158 BOARD OF EDUCATION 
to obtain for the inspectorate and keep and promote 
in it men and women of academic distinction, high 
general ability, wide outlook and steady sense of 
balance and perspective, together with those personal 
qualities which are indispensable for dealing with 
the great variety of men and women engaged in 
different capacities in the service of education. An 
inspector in that service has more need than most 
people to be a paragon, and if the quest for paragons 
is to be even occasionally successful, the field of 
search cannot be circumscribed. 
The inspection of education, or of anything else, 
cannot be regarded as an end in itself; the ideal 
towards which it works is, or should be, that of 
rendering itself superfluous. It is certainly to be 
desired that educational progress should be main- 
tained at such a rate as will, before very long, 
diminish the need for the inspector’s functions of 
watching and trying to increase the return for 
public expenditure. The extent, however, to which 
inspection would be necessary in a perfect system 
worked by perfect agents is a matter which is hardly 
likely to call for early consideration.