Note 1 — Chapter VIII · EDUCATION A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE

Conceiving, what I have all along endeavoured to show is reasonable to conceive, that all social institutions will be governed with ever-increasing intelligence and rationality as time goes on, and that they could not possibly be tolerated otherwise, it is easy to see that education as hitherto and at present practised would never do for our grandchildren, let alone for our more advanced descendants a hundred years hence. To begin with, parents in that era would certainly consider it hopelessly and criminally unethical, if not actively immoral. Projects of reform, especially in morals, are often dismissed as visionary, because it is pointed out that no changes can take place in the social order which do not appeal directly to the self-interest of the individual. In other words, there is no mainspring of social action except aggregated selfishness. Without delaying to examine the validity of the belief, it may be said at once that its full acceptance is no obstacle to the admission of the whole case on which is founded the belief that education will be conducted chiefly with a view to its moral effect at the period I am attempting to describe. The very circumstances on which writers rely, who predict the ethical deterioration of man, are those which make the ethical reform of education inevitable. Precisely in proportion as competition tends to harden and debase, there will arise the unavoidable necessity for deliberate counter-action of this tendency, resulting, as the effect of the measures necessitated becomes felt, in the changes of commercial and political conditions already1 predicted. If we consider at all thoughtfully the necessities of a hundred years hence, it is not difficult to foresee the general lines upon which they are likely to be met—lines not necessary to be accepted as representing a perfect or ideal state, but broadly indicating the methods which the effect of visible tendencies will by that time demand of a practical people.