WHAT IS AND WHATMIGHT BE

A STUDY OF EDUCATION IN GENERAL ANDELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN PARTICULAR

BY

EDMOND HOLMES

AUTHOR OF"THE CREED OF CHRIST, " "THE CREED OF BUDDHA, " "THE SILENCEOF LOVE, " "THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE, " ETC. 

LONDONCONSTABLE & COMPANY1912

 First published, May 1911. Second impression, July 1911. Third impression, September 1911. Fourth impression, November 1911. Fifth impression, January 1912. Sixth impression, October 1912. 

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+|Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. All ||other inconstancies in spelling or punctuation are as in the original. |+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

PREFACE

My aim, in writing this book, is to show that the _externalism_ ofthe West, the prevalent tendency to pay undue regard to outward andvisible "results" and to neglect what is inward and vital, is thesource of most of the defects that vitiate Education in this country, and therefore that the only remedy for those defects is the drasticone of changing our standard of reality and our conception of themeaning and value of life. My reason for making a special study ofthat branch of education which is known as "Elementary, " is that Ihappen to have a more intimate knowledge of it than of any otherbranch, the inside of an elementary school being so familiar to methat I can in some degree bring the eye of experience to bear uponthe problems that confront its teachers. I do not for a momentimagine that the elementary school teacher is more deeply taintedthan his fellows with the virus of "Occidentalism. " Nor do I thinkthat the defects of his schools are graver than those of othereducational institutions. In my judgment they are less grave because, though perhaps more glaring, they have not had time to become sodeeply rooted, and are therefore, one may surmise, less difficult toeradicate. Also there is at least a breath of healthy discontentstirring in the field of elementary education, a breath whichsometimes blows the mist away and gives us sudden gleams of sunshine, whereas over the higher levels of the educational world there hangsthe heavy stupor of profound self-satisfaction. [1] I am notexaggerating when I say that at this moment there are elementaryschools in England in which the life of the children is emancipativeand educative to an extent which is unsurpassed, and perhapsunequalled, in any other type or grade of school. 

I am careful to say all this because I foresee that, without a"foreword" of explanation, my adverse criticism of what I have called"a familiar type of school" may be construed into an attack on theelementary teachers as a body. I should be very sorry if such aconstruction were put upon it. No one knows better than I do that theelementary teachers of this country are the victims of a viciousconception of education which has behind it twenty centuries oftradition and prescription, and the malign influence of which wasintensified in their case by thirty years or more[2] of Codedespotism and "payment by results. " Handicapped as they have been bythis and other adverse conditions, they have yet produced a nobleband of pioneers, to whom I, for one, owe what little I know aboutthe inner meaning of education; and if I take an unduly highstandard in judging of their work, the reason is that theythemselves, by the brilliance of their isolated achievements, havecompelled me to take it. I will therefore ask them to bear with me, while I expose with almost brutal candour the shortcomings of many oftheir schools. They will understand that all the time I am thinkingof education in general even more than of elementary education, and using my knowledge of the latter to illustrate statements andarguments which are really intended to tell against the former. Theywill also understand that at the back of my mind I am laying theblame of their failures, not on them but on the hostile forces whichhave been too strong for many of them, --on the false assumptions ofWestern philosophy, on the false standards and false ideals ofWestern civilisation, on various "old, unhappy, far-off things, " theeffects of which are still with us, foremost among these being thatdeadly system of "payment by results" which seems to have beendevised for the express purpose of arresting growth and stranglinglife, which bound us all, myself included, with links of iron, andwhich had many zealous agents, of whom I, alas! was one. 

PART I

WHAT IS

OR

THE PATH OF MECHANICAL OBEDIENCE

CHAPTER I

SALVATION THROUGH MECHANICAL OBEDIENCE

The function of education is to foster growth. By some of my readersthis statement will be regarded as a truism; by others as achallenge; by others, again, when they have realised its innermeaning, as a "wicked heresy. " I will begin by assuming that it isa truism, and will then try to prove that it is true. 

The function of education is to foster growth. The end whichthe teacher should set before himself is the development ofthe latent powers of his pupils, the unfolding of their latentlife. If growth is to be fostered, two things must be liberallyprovided, --nourishment and exercise. On the need for nourishment Ineed not insist. The need for exercise is perhaps less obvious, butis certainly not less urgent. We make our limbs, our organs, oursenses, our faculties grow by exercising them. When they have reachedtheir maximum of development we maintain them at that level byexercising them. When their capacity for growth is unlimited, as inthe case of our mental and spiritual faculties, the need for exerciseis still more urgent. To neglect to exercise a given limb, or organ, or sense, or faculty, would result in its becoming weak, flabby, andin the last resort useless. In childhood, when the stress ofNature's expansive forces is strongest, the neglect of exercise will, for obvious reasons, have most serious consequences. If a healthychild were kept in bed during the second and third years of his life, the damage done to his whole body would be incalculable. 

These are glaring truisms. Let me perpetrate one more, --one which isperhaps the most glaring of all. The process of growing must be doneby the growing organism, by the child, let us say, and by no oneelse. The child himself must take in and assimilate the nourishmentthat is provided for him. The child himself must exercise his organsand faculties. The one thing which no one may ever delegate toanother is the business of growing. To watch another person eatingwill not nourish one's own body. To watch another person using hislimbs will not strengthen one's own. The forces that make for thechild's growth come from within himself; and it is for him, and himalone, to feed them, use them, evolve them. 

All this is--

 "As true as truth's simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth. "

But it sometimes happens that what is most palpable is leastperceptible; and perhaps it is because the truth of what I say isself-evident and indisputable, that in many Elementary Schools inthis country the education given seems to be based on the assumptionthat my "truisms" are absolutely false. In such schools the one endand aim of the teacher is to do everything for the child;--to feedhim with semi-digested food; to hold him by the hand, or rather byboth shoulders, when he tries to walk or run; to keep him under closeand constant supervision; to tell him in precise detail what he is tothink, to feel, to say, to wish, to do; to show him in precise detailhow he is to do whatever may have to be done; to lay thin veneers ofinformation on the surface of his mind; never to allow him a minutefor independent study; never to trust him with a handbook, anote-book, or a sketch-book; in fine, to do all that lies in hispower to prevent the child from doing anything whatever for himself. The result is that the various vital faculties which education mightbe supposed to train become irretrievably starved and stunted in theover-educated school child; till at last, when the time comes for himto leave the school in which he has been so sedulously cared for, heis too often thrown out upon the world, helpless, listless, resourceless, without a single interest, without a single purpose inlife. 

The contrast between elementary education as it too often is, and asit ought to be if the truth of my "truisms" were widely accepted, isso startling that in my desire to account for it I have had recourseto a paradox. "Trop de vérité, " says Pascal, "nous étonne: lespremiers principes ont trop d'évidence pour nous. " I have suggestedthat the inability of so many teachers to live up to the spirit, oreven to the letter, of my primary "truism, " may be due to its havingtoo much evidence for them, to their being blinded by the naked lightof its truth. 

But there may be another explanation of the singular fact that atheory of education to which the teacher would assent withouthesitation if it were submitted to his consciousness, counts fornothing in the daily routine of his work. Failure to carry anaccepted principle into practice is sometimes due to the fact thatthe principle has not really been accepted; that its inner meaninghas not been apprehended; that assent has been given to a formularather than a truth. The cause of the failure may indeed lie deeperthan this. It may be that the nominal adherents of the principle arein secret revolt against the vital truth that is at the heart of it;that they repudiate it in practice because they have alreadyrepudiated it in the inner recesses of their thought. "This peopledraweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with theirlips; but their heart is far from me. " Tell the teacher that thefunction of education is to foster growth; that therefore it is hisbusiness to develop the latent faculties of his pupils; and thattherefore (since growth presupposes exercise) he must allow hispupils to do as much as possible by and for themselves, --place thesepropositions before him, and the chances are that he will say "Amen"to them. But that lip assent will count for nothing. One's life isgoverned by instinct rather than logic. To give a lip assent to thelogical inferences from an accepted principle is one thing. To give a_real_ assent to the essential truth that underlies and animates theprinciple is another. The way in which the teacher too often conductshis school leads one to infer that the intuitive, instinctive side ofhim--the side that is nearest to practice--has somehow or other heldintercourse with the inner meaning of that "truism" which he repeatsso glibly, and has rejected it as antagonistic to the traditionalassumptions on which he bases his life. Or perhaps this work ofsubconscious criticism and rejection has been and is being done forhim, either by the spirit of the age to which he belongs or by thegenius of the land in which he lives. 

Why is the teacher so ready to do everything (or nearly everything)for the children whom he professes to educate? One obvious answer tothis question is that for a third of a century (1862-1895) the"Education Department" did everything (or nearly everything) for him. For a third of a century "My Lords" required their inspectors toexamine every child in every elementary school in England on asyllabus which was binding on all schools alike. In doing this, theyput a bit into the mouth of the teacher and drove him, at theirpleasure, in this direction and that. And what they did to him theycompelled him to do to the child. 

So far as the action of the "Education Department" was concerned, this policy was abandoned--in large measure, if not wholly--in 1895;but its consequences are with us still. What conception of themeaning and purpose of education could have induced "My Lords" toadopt such a policy, and, having adopted it, to adhere to it for morethan thirty years? Had one asked "My Lords" at any time during thosethirty years what they regarded as the true function of education, and had one suggested to them (as they had probably never turnedtheir minds to the question) that the function of education was tofoster the growth of the child, they might possibly have given anindolent assent to that proposition. But their educational policymust have been dictated by some widely different conception. Theymust have believed that the mental progress of the child--the onlyaspect of progress which concerned educationalists in thosedays--would best be tested by a formal examination on a prescribedsyllabus, and would best be secured by preparation for such a test;and they must have accepted, perhaps without the consent of theirconsciousness, whatever theory of education may be implicit in thatbelief. 

In acting as they did, "My Lords" fell into line with theUniversities, the Public Schools, the Preparatory Schools, the CivilService Commissioners, the Professional Societies, and (to make ageneral statement) with all the "Boards" and "Bodies" thatcontrolled, directly or indirectly, the education of the youth ofEngland. We must, therefore, widen the scope of our inquiry, andcarry our search for cause a step farther back. How did the beliefthat a formal examination is a worthy end for teacher and child toaim at, and an adequate test of success in teaching and in learning, come to establish itself in this country? And not in this countryonly, but in the whole Western world? In every Western country thatis progressive and "up to date, " and in every Western country inexact proportion as it is progressive and "up to date, " theexamination system controls education, and in doing so arrests theself-development of the child, and therefore strangles his inwardgrowth. 

What is the explanation of this significant fact? In my attempt toaccount for the failure of elementary education in England to fosterthe growth of the educated child, I have travelled far. But Imust travel farther yet. The Western belief in the efficacyof examinations is a symptom of a widespread and deep-seatedtendency, --the tendency to judge according to the appearance ofthings, to attach supreme importance to visible "results, " to measureinward worth by outward standards, to estimate progress in terms ofwhat the "world" reveres as "success. " It is the Western standard ofvalues, the Western way of looking at things, which is in question, and which I must now attempt to determine. 

That I should have to undertake this task is a proof of thecomplexity of education, of the bewildering tanglement of itsroot-system, of the depths to which some of its roots descend intothe subsoil of human-life. The defect in our system of educationwhich I am trying to diagnose is one which the "business man, " whomay have had reason to complain of the output of our elementaryschools, will probably account for in one sentence and propound aremedy for in another. But I, who know enough about education torealise how little is or can be known about it, find that if I am tounderstand why so many schools turn out helpless and resourcelesschildren, I must go back to the first principles of moderncivilisation, or in other words to the cardinal axioms of thephilosophy of the West. 

This does not mean that I must make a systematic study of Westernmetaphysics. Professional thinkers abound in the West; but the rankand file of the people pay little heed to them. It is true that theytake themselves very seriously; but so does every clique of expertsand connoisseurs. The indirect influence of their theories has attimes been considerable; but their direct influence on human thoughtis, and has always been, very slight. For the plain average man, whocannot rid himself of the suspicion that the professional thinker isa professional word-juggler, has a philosophy of his own which wasformulated for him by an unphilosophical people, and which, though itis now beginning to fail him, was once sufficient for all his needs. 

At the present moment there are two schools of popular thought in theWest. For many centuries there was only one. For many centuries menwere content to believe that the outward and visible world--the worldof their normal experience--was the all of Nature. But they were notcontent to believe that it was the "all of Being. " The latterconception would have said "No" to certain desires of the heart whichrefuse to be negatived, --desires which are as large and lofty as theyare pure and deep: and in order to provide a refuge for these, men added to their belief in a natural world which was boundedby the horizon of experience (as they understood the word), thecomplementary belief in a world which transcended the limits ofexperience, and in which the dreams and hopes for which Nature couldmake no provision might somehow or other be realised and fulfilled. With the development of physical science, the conception of theSupernatural has become discredited, and a materialistic monism hasbegun to dispute the supremacy of that dualistic philosophy which hadreigned without a rival for many hundreds of years. But antagonisticas these philosophies are to one another, they have one conception incommon. The popular belief that the world of man's normal experienceis the Alpha and Omega of _Nature_, is the very platform on whichtheir controversies are carried on. Were any one to suggest to themthat this belief was without foundation, that there was room and tospare in Nature for the "supernatural" as well as for the normal, that the supernatural world (as it had long been miscalled) wasnothing more nor less than "la continuation occulte de la Natureinfinie, "--they would at once unite their forces against him, andassail him with an even bitterer hatred than that which animates themin their own intestine strife. 

