Lord Selborne is not quite so much delighted with the
whole effect of the extension of education as Lord Rosebery. In distri- buting at Manchester on Wednesdaythe prizes gained by the can- didates for the Oxford Local Examinations, Lord Selborne, while guarding himself from being misunderstood to deprecate the spread of education, quoted profusely from an Oxford prize essay, written thirty-eight years ago by Mr. Harold Vaughan, which enlarges on the tendency of miscellaneous reading to excite a superficially critical, i.e., supercilious spirit, to promote the spread of an empirical and even sensuous philosophy, to weaken the spirit of subordination, which is the mortar of society, and to encourage " hastiness, precipitation, and immaturity of thought." No doubt there, is much to be said for all these charges against the influence of miscellaneous litera- ture, and the habits of mind- which the taste for miscel- laneous literature brings. With more activity of mind, there must be more grasp of error, as well as more grasp of truth. With more range of pleasures and pursuits there must be more false taste, as well as more good taste ; with more choice there must be more evil, as well as more good. And all that Mr. Harold Vaughan said, and Lord Selborne endorses, is practically included in that admission. But it does not follow that the new abundance of evil in thought, taste, and moral judgment is half as pernicious as the intellectual and moral blank for which it is substituted. Growth, no doubt, makes the world intricate and difficult ; but stunted natures are almost always worse than growing ones.
Previous page
