the _educational_ panacea must fail; the _eugenic_ panacea may not fail. * * * * *