The dualistic philosophy which satisfied the needs of the West forsome fifteen centuries was systematised and formulated for it, in thelanguage of myth and poetry, by an Eastern people. The acceptance ofofficial Christianity by the Graeco-Roman world was the result ofmany causes, two of which stand out as central and supreme. The firstof these was the personal magnetism of Christ, in and through whichmen came in contact with, and responded to, the attractive forces ofthose moral and spiritual ideas which Christ set before hisfollowers. The second was the readiness of the Western mind to acceptthe philosophy of Israel, --a philosophy with the master principles ofwhich it had long been subconsciously familiar, and for the clear andconvincing presentation of which it had long been waiting. Of thepersonal magnetism of Christ and the part that it has played in thelife of Christendom, I need not now speak. My present concern is toshow how the philosophy of Israel--accepted nominally for Christ'ssake, but really for its own--has influenced the educational policyof the West. 

In the Old Testament the Western mind found itself face to face withthe philosophical theories--theories about the world and its origin, about Man and his destiny, about conduct and its consequences--towhich its own mythologies had given inadequate expression, but whichthe poetical genius of a practical people was able to formulate tothe satisfaction of a practical world. In the philosophy of Israel"Nature" was conceived of, not as animated by an indwelling life orsoul, but as the handiwork of an omnipotent God. In six days--so runsthe story--"God created the heavens and the earth. " Whether by theword which we translate as "days" were meant terrestrial days orcosmic ages matters nothing, for in either case the broad factremains that according to the Biblical narrative the work of creationoccupied a definite period of time, and that on a certain day in theremote past the Creator rested from his labours, surveyed hishandiwork, and pronounced it to be very good. 

His next step was to stand aside from the world that he had made, leave it to its own devices and see how it would behave itself in theperson of its lord and his viceroy, --Man. That the Creator shouldplace Creation on its trial and that it should speedily misbehaveitself, may be said to have been preordained. The idea of a Creatorpostulates the further idea of a Fall. The finished work of anomnipotent Creator is presumably good, --good in this sense, if inno other, that its actualities must needs determine the creature'sideals and standards of good. But the world, as Man knows it, seemsto be deeply tainted with evil. How is this anomaly to be accountedfor? The story of the Fall is the answer to this question. Whethermodern theology regards the story of the Fall as literally or only assymbolically true, I cannot say for certain. The question is of minorimportance. What is of supreme importance is that Christian theologyaccepts and has always accepted the consequences of the _idea_ of theFall, and that in formulating those consequences it has provided thepopular thought of the West with conceptions by which its wholeoutlook on life has been, and is still, determined and controlled. 

The idea of the Fall, as dramatised by Israel and interpreted by the"Doctors" of the West, gives adequate expression--on the highestlevel of his thinking--to the crude dualism which constitutes thephilosophy of the average man. Hence the immense attractiveness ofthe idea to the practical races of the West, --to peoples whose chiefidea is to get their mental problems solved for them as speedily, asauthoritatively, and as intelligibly as possible, that they may thusbe free to devote themselves to "business, " to the tangible affairsof life. 

Let us follow the philosophy of the Fall into some of its moreobvious consequences. The Universe (to use the most comprehensiveof all terms) is conceived of as divided into two disseveredworlds, --the world of Nature, which is fallen, ruined, and accursed, and the Supernatural world, which shares in the perfection andcentres in the glory of God. Between these two worlds intercourse is, _in the nature of things_, impossible. But Man is not content thathis state of godless isolation should endure for ever. As a thinker, he has exiled God from Nature and therefore from his own daily life. But, as a "living soul, " he craves for reunion with God; and so longas the gulf between the two worlds remains impassable, his philosophywill be felt to be incomplete. A supplementary theory of things musttherefore be devised. Corrupt and fallen as he is, Man cannot hopeto climb to Heaven; but God, with whom nothing is impossible, can athis own good pleasure come down to earth. And come he will, wheneverthat sense of all-pervading imperfection which exiled him, in itspremature attempt to explain itself, to his supernatural Heaven, isrealised in man's heart as a desire for better things. But what willbe the signs of his advent? The philosophy of the Fall is at no lossfor an answer to this question. There was a time when Nature wasthe mirror of God's face. But it is so no longer. The mirror wasshattered when Adam fell. Henceforth it is only by troubling thewaters of Nature, by suspending the operation of its laws, by turningits order into confusion, by producing _supernatural_ phenomena, or"miracles" as they are vulgarly called, that God can announce hispresence to Man. 

The question of the miraculous is one into which we need not enter. Let us assume that God can somehow or other come to Man, and thatMan can somehow or other recognise God's presence and interpret hisspeech. We have now to ask ourselves one vital question. With whatpurpose does God visit the world which has forfeited his favour, andwhat does he propose to do for ruined Nature and fallen Man? ForNature, nothing. For Man, to provide a way of escape from Nature. The dualism of popular thought must needs control the very effortsthat men make to deliver themselves from its consequences. Theirremediable corruption of Man's _nature_ is the assumption on whichthe whole scheme of salvation is to be hinged. His deliverance fromsin and death will be effected, not by the development of any naturalcapacity for good, but by his being induced to quit the path (orpaths) of Nature, and to walk, under Divine direction, in some newand narrow path. 

But how will this end be achieved? That Man cannot discover the pathof salvation for himself will, of course, be taken for granted. Thecatastrophe of the Fall has corrupted his whole nature, and hastherefore blinded him to the light of truth. "The way of man is notin himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. " Thepromptings of his own nature, which he would follow if left tohimself, can do nothing but lead him astray. It will also be takenfor granted that the path of salvation is a path of action. When thewhole inward disposition is hopelessly corrupt, the idea of achievingsalvation by growing, by bringing one's hidden life to the perfectionof maturity, must perforce be abandoned. It is only by _doing_ God'swill that Man can hope to regain his favour. One thing, then, isclear. Man must be told in exact detail what he is to do and also(should this be necessary) how he is to do it. In other words, anelaborate Code of Law, covering the whole range of human life andregulating all the details of conduct, must be delivered by God toMan. If Man will obey this Law he will be saved. If he will not obeyit, he will be lost. 

There is another aspect of the idea of a supernatural revelation onwhich it is necessary to touch. As intercourse between Nature and theSupernatural world takes place, not in the natural order of thingsbut at the good pleasure of the Supernatural God, revelation mustneeds be conceived of as a highly-specialised process. A revelationwhich was addressed to the whole human race, and to which the wholehuman race was able to respond, could scarcely be regarded as ofsupernatural origin. The distinction between the supernaturalness ofthe appeal and the naturalness of the response would gradually tendto efface itself: for "what is universal is natural, " and the voicewhich every man was able to recognise would come at last to beregarded as a voice from within oneself. If the supernaturalcharacter of an alleged revelation is to be established, itsuniqueness must be duly emphasised. A particular people must bechosen for the purpose of the divine experiment. A particularlaw-giver must be commissioned to declare to the chosen people thewill of the Supernatural God. And from time to time a particularprophet must be sent to rebuke the chosen people for itsbackslidings, to show it where it has gone astray, and to exhortit to turn again to its God. 

 For if it is far from Man to discern good, it is still farther fromhim to desire it. How, then, shall he be induced to walk in the pathwhich the Law has prescribed for him? To this question there can bebut one answer: By the promise of external reward, and the threat ofexternal punishment. To set before Man an ideal of life--an idealwhich would be to him an unfailing fountain of magnetic force andguiding light--is not in the power of legalism. For if an ideal isto appeal to one, it must be the consummation of one's own naturaltendencies; but the current of Man's natural tendencies is eversetting towards perdition, and the vanishing point of his heart'sdesires is death. Were an ideal revealed to the Law-giver and by himpresented to his fellow-men, and were the heart of Man to respondto the appeal that it made to him, the basic assumption oflegalism--that of the corruption of Man's nature--would beundermined; for Man would have proved that it belonged to his natureto turn towards the light, --in other words, that he had a naturalcapacity for good. The plain truth is that legalism is precluded, byits own first principles from appealing to any motive higher thanthat instinctive desire for pleasure which has as its counterpart aquasi-physical fear of pain. It is impossible for the lawgiver toappeal to Man's better nature, to say to him: "Cannot you see foryourself that this course of action is better than that, --that loveis better than hatred, mercy than cruelty, loyalty than treachery, continence than self-indulgence?" What he can and must say to him isthis, and this only; "If you obey the Law you will be rewarded. Ifyou disobey it you will be punished. " And this he must say to himagain and again. 

It is true that among the many commandments which the Law sets beforeits votaries, there are some--the moral commandments, properly socalled--which do in point of fact, and in defiance of thephilosophical assumption of legalism, appeal to the better natureof Man. But these are at best an insignificant minority; and theirrelative importance will necessarily diminish with the developmentinto its natural consequences of the root idea of legalism. Forlegalism, just so far as it is strong, sincere, and self-confident, will try to cover the whole of human life. The religion that iscontent to do less than this, the religion that acquiesces in thedistinction between what is religious and what is secular, is, as weshall presently see, a religion in decay. Religion may perhaps bedefined as Man's instinctive effort to bring a central aim into hislife and so provide himself with an authoritative standard of values. In its highest and purest form, Religion controls Man's life, both asa whole and in all its essential details, through the central aim orspiritual ideal which it sets before him and the consequent standardof values with which it equips him. But legalism is debarred by itsdistrust of human nature from trying to control the details of lifethrough any central aim or ideal; and its assumption that all thecommandments of the Law are of divine origin, and therefore equallybinding upon Man, is obviously incompatible with the conception ofa standard of moral worth. Its attempt to cover the whole of lifemust therefore resolve itself into an attempt to control the detailsof conduct _in all their detail_; to deal with them, one by one, bringing each in turn under the operation of an appropriatecommandment, and if necessary deducing from the commandment a specialrule to meet the special case. In other words, besides being toldwhat he is not to do (in the more strictly moral sphere of conduct), and what he is to do (in the more strictly ceremonial sphere), Manmust be told, in the fullest detail, how he is to do whatever mayhave to be done in the daily round of his life. Such at least is theaim of legalism. The nets of the Law are woven fine, and flung farand wide. If there are any acts in a man's life which escape throughtheir clinging meshes, the force of Nature is to be blamed for thispartial failure, not the zeal of the Doctors of the Law. 

It is towards this inverted ideal that the doctrine of salvationthrough obedience will lead its votaries, when its masterprinciple--that of distrust of human nature--has been followed outinto all its natural consequences, --followed out, as it was byPharisaism, with a fearless logic and a fixed tenacity of purpose. An immense and ever-growing host of formulated rules, not one in ahundred of which makes any appeal to the heart of Man or has anymeaning for his higher reason, will crush his life down, slowly andinexorably, beneath their deadly burden. "At every step, at the workof his calling, at prayer, at meals, at home and abroad, from earlymorning till late in the evening, from youth to old age, the dead, the deadening formula"[3] will await him. The path of obediencefor the sake of obedience speedily degenerates into the path ofmechanical obedience; and the end of that path is the triumph ofmachinery over life. 

For it is to the letter of the Law, rather than to the spirit, thatthe strict legalist is bound to conform. The letter of the Law isdivine; and obedience to it is within the power of every man who willtake the trouble to learn its commandments. What the spirit of theLaw may be, is beyond the power of fallen Man to determine; and werean attempt made to interpret it, the result would be a state ofwidespread moral chaos, for there would be as many interpretations ofit as there were minds that had the courage and the initiative toundertake so audacious a task. As it is with the Law as such, so itis with each of its numerous commandments. The man who professes toobey the spirit of a commandment is in secret revolt against itsdivine authority. For he is presuming to criticise it in the lightof his own conscience and insight, and to limit his obedience to itto that particular aspect of it which he judges to be worthy of hisdevotion. From such a criticism of the Fourth Commandment as "theSabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath" to open violationof the letter of the commandment (on this occasion or on that) thereis but a single step. The whole structure of legalism would collapseif men were allowed to absolve themselves from obedience to theletter of the Law, out of regard for what they conceived to be itsspirit. To interpret a commandment, in the sense of providing for itsapplication to the fresh cases that may arise for treatment, is thework, not of poets and prophets but of Doctors and Scribes. The pathof literal, and therefore of mechanical, obedience is the only pathof safety; and the more punctiliously the letter is obeyed, the moreperfect will be the machinery of salvation, and the nearer willlegalism get to the appointed goal of its labours, --the extinctionof spiritual life. 

