What is the import of these two words ‘private education’? _Private_ is that which hath respect in all circumstances to some particular case; _public_ in all circumstances regardeth every one alike. _Education_ is the bringing up of one, not to live alone, but amongst others, because company is our natural medium; whereby he shall be best able to perform all those functions in life which his position shall require, whether public or private, in the interest of his country in which he was born, and to which he owes his whole service. All these functions are in reality public, and concern everyone, even when they seem most private, because individual ends must be adjusted to wider social ends; and yet people give the preference to private education where all the circumstances are peculiar to one learner; as if he who was brought up alone were always to live alone, or as if one should say, ‘I will have you to deal with all, but never to see all; your end shall be public, but your means shall be private.’ How can education be private? It is an abuse of the name as well as of the thing. This isolation, for a pretended advantage in education, of those who must afterwards pass on together, is very mischievous, as it allows every parent to follow out his own whims, relying on the privacy of his own house to be free from criticism, on the subserviency of the teacher whom he may choose to suit his own purposes, and on the submission of his child who is bound to obey him on pain of meeting his displeasure. In public schools such swerving from what is generally approved is impossible. The master is always in the public eye, what he teaches is known to all; the child is not alone, and he learns only what has been submitted to the judgment of the community. Whatever inconveniences may be inseparable from schools, still greater arise in private education. It puffs up the recluse with pride; it is an enemy to sympathy between those who have unequal opportunities; it fosters self-conceit in the absence of comparison with others; it encourages contempt in the superior, and envy in the inferior. This kind of education which soweth the seed of dissension by discovering differences, where the fruits of a common upbringing should be seen in the firm knitting of social bonds, should be discouraged owing to its effect in instilling the poison of spite. Certainly the thing doth naturally tend this way, though its influence may be often interrupted in time by the pressure of public opinion. But if the child turn out better then I have forecast, and show himself courteous, it will be due to his natural goodness, or to his experience outside, not to the kind of education which brings no such courtesy, though the child may see it in his parents, and read of it in his books. Sometimes it maketh him too sheepishly bashful when he comes to the light, owing to his being unaccustomed to company. More commonly, however, he is