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 demonstrated the people's ability to obtain what they desire; it only remains to kindle their imagination with a vision of what they lack. Articles like that of our Eastern critic are dropping the necessary spark.

It is absurd to assert that great commonwealths of two to six million inhabitants cannot, in providing centres for the higher learning, compete successfully with the sporadic generosity of a few scores of private individuals. It is absurd to declare that a great commonwealth cannot afford to maintain in its university a liberal arts college of absolutely the first class, and within its own high school system ample and thorough preparation of its superior young men and women for entrance upon university studies. In the brutal tongue of the market, a high grade professor of philosophy or of classical philology is not a dearer commodity than a high grade professor of civil engineering or of soil fertility. The higher and the lower technical education which has already been provided is not less but more costly than equivalent provision for the so-called "humanities."

But to come to the heart of the whole matter, it is equally absurd to declare that the support of the people—the theoretical and applied approbation of the average man—cannot be organ-