As is the life that legalism expects us to lead, so is the scheme ofrewards and punishments by which (as we have already seen) itconstrains us to lead it. The materialisation of life that takesplace under the sway of the Law is accurately matched and measured bythe materialisation of the doctrine of moral retribution. The generalidea that virtue is rewarded and vice punished is profoundly true. But the idea is easily misinterpreted; and it necessarily shares inthe degradation of one's general conception of life. Virtue rewardsthe virtuous by making them more virtuous. Vice punishes the viciousby making them more vicious. So long as the rewards for which we hopeand the punishments which we dread are conceived of as inward andspiritual, we are on safe ground. But such a scheme of rewards andpunishments is wholly foreign to the genius of supernaturalism. Itis not by becoming more virtuous that we are saved. It is not bybecoming more vicious that we are lost. We are saved by obedience, we are lost by disobedience, to the formulated rules of adivinely-delivered law. To appeal to Man's higher self, when there isno higher self to appeal to, --to set before him as the supreme rewardof virtue the development of his better nature, when his nature isintrinsically evil, --would be an obvious waste of labour. And as, apart from the presumed repugnance of the "natural man" to thepresumed delights of the Law, the intrinsic attractiveness of thelife that legalism prescribes must needs diminish in exact proportionas the authority of the Law becomes oppressive and vexatious, and theletter of it tends to establish itself at the expense of thespirit, --it is clear that a scheme of rewards and punishments willbecome, in effect as well as in theory, the only weapon in thearmoury of the legalist. It is also clear that there will be muchwork for that one weapon to do. The central tendencies of Man'snature, besides being _ex hypothesi_ evil, are antagonistic _defacto_ to the galling despotism and the irrational requirements ofthe Law; and the lawgiver, far from being able to enlist thosetendencies under his banner by appealing to the highest of them--thenatural leaders of the rest, --must be prepared to overcome theircollective resistance by winning to his side the lowest of them, byterrifying Man's weaker self with threats, by corrupting his baserself with bribes. The ruin of Man's nature, whether hypothetical oractual, [4] has left intact (or relatively intact) only the animalbase of it. It is to his animal instincts, then, that legalism mustappeal in its endeavour to influence his conduct. In other words, thepunishments and the rewards to which Man is to look forward must beof the same _genus_, if not of the same _species_, as the lash ofthe whip that punishes the lagging race-horse, or the lump of sugarthat rewards his exertions. And with the inevitable growth of egoismand individualism in the demoralising atmosphere with which legalism(and its lineal successors) must needs invest human life, Man'sconception of the rewards and punishments that await him willdeteriorate rather than improve. The Jewish desire for nationalprosperity was an immeasurably nobler motive to action than is theChristian's fear of the quasi-material fires of Hell. Indeed it isnothing but our familiarity with the latter motive that has blindedus to its inherent baseness. It is no exaggeration to say that therehave been epochs in the history of Christendom (as there are stillquarters of Christian thought and phases of Christian faith) in whichthe trumpet-call that was meant to rouse the soldiers of God torenewed exertion has rung in their ears as an ignominious "_sauve quipeut_. "

The tendency of legalism to externalise life has another aspect. Inthe eyes of the strict legalist there is no such thing as an inwardstate of human worth. The doctrine of the corruption of Man's natureis incompatible with the idea of "goodness" being measurable(potentially if not actually) in terms of the health and happinessof the "inward man. " Goodness, as the legalist conceives it, ismeasurable in terms of correctness of outward conduct, and of thatonly. And when life is regulated by an elaborate Law, the rules ofwhich are familiar to all men, there is no reason why a man's outwardconduct should not be appraised, with some approach to accuracy, byhis neighbours and friends. Hence it is that in the atmosphere oflegalism an excessive deference is wont to be paid to public, andeven to parochial, opinion. The life of the votary of the Law islived under strict and constant _surveillance_; and a man learnsat last to value himself as his conduct is valued by a criticalonlooker, and to make it the business of his life to produce"results" which can be weighed and measured by conventionalstandards, rather than to grow in grace, --with silent, subtle, unobtrusive growth. 

Were I to try to prove that the _régime_ of the Law was necessarilyfatal to the development of Man's higher faculties--conscience, freedom, reason, imagination, intuition, aspiration, and the rest--Ishould waste my time. Legalism, as a scheme of life, is based on theassumption that development along the lines of Man's nature is amovement towards perdition; and to reproach the legalist for havingarrested the growth of the human spirit by the pressure of the Lawwere to provoke the rejoinder that he had done what he intendedto do. The two schemes of Salvation--the mechanical and theevolutional--have so little in common that neither can pass judgmenton the other without begging the question that is in dispute. When Icome to consider the effect of legalism--or rather of the philosophythat underlies legalism--on education, I may perhaps be able to findsome court of law in which the case between the two schemes can betried with the tacit consent of both. Meanwhile I can but notethat in the atmosphere of the Law growth is as a matter of factarrested, --arrested so effectually that the counter process ofdegeneration begins to take its place. The proof of this statement, if proof be needed, is that legalism, when its master principle hasbeen fully grasped and fearlessly applied, takes the form ofPharisaism, and that it is possible for the Pharisee to "counthimself to have apprehended, " to congratulate himself on hisspiritual achievement, to believe, in all seriousness, that he hasclosed his account with God. 

Pharisaism is at once the logical consummation and the _reductio adabsurdum_ of legalism. It is to the genius of Israel that we owe thatpractical interpretation of the fundamental principle ofsupernaturalism, which was embodied in the doctrine of salvationthrough obedience to the letter of a Law. And it is to the geniusof Israel that we owe that rigorously logical interpretation ofthe _axiomata media_ of legalism, which issued in due season inPharisaism. The world owes much to the courage and sincerityof Israel, --to his unique force of character, to his fanaticalearnestness, to his relentless tenacity of purpose. In particular, it owes a debt which it can never liquidate to what was at once thecause and the result of his over-seriousness, --to his lack of anysense of humour, --a negative quality which allowed his practicallogic to run its course without let or hindrance, and preventedthe "brakes" of common-sense from acting when he found himself, inhis very zeal for the Law, descending an inclined plane into anunfathomable abyss of turpitude and folly. The man (or people) who isable, of his own experience, to tell the rest of mankind what a givenscheme of life really means and is really worth, owing to his havingoffered himself as the _corpus vile_ for the required experiment, isone of the greatest benefactors of the human race. Had Israel beenless sincere or less courageous, we might never have known whatdeadly fallacies lurk in the seemingly harmless dualism of popularthought. 

 * * * * *

But the West, it will be said, is Christian, not Jewish. Is itChristian? If the word "Christian" connotes acceptance of theteaching as well as devotion to the person of Christ, it is scarcelyapplicable either to the official or to the popular religion ofthe West. For Christ, the stern denouncer of the Pharisees, wasthe whole-hearted enemy of legalism; and the legal conception ofsalvation through mechanical obedience still dominates the religionand life of Christendom. 

The Jewish Law tried to cover, and tended more and more to cover, thewhole of human life. It is true that it controlled the details ratherthan the totality of life; but the reason why it dealt with life, detail by detail, was that its exponents, owing to their spiritualpurblindness, were unable to see the wood for the trees. InChristendom, while the doctrine of salvation through mechanicalobedience was retained, the authority of a Church was substitutedfor that of a Code of Law. The growth of the idea of Humanity, asopposed to that of mere nationality, made this necessary. As theformer idea began to compete with the latter, the need for adivinely-commissioned society which should declare the will andcommunicate the grace of God, not to one nation only but to all menwho were willing to hearken and obey, --and whose action, as a channelof intercourse between God and Man, should be continuous ratherthan spasmodic, --began to make itself felt. A Code of Law mightconceivably suffice to regulate the life of one small nation;but when we consider under what varying conditions of climate, occupation, custom, tradition, and so forth, the general life ofHumanity is carried on, we see clearly that no one Code can evenbegin to suffice for the needs of the whole human race. Hence, andfor other reasons which we need not now consider, the West, inaccepting the philosophy of Israel, translated its master idea ofsalvation through mechanical obedience into the notation ofecclesiastical, as distinguished from legal, control. 

That obedience to a supernaturally-commissioned Church, or rather tothe One supernaturally-commissioned Church, is the first and lastduty of Man, is the fundamental assumption on which the statelyfabric of Catholic Christianity has been reared. In various ways theChurch has striven to exact implicit obedience from her children. Through the medium of the Confessional she has secured some measureof control over their morals. By regulating the worship of God--bothpublic and private--she has been able to rule off a sphere of humanconduct in which her own authority is necessarily paramount. Bysupplying the faithful with rations of "theological information" (toquote the apt phrase of a pillar of orthodoxy), and requiring them toaccept these on her authority as indisputably true, she has succeededin imposing her yoke on thought as well as on conduct. By claimingto control the outflow of Divine grace, through the channels ofthe Sacraments, she has been able to threaten the rebellious withthe dread penalty of being cut off from intercourse with God. And by telling men, with stern insistence, that the choice betweenobedience and disobedience to herself is the choice between eternalhappiness and eternal misery, she has sought to extend her dominionbeyond the limits of time and to raise to an infinite power hersupremacy over the souls of men. 

But just because the life of collective Humanity is large, complex, and full of change and variety, the Church which aspires to beuniversal, however strong may be her desire to superintend all thedetails of human thought and conduct, and however ready she may beto adapt herself to local and temporal variations, must needs allowwhole aspects and whole spheres of human life to escape from hercontrol. The history of Christendom is the history of the gradualemancipation of the Western world from the despotism of the Church. The various activities of the human spirit--art, science, literature, law, statecraft, and the rest--have, one and all, freed themselves byslow degrees from ecclesiastical control, till little or nothing hasbeen left for the Church to regulate but her own rites andceremonies, the morals (in a narrow and ever-narrowing sense of theword), and the faith (in the theological sense of the word), of thefaithful. 

With the emancipation of Man's higher activities from ecclesiasticalcontrol, the distinction between the _religious_ and the _secular_life has gradually established itself. That this should happen wasinevitable. Mechanical obedience being of the essence of supernaturalreligion, the secularising of human life became absolutely necessaryif any vital progress was to be made. The Church patronised art, music, and the drama so far as they served her purposes. When theyoutgrew those purposes, in response to the expansive forces of humannature, she treated them as secular and let them go their severalways. In the interests of theology she tried to keep physical sciencein leading-strings; but when, after a bitter struggle, science brokeloose from her control, she treated it too as secular and let it goits way. 

Let us see what this distinction involves. As salvation is to beachieved by obedience to the Church and in no other way, it followsthat in all those spheres of life which are outside the jurisdictionof the Church (except, of course, so far as questions of "morals" mayarise in connection with them), Man's conduct and general demeanourare supposed to have no bearing on his eternal destiny. This is theview of the secular life which is taken by the Church. And not by theChurch alone. As, little by little, the Institution--be it Church, orSect, or Code, or Scripture--which claims to be the sole accreditedagent of the Eternal God, relaxes its hold upon the ever-expandinglife of Humanity, all those developments of human nature which ceaseto be amenable to its control come to be regarded as mundane, asunspiritual, as carnal, as matters with which God has no concern. 

Were this view of the secular life confined to those who callthemselves religious, no great harm would be done. Unfortunately, thesecular life, which is under the influence of the current conceptionof God as one who holds no intercourse with Man except throughcertain accredited agents, is ready to acquiesce in the currentestimate of itself as godless, and to accept as valid the distinctionbetween the religious life and its own. Hence comes a generallowering of Man's aims. As the secular life is content to regarditself as godless, and so deprives itself of any central and unifyingaim, it is but natural that success in each of its many branchesshould come to be regarded as an end in itself. It is but natural, totake examples at random, that the artist should follow art for art'ssake, that the man of science should deify positive knowledge, thatthe statesman should regard political power as intrinsicallydesirable, that the merchant and the manufacturer should live to makemoney, and that the highest motive which appeals to all men alikeshould be the desire to bulk large in the eyes of their fellow-men. Even the ardent reformer, whose enthusiasm makes him unselfish, pursues the ideal to which he devotes himself, as an end in itself, and makes no attempt to define or interpret it in terms of itsrelation to that supreme and central ideal which he ought to regardas the final end of human endeavour. When we remind ourselves, further, that secularism, equally with supernaturalism, tends toidentify "Nature" with lower nature--in other words, with thematerial side of the Universe and the carnal side of Man's being, --weshall realise how easy it is for the secular life, once it has lost, through its divorce from religion, the tonic stimulus of a centralaim, to sink, without directly intending to do so, into the mire ofmaterialism, --a materialism of conduct as well as of thought. 

