sacrifice for the common good, so I regarded special knowledge and special culture as means for advancing the culture of all.  It is said to be human nature when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that altruistic ideas should also be cultivated.  We see that in China an aristocracy of letters—­for it is through passing difficult examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are appointed—­is no protection to the poor and ignorant from oppression or degradation.  It is true that the classics in China are very old, but so are the literatures of Greece and Rome, on which so many university degrees are founded; and it ought to be impressed upon all seekers after academic honours that personal advantage is not the be-all and end-all of their pursuits.  In our democratic Commonwealth, although there are some lower titles bestowed by the Sovereign on colonists more or less distinguished, these are not hereditary, so that an aristocracy is not hereditary.  There may be an upper class, based on landed estate or one on business success, or one on learning, but all tend to become conservative as conservatism is understood in Australia.  Safety is maintained by the free rise from the lower to the higher.  But all the openings to higher education offered in high school and university do not tempt the working man’s children who want to earn wages as soon as the law lets them go to work.  Nor do they tempt their parents to their large share of the sacrifice which young Scotch lads and even American lads make to get through advanced studies.  The higher education is still a sort of preserve of the well-to-do, and when one thinks of how greatly this is valued it seems a pity that it is not open to the talents, to the industry, to the enthusiasm of all the young of both sexes.  But one exception I must make to the aloofness of people with degrees and professions from the preventible evils of the world, and that is in the profession that is the longest and the most exacting—­the medical profession.  The women doctors whom I have met in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney have a keen sense of their responsibility to the less fortunate.  That probably is because medicine as now understood and practised is the most modern of the learned professions, and is more human than engineering, which is also modern.  It takes us into the homes of the poor more intimately than even the clergyman, and it offers remedies and palliatives as well as advice.  The law is little studied by women in Australia, but in the United States there are probably a thousand or more legal practitioners.  It is the profession that I should have chosen when I was young if it had been in any way feasible.  I had no bent for the medical profession, and still less for what every one thinks the most womanly of avocations—­that of the trained nurse.  I could nurse my own relatives more or less well, but did not distinguish myself in that way, and I could