Thus, then, we may maintain our principle of the limits of distinctive State action. The peculiarity of it is that it allows of positive acts and interferences, motived by an ultimate positive {196} purpose, but with a bearing on that purpose which is primarily negative or indirect. However positive, as actual facts, are the conditions which it may become advisable to maintain, they may always, on the side which is distinctively due to State compulsion, be regarded as the hindrance of hindrances. And the _bona-fide_ application of this principle will really be, when aided by special experience, in some degree a valuable clue to what ought to be done. It is only putting in other words the rule of action followed by all practical men in matters of which they have genuine experience. We may think, for instance, of the problem involved in State maintenance of universities. It is easy to vote money, to build buildings, and to pass statutes. But none of these things will secure the objects of a university. Money and buildings and statutes may throw open an arena, so to speak, for the work of willing minds in learning and education. But the work itself is in a different medium from anything which can be produced by compulsion, and is so far less vital as it is conditioned by the operation of force upon minds which demand no work of the kind. But here we meet a difficulty of principle. Do we say that no external conditions are more than hindrances of hindrances to the best life? Do we deny that the best life can be positively promoted by external conditions; or if we admit this, do we still deny that it can be positively promoted by the work of the State? The answer has already been implied, but may be explicitly restated. We refused [1] to separate mind from its embodiment in {197} material things, and so to be drawn into a purely inward theory of morality, It would be exaggeration to call such external conditions as, _e.g_., first-rate educational apparatus, [2] mere negative conditions of the best life. But then, we are now asked, cannot the State supply such external conditions by expenditure compulsorily provided for, and if so, is not our principle destroyed, viz., the limitation of State action to the hindrance of hindrances? [1] Page 31. [2] See Thring on the importance of this, in Parkin’s life of him. Note, however, also the modification of his view by the adventure of Uppingham on the Sea.