But if the loss to the secular life, from its compulsorydespiritualisation, is great, the loss to religion, from thesecularisation of so much of Man's rational activity, is greaterstill. The very distinction between the secular and the religiouslife is profoundly irreligious, in that it rests on the tacitassumption that there is no unity, no central aim, in human life;and the fact that official religion is ready to acquiesce in thedistinction, is ready, in other words, to make a compromise with itsenemy "the world, " is a proof that it is secretly conscious of itsown failing power, and is even beginning to despair of itself. As itresigns itself to this feeling (as yet perhaps but dimly realised), its reasons for entertaining it must needs grow stronger. Theprogressive enlargement of the sphere of Man's secular activities isaccompanied, step for step, by the devitalisation of the idea of theDivine. What kind of intercourse can God be supposed to hold with Manif the latter is to be left to his own devices in what he must needsregard as among the more important aspects of his life, --in hiscommercial and industrial enterprises, in his art, in his literature, in his study of Nature's laws, in his mastery of Nature's forces, in his pursuit of positive truth and practical good? As in thesematters Man frees himself, little by little, from the yoke ofsupernaturalism, which he has been accustomed to identify withreligion, his formal conception of his relation to God and of thepart that God plays in his life--the conception that is defined andelucidated for him by religious "orthodoxy"--becomes of necessitymore irrational, more mechanical, more unreal, more repugnant to hisbetter nature and to the higher developments of his "common-sense. "The tendency to exalt the letter of what is spoken or written, at theexpense of the spirit, is as much of the essence of ecclesiasticismas of legalism. "_Si dans les règles du salut le fond l'emporteraitsur la forme, ce serait la ruine du sacerdoce. _" And, as a matter ofexperience, the hair-splitting puerilities of Pharisaism under theOld Dispensation have been matched, and more than matched, in thespheres of ritual, of dogmatic theology, and of casuistical morality, under the New. As Man gradually shifts the centre of gravity of hisbeing from the religious to the secular side of his life, thispuerile element in religion--the element of ultra-formalism, ofirrationality, of unreality--tends, like a morbid growth, to draw toitself the vital energies of what was once a healthy organism butis now degenerating into a "body of death. " If, in these days ofabsorbing secular activity, Man continues to tolerate the theoriesand practices of the religious experts, the reason is--apart from theinfluence of custom and tradition and of his respect for venerableand "established" institutions--that they are things which he hasneither time nor inclination to investigate, and which he cantherefore afford to tolerate as being far removed from what is vitaland central in his life. I am told that the Catholic Church holds, inthe case of a dying man, "that the eternal fate of the soul, for goodor for evil, may depend upon the reception or the non-reception ofabsolution, and even of extreme unction. " That the truly appallingconception of God which is implicit in this sentence should stillsurvive, that it should not yet have been swept out of existence bythe outraged common-sense and good feeling of Humanity, is a proof ofthe immense indifference with which the Western world, absorbed as itis in secular pursuits, regards religion. 

It may indeed be doubted if men have ever been so non-religious asare at the present day the inhabitants of our highly-civilised andthoroughly-Christianised West. At any rate the absence of a centralaim in human life has never been so complete as it is now. Most menare content to drift through life, toiling for the daily bread whichwill enable them to go on living, yet neither knowing nor caring toknow why they are alive. There is a minority of stronger and moreresolute men who devote life with unwavering energy to the pursuit ofwhat I may call private and personal ends. Thus the man of businesslives for the acquisition of riches; the scholar and the scientist, of knowledge; the statesman, of power; the speculator, of excitement;the libertine, of pleasure; and so forth. Few are they who everdream of devoting life as a whole to the pursuit of an end which ispotentially attainable by all men, and which is therefore worthy ofMan as Man. The idea of there being such an end has indeed beenalmost wholly lost sight of. Those among us who are of largerdiscourse than the rest and less absorbed by personal aims, askthemselves mournfully: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?Is life worth living? and other such questions; and being unable toanswer them to their satisfaction, or get them answered, resignthemselves to a state of quasi-stoical endurance. That religioncannot be expected to answer these questions--the very questionswhich it is its right and its duty to answer--seems to be taken forgranted by all who ask them. Religion, as it is now conceived of, is a thing for priests and ministers, for churches and chapels, forSundays and Saints'-days, for the private devotions of women andchildren, for educational debates in Parliament, for the first lessonon the time-table (9. 5 to 9. 45 a. M. ) of a Public Elementary School. The "unbeliever" is eager to run a tilt against religion. The"non-believer" is content to ignore it. The "believer" is careful toexclude it from nine-tenths of his life. It is to this pass that thegospel of salvation by machinery has brought the most "progressive"part of the human race. 

The phase of non-religiousness through which the West is passing has, we may rest assured, a meaning and a purpose. At the meetings of theCatholic Truth Society it is customary for the speakers to deplorethe steady relapse of Christendom into paganism, which is going onbefore their eyes. As the Church had things her own way for tencenturies or more, these complaints on the part of her champions areequivalent to a confession on her part of disastrous failure. Why isthe Church, after having evangelised the West and ruled it for athousand years, allowing it to slide back into paganism? The answerto this question is that she herself is unwittingly paganising it. I mean by this that, without intending to do so, she is compellingit to choose between secularised life and arrested growth. Were agrowing tree encircled with an iron band, the day would surely comewhen the tree, by the force of its own natural expansion, wouldeither shatter the band or allow it to cut deep into its own stem. The growing consciousness of Humanity has long been encircled by arigid and inadequate conception of God. The gradual secularisation ofthe West means that the soul of man is straining that particularconception of God to breaking-point: and it is infinitely better thatit should be broken to pieces than that its iron should be allowed tosink deep into the soul. 

The secularisation of contemporary life means this, and more thanthis. It means the gradual handing back of Man's life to the controlof Nature, --of Nature which is as yet unequal to the task that isbeing set it, owing to its having been through all these centuriesidentified with its lower self, taught to distrust itself, andotherwise misinterpreted and mismanaged, but which, in obedience tothe primary instinct of self-preservation, will gradually rise tothe level of the responsibility that is being laid upon it. With thefurther secularisation of Man's life, the need for religion to makeeffective the control of Nature, by pointing out to it its own idealand so co-ordinating and organising all its forces, will graduallymake itself felt, and the regeneration of religion will at last havebegun. 

 * * * * *

For many centuries the current of religious belief in the West wasalmost entirely confined to the one channel of Catholic Christianity. There the mighty river pursued his course, "brimming and bright andlarge, " till the time came when, with the gradual loss of hispristine energy--

 "Sands began To hem his wintry march, and dam his streams And split his currents";

Side channels were formed, and grew in number; and though Catholicismis still the central channel for the moving waters, the river has nowfallen on evil days, and "strains along, " "shorn and parcelled, " likethe river of the Asian desert--

 "forgetting the bright speed he bore In his high mountain cradle. "

Of the many side streams into which Western Christianity has split, the majority may be spoken of collectively as Protestant. Protestantism claims to have liberated a large part of Christendomfrom the yoke of Rome; and it is therefore right that we should askourselves in what sense and to what extent it has brought freedomto the human spirit. The answer to this question is, I think, thatthough Protestantism has fought a good fight for the _principle_ offreedom, it has failed--for many reasons, the chief of which is thatit began its work before men were ripe for freedom--to lead itsvotaries into the path of spiritual life and growth. Confronted bythe uncompromising dogmatism of Rome, it had to devise a counterdogmatism of its own in order to rally round it the faint-heartedwho, though eager to absolve themselves from obedience to thedespotism of the Church, yet feared to walk by their own "inwardlight. " In making this move, which was not the less false becauseit was in a sense inevitable, Protestantism may be said to haverenounced its mission. That it has done much, in various ways, forhuman progress is undeniable; but the fact remains that it hasfailed to revitalise Christianity. Its master-stroke in its strugglewith priestcraft--the substitution of "faith" for "works" as thebasis of salvation--has done little or nothing to relieve the Westfrom the deadly pressure of Israel's philosophy. For faith, asProtestantism understands the word, is the movement of the soul, not towards the ideal end of its being but towards an allegedsupernatural transaction, --the redemption of the world by thedeath of Christ on the Cross. Gratitude to Christ for his love andself-sacrifice may indeed be an effective motive to action, but faithin the efficacy of Christ's atoning sacrifice is no guide to conduct. The inability of Protestantism to deduce a scheme of life from itsown master-principle of salvation by "faith" has compelled it, inits desire to avoid the pitfalls of antinomianism, to revive in amodified form the practical legalism of the Old Testament. TheProtestant desires to show his gratitude to Christ by leading acorrect life; but his distrust of his own higher nature compels himto go to some external authority for ethical guidance; and as he hasrepudiated the authority of the supernaturally-inspired Church, heis compelled to have recourse to the supernaturally-inspired Bible. Hence the traditional alliance between Protestantism and the OldTestament, in which the path of duty is far more clearly andconsistently defined than in the New. And hence the singular factthat Calvinism, which is the backbone of Protestantism, and which intheory, and even (at times) in practice, regards "works" as "filthyrags, " finds its other self in Puritanism, which is in the main arecrudescence of Jewish legalism in the more strictly _moral_ sphereof conduct. 

It is owing to its alliance with the legalism of Israel, thatProtestantism has been in some respects an even greater enemy ofhuman freedom than Catholicism, and has on the whole done more thanthe latter to narrow and maim human life. The strict legalist tries, as we have seen, to bring the whole of human life under the directcontrol of the Law; and when he finds, as the Puritan did in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that whole aspects of life havein point of fact escaped from the control of religion and won fromthe latter a tacit acceptance of themselves as secular, he notunnaturally tends to regard these non-religious aspects of life as"carnal, " and therefore as unacceptable to God. Hence the antipathyof the Protestant, in his seasons of Puritanical fanaticism, toart, music, the drama, and other noble fruits of the human spirit. Catholicism has found itself compelled to tolerate the secularactivities of the layman; Protestantism, while tolerating thoseactivities by which man earns his daily bread and which may be spokenof collectively as "business, " has from time to time waged waragainst all the developments of human nature which are neitherspiritual (in the narrow and rigid sense of the word) nor obviouslyuseful, and has sought to extirpate the corresponding desires fromthe heart of Man. On the more artistic side of human life, it hasdone as much to impede the growth of the soul as Catholicism hasdone on the more intellectual side; and through its influence oncharacter it has done as much to harden the fibre of the soul asCatholicism has done to relax it, the tendency of both religionsbeing to destroy that elasticity of fibre which mediates betweenhardness and flabbiness, and which has its counterpart in vigoroushealth and strength. 

The truth is--but it is a truth which Protestantism is aptto misinterpret, and which Catholicism finds it expedient toignore--that religion is not a branch or department of human life, but a way of looking at life as a whole. Indeed, it is of the essenceof religion (as has been already suggested) that it should lookat life as a whole, and so be able to look at each of its detailsin the light of that supreme synthesis which we call Divine. Andthe religion which sanctions, and by its own action necessitates, the division of life into two branches--the secular and thereligious--has obviously missed its destiny and betrayed its trust. 

 * * * * *

A brief summary of the contents of this chapter will prepare the wayfor the next. The movements of higher thought in the West have beendominated, nominally by the professional thinker, really by theaverage man. As a thinker, the average man is incurably dualistic. Enslaved as he is to the requirements of his instrument, language, heinstinctively opposes mind to body, spirit to matter, good to evil, the Creator to the Creation, God to Man; and in each case he fixes agreat gulf between the "mighty opposites" that constitute the givenantithesis. Confronted by the mystery of existence, he has explainedit by the story of Creation. Confronted by the twin mysteries of sinand sorrow, he has explained them by the story of the Fall. From thestory of the Fall he has passed on to the doctrine of original sin, to the belief that Nature in general, and human nature in particular, is corrupt and ruined, and therefore intrinsically evil. Shrinkingfrom the hopeless prospect which this belief opens up to him, hehas found refuge in the conception of another world, --of a worldabove and beyond Nature, a world of Divine perfection from whichinformation and guidance can at God's good pleasure be doled outto Man. For a "supernatural revelation" (as theologians call thissending of help from God to Man) special instruments are obviouslyneeded, --a special People, a special Scripture, a special Lawgiver, a special Prophet, a special Church. Hence has arisen the idea thatcertain persons, certain castes, certain institutions have a monopolyof Divine truth and grace, and are therefore in a position to dictateto their fellow-men how they are to bear themselves if they wish tobe "saved, " what they are to believe, what they are to do. From thisthe transition has been easy to the further idea that salvation isto be achieved by blind and mechanical obedience, --by renouncingthe right to follow one's own higher nature, to obey one's ownconscience, to use one's own reason, to map out one's own life. Inorder to induce men to yield the obedience which is required of them, their lower instincts have had to be appealed to (for the higher, ruined by the Fall, have presumably ceased to operate), --their desirefor pleasure by the promise of Heaven, their fear of pain by thethreat of Hell. And in order that their lives may be kept underclose supervision and their merits accurately appraised, anever-increasing stress has had to be laid on what is outward, visible, and measurable in human life, as distinguished from whatis inward and occult, --on correctness in the details of prescribedconduct, or again in the details of formulated belief. As the idea ofsalvation through mechanical obedience develops into a systematisedscheme of life, the higher and more spiritual faculties of Man'snature become gradually atrophied by disuse. In other words, thechannel of soul growth--the only channel that leads to spiritualhealth, and therefore to "salvation"--becomes gradually obstructed, with the result that the vital energies of the soul tend either todissipate themselves and run to waste, or to make new channels forthemselves, --channels of degenerative tendency, the end of which isspiritual death. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] By "self-satisfaction" I mean satisfaction with theexisting system _as a system_. That strenuous efforts are being madeto improve the system, within its own limits, I can well believe. Butthe system itself, with the defects and limitations which are of itsessence, seems to be regarded as adequate, and even as final, bynearly all who work under it. 

