What is perhaps
worse than any of these defects is the tendency
to cause overwork in youth, leading to lack of vigor
and interest when manhood has been reached. It
can hardly be doubted that by this cause, at present,
many fine minds have their edge blunted and their
keenness destroyed.
State Socialism might easily universalize the
system of scholarships obtained by competitive examination,
and if it did so it is to he feared that it
would be very harmful. State Socialists at present
tend to be enamored of the systems which is exactly
of the kind that every bureaucrat loves: orderly,
neat, giving a stimulus to industrious habits, and
involving no waste of a sort that could be tabulated
in statistics or accounts of public expenditure.
Such men will argue that free higher education is
expensive to the community, and only useful in the
case of those who have exceptional abilities; it
ought, therefore, they will say, not to be given to all,
but only to those who will become more useful members
of society through receiving it. Such arguments
make a great appeal to what are called ``practical''
men, and the answers to them are of a sort which it
is difficult to render widely convincing. Revolt
against the evils of competition is, however, part
of the very essence of the Socialist's protest against
the existing order, and on this ground, if on no other,
those who favor Socialism may be summoned to look
for some better solution.
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