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THE HIGHER EDUCATION

tablished in reaction from the extreme evils of democracy,—a rule of the best, in some meaning of the word "best." But shall it be the man "best" to lead the populace by deceiving them, as the self-deceived or shrewdly hypocritical demagague has done so frequently in the past history of governments? Or shall it be the man, or the corporation, or the syndicate, whose length of purse and elasticity of conscience best stand the drain upon it made by the demands of the law-makers; shall it be the rule, by bribery, of the plutocracy? Or shall it be the rule of the men of liberal minds, of minds set free from bonds of prejudice and of avarice, and well acquainted with those laws of nature and of the soul, of man as a thinking, speaking, social, and religious being, which it is the business of a liberal education to impart? I sincerely hope that our really governing aristocracy in the country will be of this third class. And it is in the fitting of this class for the life which lies before them as the genuine aristocrats that the supreme value of a truly liberal education consists.