[2] 1862 to 1895 A. D. 

[3] The _Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ_, by Dr. Emil Schürer. 

[4] In its extreme form legalism tends to bring about thatruin of human nature which it starts by postulating; for, byforbidding Man's higher faculties to energise, it necessarily arreststheir development, and so makes it possible for the lower facultiesto draw to themselves an undue share of the rising sap of Man'slife. 

CHAPTER II

EDUCATION THROUGH MECHANICAL OBEDIENCE

The God of popular theology has been engaged for more than thirtycenturies in educating his child, Man. His system of education hasbeen based on complete distrust of Man's nature. In the schools whichMan has been required to attend--the Legal School under the OldDispensation, the Ecclesiastical School under the New--it hasbeen taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true, nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore beenformulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote andprofess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also beenformulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail bydetail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, orto the direction of an all-controlling Church. 

It has further been taken for granted that Man's instincts andimpulses are wholly evil, and that "Right Faith" and "Right Conduct"are entirely repugnant to his nature. In order to overcome theresistance which his corrupt heart and perverse will might thereforebe expected to offer to the authority and influence of his teachers, a scheme of rewards and punishments has had to be devised for hisbenefit. As there is no better nature for the scheme to appeal to, an appeal has had to be made to fears and hopes which are avowedlybase. The refractory child has had to be threatened with corporalpunishment in the form of an eternity of torment in Hell. And he hashad to be bribed by the offer of prizes, the chief of which is aneternity of selfish enjoyment in Heaven, --enjoyment so selfish thatit will consist with, and even (it is said) be heightened by, theknowledge that in the Final Examination the failures have been manyand the prize-winners few. 

And as, under this system of education, obedience is the first andlast of virtues, so self-will--in the sense of daring to think andact for oneself--is the first and last of offences. It is for thesin of spiritual initiative--the sin of trying to work out one'sown salvation by the exercise of reason, conscience, imagination, aspiration, and other spiritual faculties--that the direst penaltiesare reserved. The path of salvation is the path of blind, passive, mechanical obedience. To deviate even a little from that path is toincur the penalty of eternal death. 

 * * * * *

As Man is educated by his father, God, so must the child be educatedby his father, the adult man. If the nature of Man is intrinsicallyevil, the child must needs have been conceived in sin and shapen ininiquity. If Man, even in his maturity, cannot be trusted to thinkor desire or do what is right, still less can he be so trusted whenhe is that relatively immature and helpless being, the child. Ifthe adult man has to be told in the fullest detail (whether by aformulated Law or by a living Church) how he is to conduct himself, still greater is the need for such or similar direction to be givento the child. If the adult is to be "saved" by strict and mechanicalobedience, and by no other method, still greater is the need forsuch obedience on the part of the child. If a system of externaland quasi-material rewards and punishments is indispensable in theeducation of the adult, still less can it be dispensed with in theeducation of the child. These _a fortiori_ arguments are strong; butthere is a stronger. The child will develop into the adult, and hecannot too soon be initiated into the life which, as the adult, hewill have to lead. The process of educating the child is not merelyanalogous to the process of "saving" the man. It is a vital partof it. For childhood is the time when human nature is most easilymoulded; and the bent that is given to it then is, in nine cases outof ten, decisive of its ultimate destiny. 

It is clear, then, that if Man is to be "saved" by a _régime_ ofmechanical obedience, his education in his childhood must be based onthe same general conception of life and duty. This means, in thefirst place, that the child must be brought up in an atmosphere ofseverity. The God of the Old Testament--the Deity whose _nimbus_overshadows the life of the West--combines in his own person thefunctions of law-giver, governor, prosecutor, judge, and executioner. His subjects are a race of vile offenders, whose every impulse isbad, and whose nature turns towards evil as inevitably as a plantturns towards the light. As he cannot trust them to know good fromevil, he has had to provide them with an elaborate code of law; andhe has had to take for granted that, left to themselves, they willbreak his commandments, and find pleasure in doing so. From the veryoutset, then, his attitude towards them has been one of suspicion andrising anger. He is always on the look-out for disobedience, and heis ready to chastise the offender almost before he has had time tocommit the offence. His pupils, brought up in an atmosphere ofsuspicion, and taught from their earliest days to disbelieve in andcondemn themselves, can scarcely be blamed for living _down_ to theevil reputation which they have unfortunately gained. To persuade aman that he is a miserable sinner is to go some way towards leadinghim into the path of sin. Systematic distrust paralyses anddemoralises those who live under it, and so tends to justify thecruelty into which it too readily develops. The penalties which Godhas attached to the sins which he may almost be said to have provokedMan to commit, are so terrible and unjust that if the fear of themhas not robbed life of all its sunshine, the reason is that theirvery horror has numbed Man's imagination, and made it impossible forhim even to begin to picture to himself their lurid gloom. 

In the West men have loyally striven to reproduce towards theirchildren the supposed attitude of their God of Wrath towardsthemselves. From very tender years the child has been brought up inan atmosphere of displeasure and mistrust. His spontaneous activitieshave been repressed as evil. His every act has been looked upon withsuspicion. He has been ever on the defensive, like a prisoner in thedock. He has been ever on the alert for a sentence of doom. He hasbeen cuffed, kicked, caned, flogged, shut up in the dark, fed onbread and water, sent hungry to bed, subjected to a variety ofcruel and humiliating punishments, terrified with idle--but to himappalling--threats. In his misery he has shed a whole ocean oftears, --the salt and bitter tears of hopeless grief and helplessanger, not the soul-refreshing tears which are sometimes distilledfrom sorrow by the sunshine of love. But of all the cruelties towhich he has been subjected, the most devilish has been that ofmaking him believe in his own criminality, in the corruption of hisinnocent heart. In the deadly shade of that chilling cloud, theflower of his opening life has too often withered before it has hadtime to expand. For what is most cruel in cruelty is its tendency todemoralise its victims, especially those who are of tender years--toharden them, to brutalise them, to make them stubborn and secretive, to make them shifty and deceitful, to throw them back uponthemselves, to shut them up within themselves, to quench the joy oftheir hearts, to numb their sympathies, to cramp their expansiveenergies, to narrow and darken their whole outlook on life. All thisthe cruelty of his seniors would do to the child, even if he had notbeen taught to believe in his own inborn wickedness. But that belief, with which he has been indoctrinated from his earliest days, necessarily weakens his power of resisting evil, and so predisposeshim to fall a victim to the malignant germs that cruelty sows in hisheart. We tell the child that he is a criminal, and treat him assuch, and then expect him to be perfect; and when our misguidededucation has begun to deprave him, we shake our heads over hiscongenital depravity, and thank God that we believe in "originalsin. "[5]

In the next place, if Man is to be faithful to his model, he mustbring up the child in an atmosphere of vexatious interference andunnatural restraint. That Man himself has been brought up in such anatmosphere in both his schools--the Legal and the Ecclesiastical--Ineed not take pains to prove. What he has suffered at the hands ofhis Schoolmaster--the God of Israel (and of Christendom)--he hastaken good care to inflict on his pupil, the child. Such phrases as:"Don't talk, " "Don't fidget, " "Don't worry, " "Don't ask questions, ""Don't make a noise, " "Don't make a mess, " "Don't do this thing, ""Don't do that thing, " are ever falling from his lips. And they aresupplemented with such positive instructions as: "Sit still, " "Standon the form, " "Hold yourself up, " "Fold arms, " "Hands behind backs, ""Hands on heads, " "Eyes on the blackboard. " At every turn--frominfancy till adolescence, "from early morning till late in theevening"--these "dead and deadening formulas" await the unhappychild. The aim of his teachers is to leave nothing to his nature, nothing to his spontaneous life, nothing to his free activity; torepress all his natural impulses; to drill his energies into completequiescence; to keep his whole being in a state of sustained andpainful tension. And in order that we may see a meaning and arational purpose in this _régime_ of oppressive interference, we mustassume that its ultimate aim is to turn the child into an animatedpuppet, who, having lost his capacity for vital activity, will beready to dance, or rather go through a series of jerky movements, inresponse to the strings which his teacher pulls. It is the inevitablereaction from this state of tension which is responsible for much ofthe "naughtiness" of children. The spontaneous energies of the child, when education has blocked all their lawful outlets, must needs forcenew outlets for themselves, --lawless outlets, if no others areavailable. The child's instinct to live will see to that. Itsometimes happens that, when the channel of a river has been blockedby winter's ice, the river, on its awakening in Spring, will suddenlychange its course and carve out a new channel for itself, reckless ofthe destruction that it may cause, so long as an outlet can by anymeans be found for its baffled current. It is the same with the riverof the child's expanding life. The naughtiest and most mischievousboy not infrequently develops into a hero, or a leader of men. Theexplanation of this is that through his very naughtiness the currentof soul-growth, which ran stronger in him than in his school-mates, kept open the channel which his teachers were doing their best toclose. Even Hooliganism--to take the most serious of the periodicoutbursts of juvenile criminality--resolves itself, when thoughtfullyconsidered, into a sudden and violent change in the channel of aboy's life, a change which is due to the normal channel (or channels)of his expansive energies having been blocked by years of educationalrepression. His wild, ruffianly outrages are perhaps the lastdespairing effort that his vital principle makes to assert itself, before it finally gives up the struggle for active existence. 

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When severity and constraint have done their work, when the spirit ofthe child has been broken, when his vitality has been lowered to itsbarest minimum, when he has been reduced to a state of mental andmoral serfdom, the time has come for the system of education throughmechanical obedience to be applied to him in all its rigour. In otherwords, the time has come for Man to do to the child, what the Godwhom he worships is supposed to have done to him, --to tell him in thefullest and minutest detail what he is to do to be "saved, " and tostand over him with a scourge in his hand and see that he does it. Inthe two great schools which God is supposed to have opened for Man'sbenefit, freedom and initiative have ever been regarded (and withgood reason) as the gravest of offences. Literal obedience hasbeen exacted by the Law; blind obedience by the Church; passiveobedience--the obedience of a puppet, or at best of an automaton--byboth. The need for this insistence on the part of Law and Church isobvious. If any lingering desire to think things out for himself, ifany intelligent interest in what he was taught, survived in thedisciple, the whole system of salvation by machinery would be indanger of being thrown out of gear. 

As it has been, and still is, in the schools which God has openedfor Man, so it has been, and still is, in the schools which Manhas opened for the child. Blind, passive, literal, unintelligentobedience is the basis on which the whole system of Western educationhas been reared. The child must distrust himself absolutely, mustrealise that he is as helpless as he is ignorant, before he can beginto profit by the instruction that will be given to him. His mind mustbecome a _tabula rasa_ before his teacher can begin to write on it. The vital part of him--call it what you will--must become as claybefore his teacher can begin to mould him to his will. 

The strength of the child, then, is to sit still, to listen, to say"Amen" to, or repeat, what he has heard. The strength of the teacheris to bustle about, to give commands, to convey information, toexhort, to expound. The strength of the child is to efface himself inevery possible way. The strength of the teacher is to assert himselfin every possible way. The golden rule of education is that the childis to do nothing for himself which his teacher can possibly do, oreven pretend to do, for him. Were he to try to do things by or forhimself, he would probably start by doing them badly. This is not tobe tolerated. Imperfection and incorrectness are moral defects; andthe child must as far as possible be guarded from them as from thecontamination of moral guilt. He must therefore trust himself to histeacher, and do what he is told to do in the precise way in whichhe is told. His teacher must stand in front of him and give suchdirections as these: "Look at me, " "See what I am doing, " "Watch myhand, " "Do the thing this way, " "Do the thing that way, " "Listen towhat I say, " "Repeat it after me, " "Repeat it all together, " "Say itthree times. " And the child, growing more and more comatose, mustobey these directions and ask no questions; and when he has done whathe has been told to do, he must sit still and wait for the nextinstalment of instruction. 

What is all this doing for the child? The teacher seldom asks himselfthis question. If he did, he would answer it by saying that the endof education is to enable the child to produce certain outward andvisible results, --to do by himself what he has often done, either inimitation of his teacher, or in obedience to his repeated directions;to say by himself what he has said many times in chorus with hisclass-mates; to disgorge some fragments of the information with whichhe has been crammed; and so forth. What may be the value of theseoutward results, what they indicate, what amount or kind of mental(or other) growth may be behind them, --are questions which theteacher cannot afford to consider, even if he felt inclined toask them. His business is to drill the child into the mechanicalproduction of quasi-material results; and his success in doing thiswill be gauged in due course by an "examination, "--a periodic testwhich is designed to measure, not the degree of growth which thechild has made, but the industry of the teacher as indicated by thereceptivity of his class. 

