I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have
done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have
never found one ... who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the whole native literature of India and
Arabia. i If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British
Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is
truth.2 Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in
his hand and who is struck with it.Consider a shop, here and now, which
stocks a finite but very large number of commodities, each of whose
characteristics is known to both the shoppers and the shopkeeper, and
each of whose prices is posted at the shopdoor. Let one of these
cOinmodities be units of undergraduate education, measured in years. The
following scenario, thought-experiment if one prefers, brings out how
the shop functions. I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked
"five years of undergraduate education." He takes the slip to the
shopkeeper, who.......
