greater power, ampler knowledge and more definite will our endeavours
will give it, to raise its successor still higher in the scale of life.
Or we may put the thing in another and more concrete and vivid way. On
the one hand imagine an average little child let us say in its second
year. We have discussed all that can be done to secure that this
average little child shall be well born, well fed, well cared for, and
we will imagine all that can be done has been done. Accordingly, we
have a sturdy, beautiful healthy little creature to go upon, just
beginning to walk, just beginning to clutch at things with its hands,
to reach out to and apprehend things with its eyes, with its ears, with
the hopeful commencement of speech. We want to arrange matters so that
this little being shall develop into its best possible adult form. That
is our remaining problem.

Is our contemporary average citizen the best that could have been made
out of the vague extensive possibilities that resided in him when he
was a child of two? It has been shown already that in height and weight
he, demonstrably, is not, and it has been suggested, I hope almost as
convincingly, that in that complex apparatus of acquisition and
expression, language, he is also needlessly deficient. And even upon
this defective foundation, it is submitted, he still fails, morally,
mentally, socially, aesthetically, to be as much as he might be. "As
much as he might be," is far too ironically mild. The average citizen
of our great state to-day is, I would respectfully submit, scarcely
more than a dirty clout about his own buried talents.

I do not say he might not be infinitely worse, but can any one believe
that, given better conditions, he might not have been infinitely
better? Is it necessary to argue for a thing so obvious to all clear-
sighted men? Is it necessary, even if it were possible, that I should