The truth is that inward and spiritual growth, even if it werethought desirable to produce it and measure it, could not possibly bemeasured. The real "results" of education are in the child's heartand mind and soul, beyond the reach of any measuring tape or weighingmachine. It follows that if the work of the teacher is to be tested, an external test must be applied. This means that external results, results which can be weighed and measured, must be aimed at by bothteacher and child, and that the value of these as symbols of what isinward and intrinsic must be wholly ignored. Not that the inwardresults of education would in any case be seriously considered. Wheneducation is based on the passivity of the child, nothing matters tohim or to his teacher except the accuracy with which he can reproducewhat he has been taught, --can repeat what he has been told, or do byhimself what he has been told how to do. What connection there may bebetween these achievements and his mental state matters so littlethat the bare idea of there being such a connection is, as a rule, entirely lost sight of. The externalisation of religion in the West, as evidenced by its ceremonialism and its casuistry, has faithfullymirrored itself in the externality of Western education. Theexamination system (which I will presently consider) keeps educationin the grooves of externality, and drives those grooves so deep asto make escape from them impossible. Yet it does but give formalrecognition to, and in so doing crown and complete--as the keystonecrowns and completes the arch--the whole system of education in theWest. It is because what is outward and visible counts for everythingin the West, first in the life of the adult and then in the life ofthe child, that the idea of weighing and measuring the results ofeducation--with its implicit assumption that the real results ofeducation are ponderable and measurable (a deadly fallacy which nowhas the force and authority of an axiom)--has come to establishitself in every Western land. 

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The tendency of the Western teacher to mistake the externals for theessentials of education, and to measure educational progress in termsof the "appearance of things, " gives rise to many misconceptions, one of the principal of which is the current confusion betweeninformation and knowledge. To generate knowledge in his pupils isa legitimate end of the teacher's ambition. In schools and other"academies" it tends to become the chief, if not the sole, end; and, things being what they are, the teacher may be pardoned for regardingit as such. But what is knowledge? The vulgar confusion betweenknowledge and information is the accepted answer to this question. But the answer is usually given before the question has beenseriously considered. One who allowed himself to reflect on it, however briefly or cursorily, would quickly realise that it ispossible to have intimate and effective knowledge of a subjectwithout being able to impart any information about it. Successfulaction, as in arts, crafts, games, sports, and the like, must needshave subtle and accurate knowledge behind it; but the possessor ofsuch knowledge is seldom able to impart it with any approach tolucidity. On the other hand, it frequently happens that one who has aretentive memory is able to impart information glibly and correctly, without possessing any real knowledge of the subject in question. 

The truth is that knowledge, which may perhaps be provisionallydefined as a correct attitude towards one's environment, has almostas wide a range as that of human nature itself. At one end of thescale we have the quasi-animal instinct which governs successfulphysical action. At the other end we have the knowledge, of which, and of the possession of which, its possessor is clearly, conscious. Between these extremes there is an almost infinite series of strata, ranging through every conceivable degree of subconsciousness. Theknowledge that is real and effective is absorbed into one or more ofthe subconscious strata, from which it gradually ascends, under theinfluence of attention and reflection, towards the more consciouslevels, gaining, as it ascends, in scope and outlook what it maypossibly lose in subtlety and nearness to action. When knowledge, after passing upwards through many subconscious strata, rises towhat I may call the surface-level of consciousness, it is ready, onoccasion, to give itself off as information. This exhalation from thesurface of consciousness is genuine information, not to be confoundedwith knowledge, to which it is related as the outward to the inwardstate, still less to be confounded with that spurious informationwhich floats, as we shall presently see, like a film on the surfaceof the mind, meaning nothing and indicating nothing except that ithas been artificially deposited, and that in due season it will beskimmed off, if the teacher's hopes are fulfilled, for thedelectation of an examiner. 

There are, of course, many cases in which the conscious acquisitionof information is a necessary stage in the acquisition of knowledge. But in all such cases, if the information acquired is to haveany educative value, it must be allowed to sink down into thesubconscious strata, whence, after having been absorbed andassimilated and so converted into knowledge, it will perhaps reascendtowards the surface of the mind, just as the leaves which fall inautumn are dragged down into the soil below, converted into fertilemould, and then gradually lifted towards the surface; or as the freshwater that the rivers pour into the sea has to be slowly absorbedinto the whole mass of salt water before it (or its equivalent) canreturn to the land as rain. When information which has been receivedand assimilated rises to the surface of the mind, it will be ready, when required to do so, to reappear as information, and perhapsto return in that form to the source from which it came. But theinformation which is given off will differ profoundly from that whichhas been received, for between the two will have intervened manystages of silent absorption and silent growth. 

It may be necessary, then, in the course of education, both to supplyand to demand information. But the information which is supplied mustbe regarded as the raw material of knowledge, into which it is to beconverted by a subtle and secret process. And the information whichis demanded must be regarded as an exhalation (so to speak) from thesurface of a mind which has been saturated with study and experience, and therefore as a proof of the possession of knowledge. To assumethat knowledge and information are interchangeable terms, that toimpart information is therefore to generate knowledge, that to giveback information is therefore to give proof of the possession ofknowledge, --is one of the greatest mistakes that a teacher can make. 

But the mistake is almost universally made. Information being relatedto knowledge, as what is outward to what is inward, it is but naturalthat education in the West, which on principle concerns itself withwhat is outward, and ignores what is inward, should have alwaysregarded, and should still regard, the supplying of information asthe main function of the teacher, and the ability of the child toretail the information which has been supplied to him as a convincingproof that the work of the teacher has been successfully done. Innine schools out of ten, on nine days out of ten, in nine lessons outof ten, the teacher is engaged in laying thin films of information onthe surface of the child's mind, and then, after a brief interval, in skimming these off in order to satisfy himself that they had beenduly laid. He cannot afford to do otherwise. If the child, like theman, is to be "saved" by passive obedience, his teacher must keephis every action and operation under close and constant supervision. Were the information which is supplied to him allowed to descend intothe subconscious strata of his being, there to be dealt with by thesecret, subtle, assimilative processes of his nature, it wouldescape from the teacher's supervision and therefore from his control. In other words, the teacher would have abdicated his function. Hemust therefore take great pains to keep the processes by which thechild acquires knowledge (or what passes for such) as near to thesurface of his mind as possible; in rivalry of the nurse who shouldtake so much interest in the well-being of her charges that she wouldnot allow them to digest the food which she had given them, but wouldinsist on their disgorging it at intervals, in order that she mightsatisfy herself that it had been duly given and received. It is nodoubt right that the teacher should take steps to test the industryof his pupils; but the information which the child has always to keepat the call of his memory, in order that he may give it back ondemand in the form in which he has received it, is the equivalentof food which its recipient has not been allowed to digest. 

The confusion between information and knowledge lies at the heart ofthe religion, as well as of the education, of the West. In this, asin other matters, the training of the child by his teacher has beenmodelled on the supposed training of Man by God. It is scarcely anexaggeration to say that the whole scheme of salvation by mechanicalobedience is pivoted on the assumed identity of information andknowledge. In both the schools which Man has attended three thingshave always been taken for granted. The first is that salvationdepends upon right knowledge of God. The second, that right knowledgeof God and correct information about God are interchangeable phrases. The third, that correct information about God is procurable by, andcommunicable to, Man. From these premises it has been inferred thatif Man can be duly supplied with correct information about God, andcan be induced to receive and retain it, he will be able to "savehis soul alive. " The difference between the two schools is, that inthe Legal School the information supplied to Man has been largelyconcerned with the _Will_ of God, so far as it bears on the lifeof Man, and has therefore taken the form of a Code of formulatedcommandments; whereas in the Ecclesiastical School it has mainly beenconcerned with the _Being_ of God, as interpreted from his doings andespecially from his dealings with Man, and has therefore taken theform of catechisms and creeds. And there is, of course, the furtherdifference that in the Legal School Man's acceptance of what he istaught has taken the _practical_ form of doing what he is told to do, detail by detail; whereas in the Ecclesiastical School it has beenmainly _oral_ (though also partly ceremonial), the business of thedisciple being to commit to memory the creed or catechism which hasbeen placed in his hands, and recite it, formula by formula, withflawless accuracy. But the difference between the two schools iswholly superficial, being, in fact, analogous to that between theconventional teaching of Drawing, in which the pupil finds salvationin doing what he is told to do, line by line, and stroke by stroke, and the conventional teaching of History and Geography, in which thepupil finds salvation in saying what he is told to say, name by name, and date by date. The relation between the two great branches ofeducation, the education of Man by God, and the education of thechild by the man, is one, not of analogy merely, but also of causeand effect. It is because the Jew thought to "save his soul alive" byobeying, blindly and unintelligently, a multitude of vexatious rules, that the teacher of to-day thinks to educate his pupils in Drawing bytelling them in the fullest detail (either in his own person or bymeans of a diagram) what lines and strokes they are to make. And itis because the Christian has thought to "save his soul alive" byreciting with parrot-like accuracy the formulæ of his creeds andcatechisms, that the teacher of to-day thinks to educate his pupilsin History and Geography by making them repeat from memory a seriesof definitions, dates, events, names of persons, names of places, articles of commerce, and the like. I do not say that the modernteacher consciously imitates his models; but I say that he and theyhave been inspired by the same conception of life, and that theinfluence of that conception has been, in part at least, transmittedby them to him. 

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That education in the West should ultimately be controlled by asystem of formal examination, may be said to have been predestined bythe general trend of religious thought and belief. Wherever literalobedience is regarded as the first, if not the last, condition ofsalvation, the tendency to measure worth and progress by the outwardresults that are produced will inevitably spring up and assertitself. In this tendency we have the whole examination system inembryo. When Israel, with characteristic thoroughness, had embodiedin Pharisaism the logical inferences from his religious conceptions, a merciless examination system came into being, in which everyone was at once examiner and examinee, and in which the whole ofhuman life was dragged out (as far as that was possible) into thefierce light of public criticism, and placed under vigilant andunintermittent supervision. When Pharisaism was revived, with manymodifications but with no essential change of character, under thename of Puritanism, the tendency to arraign human life at the bar ofpublic opinion reasserted itself, and gave rise, as in New Englandand covenanting Scotland, to an intolerable spiritual tyranny. InCatholic countries the believer is subjected in the Confessional to aperiodical oral examination, in which he passes in review the outwardaspect of his inward and spiritual life, detailing for the benefit ofhis confessor his sins of ceremonial omission or laxity, and suchlapses from moral rectitude as admit of being formulated in words andaccurately valued in terms of expiatory penance. Even in the AnglicanChurch, which has too great a regard for the Englishman's traditionallove of personal freedom to be unduly inquisitorial, the clergyman isapt to measure the spiritual health and progress of his parishionersby the frequency with which they attend church and "Celebration, "while the Bishop measures the spiritual health and progress of eachparish by the number of its communicants and the frequency with whichthey communicate, statistics under both heads being (I am told)regularly forwarded to him from all parts of his diocese. 

It was inevitable, then, the relation between that sooner or laterthe education of the young should come under the control of asystem of formal religion and education being what it was and is, examination, and that it should be as much easier to apply the systemto education than to religion as it is easier to test knowledge (inthe conventional sense of the word) than conduct. It is to the vulgarconfusion between knowledge and information that we owe the formalexamination, as it is now conducted in most Western countries. In asociety which mistakes the externals for the essentials of life, itis but natural that the teacher, with the full consent of the parentsof his pupils, should regard the imparting of knowledge as the endand aim of his professional life, and that the parents should demandsome guarantee that knowledge has been successfully imparted to theirchildren. If by knowledge were meant a correct attitude of mind, theteacher would realise that the idea of testing it in any way whichwould satisfy the average parent was chimerical; and his clients, ifthey continued to ask for a guarantee of successful teaching, wouldrequire something widely different from that which has hithertocontented them. But when information is regarded as the equivalent ofknowledge, the testing of the teacher's work becomes a simple matter, for it is quite easy to frame an examination which will ascertain, with some approach to accuracy, the amount of information that isfloating on the surface of the child's mind; and it is also easy totabulate the results of such an examination, --to find a numericalequivalent for the work done by each examinee, and then arrange thewhole class in what is known as the "order of merit, " and acceptedas such, without a moment's misgiving, by all concerned. 

Unfortunately, however, it is equally easy to prepare children for anexamination of this, the normal type. As children have receptivememories, it is easy for the teacher to lay films of informationon the surface of their minds. As they have capacious and fairlyretentive memories, it is easy for the teacher, especially if he is astrict disciplinarian, to make his pupils retain the greater part ofwhat they have been taught. To skim off and give back to the teacher(or examiner) portions of the floating films of information, is aknack which comes with practice, and which the average child easilyacquires. The teacher will, of course, demand that his school shallbe examined on a clearly-defined syllabus; and the examiner, in hisown interest, will gladly comply with this demand. The examiner willgo further than this. If he happens to be employed by the State or bya Local Authority, and has, therefore, many schools of the same typeto examine, he will, in order to save himself unnecessary trouble, prescribe the syllabus on which all the schools in his area are tobe examined. This means that he will dictate to the teacher whatsubjects he is to teach, how much ground he is to cover in each year(or term), in what general order he is to treat each subject, and onwhat general principles he is to teach it. Intentionally he will doall this. Unintentionally he will do far more than this. As he wisheshis examination to be a test and not a mere formality, as he wishesto sift the examinees and not to set the seal of approval on all ofthem indiscriminately, he will take care that some at least of hisquestions are different from what the teacher might expect them tobe. Also, as he is himself a rational being, he will probablyendeavour to test intelligence as well as memory; and, with this endin view, he will set questions, the precise nature of which it willbe difficult for the teacher to forecast. But the teacher will make apractice of studying the questions set in the periodical examinationsand of preparing his pupils accordingly, equipping them (if he is anexpert at his work) with a stock of superficial intelligence as wellas of information, and putting them up to whatever knacks, tricks, and dodges will enable them to show to advantage on the examinationday. In his desire to outwit the teacher, the examiner will turn anddouble like a hare who is pursued by a greyhound. But the teacherwill turn and double with equal agility, and will never allow himselfto be outdistanced by his quarry. 

The more successful the teacher is in keeping up with the examiner, the more fatal will his success be to his pupils and to himself. In the ardour of the chase he is being lured on into a region oftreacherous quicksands; and the longer he is able to maintain thepursuit, the more certain is it that he will lose himself at lastin depths and mazes of misconception and delusion. It is only bystripping himself of his own freedom and responsibility that theteacher is able to keep pace with the examiner, and each turnor double that he makes involves a fresh surrender of thoseprerogatives. In consenting to work on a prescribed syllabus he hasgiven up the idea of planning out his work for himself. In attemptingto adapt his teaching to the questions set by the examiner, he isallowing the latter to dictate to him, in the minutest detail, howeach subject is to be taught. In other words, in order to achieve thesemblance of success, he is delivering himself, mind and soul, intothe hands of the examiner, and compelling the latter, perhaps againsthis will, to become a Providence to him and to order all his goings. This means that his distrust of himself is as complete as hisdistrust of the child, and that his faith in the efficacy ofmechanical obedience has led him to seek salvation for himself, as well as for his pupils, by following that fatal path. 

It is in this way that a formal examination reacts upon andintensifies the sinister tendencies of which it is at once a productand a symptom. The examination system is, as I have said, thekeystone of the arch of Western education, crowning and completingthe whole structure, and at the same time holding it together, andpreventing it from falling, as it deserves to fall, into a ruinousheap. Education, as it is now interpreted and practised in the West, could not continue to exist without the support of the examinationsystem; but the price that it pays, and will continue to pay, forthis deadly preservative, is the progressive aggravation of all itsown inherent defects. The plight of an organism is indeed desperatewhen the very poison which it ought, if healthy, to eliminate fromits system, has become indispensable to the prolongation of its life. 

It is notorious that the application of the examination principle toreligion--the attempt to estimate spiritual health and growth interms of outward action--generates hypocrisy, or the pretence ofbeing more virtuous (and more religious) than one really is. Whenapplied to the education of the young, the same principle generateshypocrisy of another kind, --the pretence of being cleverer than onereally is, of knowing more than one really knows. So long as thehypocrite realises that he is a hypocrite, there is hope for him. Butwhen hypocrisy develops into self-deception, the severance betweenoutward and inward, between appearance and reality, is complete. In a school which is ridden by the examination incubus, the wholeatmosphere is charged with deceit. The teacher's attempt to outwitthe examiner is deceitful; and the immorality of his action isaggravated by the fact that he makes his pupils partners with him inhis fraud. The child who is being crammed for an examination, and whois being practised at the various tricks and dodges that will, itis hoped, enable him to throw dust in the examiner's eyes, may notconsciously realise that he and his teacher are trying to perpetratea fraud, but will probably have an instinctive feeling that he isbeing led into crooked ways. If he has not that feeling, if thecrooked ways seem straight in his eyes, we may know that his senseof reality is being poisoned by the vitiated atmosphere which hehas been compelled to breathe. Nor, if that is his case, willhe lack companionship in his delusion. In the atmosphere of theexamination system, deceit and hypocrisy are ever changing intoself-deception; and all who become acclimatised to the influence ofthe system--pupils, teachers, examiners, parents, employers oflabour, ministers of religion, members of Parliament, and therest--fall victims, sooner or later, to the poison that infectsit, and are well content to cheat themselves with outward andvisible results, accepting "class-lists" and "orders of merit" as ofquasi-divine authority, mistaking official regulations for laws ofNature, and the clumsy movements of over-elaborated yet ill-contrivedmachinery for the subtle processes of life. 

Of the many evils inherent in Western education, which theexamination system tends to intensify, one of the greatest is that ofstarving the child's activities, of making him helpless, apathetic, and inert. Original sin finds its equivalent, in the sphere of mentalaction, in original impotence and stupidity. It is not in the childto direct his steps, and the teacher must therefore direct them forhim, and, if necessary, support him with both hands while he makesthem. Even if the outward results which are the goal of the teacher'sambition were to be produced for his own satisfaction only, he wouldtake care to leave as little as possible to the child's independenteffort. But when the results in question have to satisfy an examiner, and when, as may well happen, the teacher's own professional welfaredepends on the examiner's verdict, it is but natural that he shouldhold himself responsible for every stroke and dot that his pupilmakes. When the education given in a school is dominated by aperiodical examination on a prescribed syllabus, suppression ofthe child's natural activities becomes the central feature of theteacher's programme. In such a school the child is not allowed to doanything which the teacher can possibly do for him. He has to thinkwhat his teacher tells him to think, to feel what his teacher tellshim to feel, to see what his teacher tells him to see, to say whathis teacher tells him to say, to do what his teacher tells him to do. And the directions given to him are always minute. Not the smallestroom for free action is allowed him if his teacher can possibly helpit. Indeed, it is the function of the skilful teacher to search forsuch possible nooks and crannies, and fill them up. It is true thatif an examination is to be passed with credit some thinking has to bedone. But the greater part of this thinking must be done by theteacher, the _rôle_ of the pupil, even when he is an adult student, being essentially passive and receptive. The pupil must indeed beactively passive and industriously receptive; but for the rest, hemust as far as possible leave himself in the teacher's hands. Howto outwit the examiner is the one aim of both the teacher and theexaminee; and as the teacher is presumably older, wiser, and farmore skilful at the examination game than his pupil, the duty ofthinking--of planning, of contriving, and even (in the deeper senseof the word) of studying--necessarily devolves on the former; and thelatter, instead of relying upon himself and learning to use his ownwits and resources, becomes more and more helpless and resourceless, and gradually ceases to take any interest in the work that he isdoing, for its own sake, his chief, if not his sole, concern beingto outwit the examiner and pass a successful examination. (Onefrequently meets with clever University students who, having read acertain book for a certain examination and had no question set fromit, regard the time given to the study of it as wasted, and haveno compunction about expressing this opinion!) If these are evilsincidental--I might almost say essential--to the examination of adultscholars, it stands to reason that they will be greatly aggravatedwhen the examinees are young children. For the younger the child, themore ignorant and helpless he is (however full he may be of latentcapacity and spontaneous activity), and therefore the more ready heis to lean upon his teacher and to look to him for instruction anddirection. 

The desire to outwit, and so win approval from, an examiner, is notthe only reason why the teacher so often reduces to an absurdity thetraditional distrust of the child. His own inability to educate thechild on other lines is another and not less potent reason. Theexamination _régime_ to which he has been subjected himself, partly, perhaps, under compulsion, but also and in larger measure of hisown choice, deprives him, as we have already seen, of much of hisfreedom, initiative, and responsibility; and that being so, it isinevitable that within the limited range of free action which is leftto him, he in his turn should devote his energies to depriving hispupils of the same vital qualities, and to making them the helplesscreatures of habit and routine which he himself is tending to become. To give free play to a child's natural faculties and so lead himinto the path of self-development and self-education, demands a highdegree of intelligence on the part of the teacher, combined with theconstant exercise of thought and initiative within a wide range offree action. If you tell a teacher in precise detail, whetherdirectly or indirectly, that he is to do this thing, and thatthing, and the next thing, he will not be able to carry out yourinstructions, except by telling his pupils, again in precise detail, that they are to do this thing, and that thing, and the next thing. He cannot help himself. He has no choice in the matter. He is thevictim of a quasi-physical compulsion. The pressure which is put uponhim will inevitably be transmitted by him and through him to hispupils, and will inevitably be multiplied (the relations betweenteacher and pupil being what they are) in the course of transmission. 

There is nothing that a healthy child hates so much as to have theuse of his natural faculties and the play of his natural energiesunduly restricted by parental or pedagogic control. We may thereforetake for granted that the child will find himself ill at ease in aschool in which every vital activity is rigidly repressed, and inwhich he spends most of his time in sitting still and waiting fororders. Nor will it add to his happiness to live habitually in anatmosphere of constraint, of austerity, of suspicion, of gloom. But Ineed not take pains to prove that education, as it is conducted inWestern countries, is profoundly repugnant to the natural instinctsof the healthy child. For that is precisely what it is intended tobe. The idea of a child enjoying his "lessons" is foreign to thegenius of the West. Dominated as he is by the inherited convictionthat Man's nature is corrupt and that his instincts are evil, theWestern teacher has set himself the task of doing violence to thechild's instinctive tendencies, of thwarting his inborn desires, ofworking against the grain of his nature. He has expected the child torebel against this _régime_, and he has welcomed his rebellion as aproof of the corruption of Man's nature, and therefore of thesoundness of the traditional philosophy of education. 

But if education is hateful to the child, how is he to be induced tosubmit to being educated? Some co-operation on his part will benecessary. How is it to be secured? By precisely the same methods asthose by which Man, in the course of his education, has been inducedto co-operate with God. The child, like Man, is to be "saved"--to berescued from Nature and from himself--by being led into the path ofmechanical obedience. The child, like Man, is to be kept in that pathby a system of external rewards and punishments. If he will not dowhat he is told to do, he will be punished by his teacher. If hewill do what he is told to do, he will escape punishment, and he maypossibly, when his merits have accumulated sufficiently, receive areward. In the education of Man by the God of Israel the balancebetween rewards and punishments has been kept fairly even. Hell hasbeen balanced by Heaven, calamity by prosperity, death by life. Ithas been far otherwise with the child. His punishments have beenmany, and his rewards few. At the present day men are more humanethan they used to be; and corporal punishment, though still resortedto, counts for less than it used to do in the training of the child. But punishments of various kinds are still regarded as indispensableadjuncts to school discipline; and it is still taken for granted infar too many schools that the fear of punishment and the hope ofreward are the only effective motives to educational effort. 

It is difficult to say which of the two motives is the more likely todemoralise the child. A _régime_ of punishment is not necessarily a_régime_ of cruelty; but punishment can scarcely fail to savour ofseverity, and when the doctrine of original sin is in the ascendant, and the inborn wilfulness and stubbornness of the child arepostulated by his teachers, the indefinable boundary line betweenseverity and cruelty is easily crossed. Of the tendency of crueltyto demoralise its victims I have already spoken. But the effect ofpunishment on the child must be considered in its relation to hismental, as well as to his moral, development. Scholarships, prizes, high places in class, and other such rewards are for the few, not forthe many. If the many are to be roused to exertion, the fear ofpunishment (in the hypothetical absence of any other motive) mustbe ever before them. What will happen to them when that motive iswithdrawn, as it will be when the child becomes the adolescent? Hiseducation has been distasteful to the child, partly because histeachers have assumed from the outset that it would be and must beso, but chiefly because in their ignorance they have taken pains tomake it so, his school life having been so ordered as to combine themaximum of strain with the maximum of _ennui_. His teachers have doneeverything for him, except those mechanical and monotonous exerciseswhich they felt they might trust him to do by himself. Some ofhis mental faculties have become stunted and atrophied through lackof exercise. Others have been allowed to wither in the bud. If hehappens to belong to the "masses, " he will have completed his schooleducation at the age of thirteen or fourteen. What will he do withhimself when there is no longer a teacher at his elbow to tell himwhat to do and how to do it, and to stand over him (should this benecessary) while he does it? Why should he go on with studies whichhe has neither the inclination nor the ability to pursue, andwhich, in point of fact, he has never really begun? And why should hecontinue to exert himself when, owing to his being at last beyond thereach of punishment, the need for him to do so--the only need whichhe has been accustomed to regard as imperative--has ceased to exist?

The objections to the hope of reward as a motive to educationaleffort are of another kind. Prizes, as I have said, are for the few;and it is the consciousness of being one of the elect which investsthe winning of a prize with its chief attraction. The prize systemmakes a direct appeal to the vanity and egoism of the child. Itencourages him to think himself better than others, to pride himselfon having surpassed his class-mates and shone at their expense. Theclever child is to work hard, not because knowledge is worth winningfor its own sake and for his own sake, but because it will bepleasant for him to feel that he has succeeded where others havefailed. It is a just reproach against the examination system thatwhile, by its demand for outward results it does its best to destroyindividuality, the essence of which is sincerity of expression, italso does its best to foster individualism, by appealing, with itsoffer of prizes and other "distinctions, " to those instincts whichpredispose each one of us to affirm and exalt that narrow, commonplace, superficial aspect of his being which he miscalls his_self_. 

Thus the hope of reward tends to demoralise the clever child bymaking an appeal to basely selfish motives. At the same time it isprobably deluding him with the belief that he has more capacity thanhe really has. If the examination system is, as I have suggested, thekeystone of the arch of Western education, it is by means of theprize system that the keystone has been firmly cemented into itsplace. An examination which had no rewards or distinctions to offerto the competitors would not be an effective stimulus to exertion. That being so, our educationalists have taken care that to everyexamination some external reward or rewards shall be attached. Evenif there are no material prizes to appeal to the child's cupidity, there is always the class-list, with its so-called "order of merit, "to appeal to his vanity. Our educationalists have also taken carethat during the periods of childhood, adolescence, and even earlymaturity, every prize that is offered for competition shall beawarded after a formal examination and on the consideration of itstabulated results. The appointments in the Home, Colonial, and IndianCivil Services, the promotions in the Army and Navy, the fellowshipsand scholarships at the Universities, the scholarships at the PublicSchools, the medals, books, and other prizes that are offered toschool-children, are all awarded to those who have distinguishedthemselves in the corresponding examinations, no other qualificationthan that of ability to shine in an examination being looked for inthe competitors. There are, no doubt, exceptions to these generalstatements, but they are so few that they scarcely count. We haveseen that the ascendency of the examination system in our schools andcolleges is largely due to the vulgar confusion between informationand knowledge; and we have also seen that the examination systemreacts upon that fatal confusion and tends to strengthen andperpetuate it. If, then, the effect of the prize system is toconsolidate the authority of the formal examination and intensifyits influence, we shall not go far wrong in assuming that in thevarious competitions for prizes the confusion between informationand knowledge will play a vital part. And, in point of fact, thecleverness which enables the child--I ignore for the moment theadolescent and the adult student--to win prizes of various kinds isfound, when carefully analysed, to resolve itself, in nine cases outof ten, into the ability to receive, retain, and retail information. As this particular, ability is but a small part of that mentalcapacity which education is supposed to train, it is clear that theclever child who gets to the top of his class, and wins prizes in sodoing, may easily be led to over-estimate his powers, and to takehimself far more seriously than it is either right or wise of him todo. His over-confidence may for a time prove an effective stimulus toexertion; but the exertion will probably be misdirected; and lateron, when he finds himself confronted by the complex realities oflife, and when problems have to be solved which demand the exerciseof other faculties than that of memory, his belief in himself, whichis the outcome of a false criterion of merit, may induce him toundertake what he cannot accomplish, and may lead at last--owing tohis having lost touch with the actualities of things--to his completeundoing. 

And as under the prize system the child who is high in his class isapt to over-estimate his ability, so the child who is low in hisclass is apt to accept the verdict of the class-list as final, and toregard himself as a failure because he lacks the superficial abilitywhich enables a child to shine on the examination day. Again andagain it happens that the dunce of his class goes to the front in thebattle of life. But numerous and significant as these cases are, theyare unfortunately exceptions to a general rule. For one dunce whoemerges from the depths of "apparent failure, " there are ten who gounder after a more or less protracted struggle, and sink contentedlyto the bottom. The explanation of this is that though every childhas capacity (apart, of course, from the congenital idiot and thementally "defective"), there are many kinds of capacity which aformal examination fails to discover, and which the education thatis dominated by the prize system fails to develop. The child whoseparticular kind of capacity does not count, either in the ordinaryschool lesson or on the examination day, is not aware that he iscapable; and as he is always low on the class-list, and is thereforeregarded by his teachers as dull and stupid, he not unnaturallyacquiesces in the current and apparently authoritative estimate, ofhis powers, and, losing heart about himself, ends by becoming thefailure which he has been taught to believe himself to be. In brief, while the prize system breeds ungrounded and therefore dangerousself-esteem in the child whom it labels as bright, it breedsungrounded but not the less fatal self-distrust in the child whomit labels as dull. 

We have seen that there comes a time in the life of every man whenthe fear of punishment ceases to act as a stimulus to educationalexertion. It is the same with the hope of reward. Examinations, andthe prizes which reward success in examinations, are for the young. What will happen to the prize-winner when there are no more prizesfor him to compete for? Will he continue to pursue knowledge for itsown sake? Alas! he has never pursued it for its own sake. He haspursued it for the sake of the prizes and other honours which itbrought him. When he has won his last prize the chances are thathe will lose all interest in that branch of learning in which heachieved distinction, unless, indeed, he has to earn his livelihoodby teaching it. Of the scores of young men who distinguish themselvesin "Classics" at Oxford and Cambridge, how many will continue tostudy the classical writers when they have gained the "Firsts" forwhich they worked so diligently? Apart from those who are goingto teach Classics in the Public Schools or Universities, a merehandful, --one in ten perhaps, though that is probably an extravagantestimate. And yet the poets, philosophers, and historians whom theyhave studied are amongst the greatest that the world has produced. What is it, then, that kills, in nine cases out of ten, theclassical student's interest in the masterpieces of antiquity? Theobvious fact that he was never interested in them for their ownsakes--that he studied them, not in order to enjoy them or profit bythem, but in order to pass an examination in them, of which he mightbe able to say in after years:

 "I am named and known by that hour's feat, There took my station and degree. "

How many Wranglers, other than those who have or will becomeschoolmasters or college tutors, continue to study mathematics? Howmany of the First Classmen in Science, History, Law, and other Honour"Schools" continue to study their respective subjects? In every casean utterly insignificant minority. 

But if the prize system does this to the young man of twenty-two ortwenty-three, if it kills his interest in learning, if it makes himregister an inward vow never again to open the books which he hascrammed so successfully for his examinations, what may it be expectedto do to the child whose school education comes to an end when heis only thirteen or fourteen years old? When, with the fear ofpunishment, the complementary hope of reward is withdrawn from him, is it reasonable to expect him to continue his education, to continueto apply himself to subjects with which his acquaintance has beenentirely formal and superficial, and which he has never been allowedto digest and assimilate? The utter indifference of the averageex-elementary scholar to literature, to history, to geography, toscience, to music, to art, is the world-wide answer to this question. 

For what is, above all, hateful in any scheme of rewards andpunishments, when applied to the school life of the young, is that itwholly externalises what is really an inward and spiritual process, the evolution of the youthful mind. Just as in the sphere of religionit is postulated as a self-evident truth that righteousness is notits own reward, nor iniquity its own punishment, --so in the sphere ofeducation it is postulated as a self-evident truth, that knowledge isnot its own reward, nor ignorance its own punishment. And just as inthe sphere of religion the appeal to Man's selfish hopes and ignoblefears has generated a radical misconception of the meaning andpurpose of righteousness, which has caused his moral and spiritualenergies to be diverted into irreligious or anti-religious channels, to the detriment of his inward and spiritual growth, --so in thesphere of education the appeal to the child's selfish desires andignoble fears has generated a radical misconception of the meaningand purpose of knowledge, which has caused his mental energies to bediverted into uneducational channels, to the detriment of his mentalgrowth. In each case the scheme of rewards and punishments, actinglike an immense blister, when applied to a healthy body, draws to thesurface the life-blood which ought to nourish and purify the vitalorgans of the soul (or mind), thereby impoverishing the vitalorgans, and inflaming and disfiguring the surface. For if the surfacelife, with its outward and visible "results, " is to be happy andproductive, the health of the vital organs must be carefullymaintained. This is the fundamental truth which those who controleducation in the West have persistently ignored. 

The system of education which I have tried to describe is a practicalembodiment of the ideas that govern the popular philosophy of theWest. One who had studied that philosophy, and who wished toascertain what provision it made for the education of the young, would in the course of his inquiry construct _a priori_ the precisesystem of education which is in vogue in all Western countries. The supposed relation between God and his fallen and rebelliousoffspring, Man, is obviously paralleled by the relation between theteacher and the child; and it is therefore clear that the supposeddealings of God with Man ought to be paralleled by the dealings ofthe teacher with the child. That they are so paralleled--thatsalvation by machinery has found its most exact counterpart ineducation by machinery--the history of education has made abundantlyclear. 

Whatever else the current system of education may do to the child, there is one thing which it cannot fail to do to him, --to blight hismental growth. What particular form or forms this blighting influencemay take will depend in each particular case on a variety ofcircumstances. Experience tells us that what happens in most cases isthat Western education strangles some faculties, arrests the growthof others, stunts the growth of a third group, and distorts thegrowth of a fourth. 

Is it intended that education should do all this? This question isnot so paradoxical as it sounds. My primary assumption that thefunction of education is to foster growth may be a truism in theeyes of those who agree with it; but Western orthodoxy, just sofar as it is self-conscious and sincere, must needs repudiate itas a pestilent heresy. For if what grows is intrinsically evil, what can growth do for it but carry it towards perdition?

What is it that grows? It is time that I should ask myself thisquestion. My answer to it is, in brief, that it is the whole humanbeing that grows, the whole nature of the child, --body, mind, heartand soul. When I use these familiar words, I am far from wishingto suggest that human nature is divisible into four provinces orcompartments. In every stage of its development human nature is aliving and indivisible whole. Each of the four words stands for atypical aspect of Man's being, but one of the four may also be saidto stand for the totality of Man's being, --the word _soul_. For itis the soul which manifests as _body_, which thinks as _mind_, whichfeels and loves as _heart_, and which is what it is--though notperhaps what it really or finally is--as _soul_. 

The function of education, then, is to foster the growth of thechild's whole nature, or, in a word, of his soul. I ought, perhaps, to apologise for my temerity in using this now discredited word. Inthe West Man does not believe in the soul. How can he? He does notbelieve in God either as the eternal source or as the eternal end ofhis own nature. It follows that he does not and cannot believe inthe unity of his own being. He has been taught that his nature iscorrupt, evil, godless; and that the "soul, " which is somehow orother attached to his fallen nature during his "earthly pilgrimage, "was supernaturally created at the moment of his birth. He is nowbeginning to reject this conception of the soul; but he cannot yetrise to the higher conception of it as the vital essence of hisbeing, as the divine germ in virtue of which his nature is no mereaggregate of parts or faculties, but a living whole. So deeply rootedin the Western mind is disbelief in the reality of the soul that itis difficult to use the word, when speaking to a Western audience, without exposing oneself to the charge of insincerity, --not to speakof the graver charge of "bad form. " A savour either of _cant_ or_gush_ hangs about the word, and is not easily detached from it. Thatbeing so, it must be clearly understood that I mean by the soul thenature of Man considered in its unity and totality, --no more thanthis, and no less. 

In the opening paragraph of this book I said that some of my readerswould regard my fundamental assumption as a truism, others as achallenge, and others again as a wicked heresy. Whether it shall beregarded as a truism, a challenge, or a heresy, will depend on theway in which it is worded. To say that the function of education isto foster the growth of human nature, is to invite condemnation fromthose who regard human nature as ruined and corrupt. To say that thefunction of education is to foster the growth of the soul, is toissue a challenge to Western civilisation, which is based on thebelief that the end of Man's being is not the growth of his soul, butthe growth of his balance at the bank of material prosperity. To saythat the function of education is to foster the growth of certainfaculties, is to insist on what no one who had given his mind tothe matter would care to deny. For even the orthodox, who regardMan's nature in its totality as intrinsically evil, admit withouthesitation that there are faculties in Man which can be and oughtto be trained; while the "man of the world, " whom we may regard asthe most typical product of Western civilisation, is clamorous inhis demand that education shall foster the growth of certain mentalfaculties which will enable the child to become an efficient clerk orworkman, and so contribute to the enrichment of his employer and thecommunity to which he belongs. 

The Western educationalist will admit, then, that the function ofeducation is to foster growth; and if you ask him what it is thatgrows or ought to grow under education's fostering care, he will giveyou a long list of faculties--mental, for the most part, but alsomoral and physical--and then break off under the impression that hehas set education an adequate and a practicable task. But he hasset it an inadequate and an impracticable task. For behind all thefaculties that he enumerates dwells the living reality which hecannot bring himself to believe in, --the soul. And because he cannotbring himself to believe in the soul, he deprives the facultieswhich he proposes to cultivate of the very qualities which makethem most worthy of cultivation, --of their interrelation, theirinterdependence, their organic unity. In other words he devitaliseseach of them by cutting it off from the life which is common to allof them, and so paralyses its capacity for growing in the very actof taking thought for its growth. He forgets that every faculty whichis worth cultivating both draws life from, and contributes life to, the general life of the growing child. He forgets that the childhimself--"the living soul"--is growing in and through the growth ofeach of his opening faculties; and that unless, when a faculty seemsto be growing, the life of the child is at once expressing itself inand renewing itself through the process of its growth, its semblanceof growth is a pure illusion, the results that are produced being inreality as fraudulent as artificial flowers on a living rose-bush. 

But the whole question may be looked at from another point of view. Let us assume, for argument's sake, that the function of educationis to train, or foster the growth of, certain faculties, which aremainly though not exclusively mental, and that when those facultieshave been duly trained the teacher has done his work. What, then, are the faculties which education is supposed to train? In my attemptto answer this question I will confine myself to the elementaryschool, --the only school which I can pretend to know well. A glanceat the time-table of an ordinary elementary school might suggest tous that there were two chief groups of faculties to be trained--thosewhich perceive and those which express, those which take in and thosewhich give out. When such subjects as History, Geography, or Scienceare being taught, the child's perceptive faculties are being trained. When such subjects as Composition, Drawing or Singing are beingtaught, the child's expressive faculties are being trained. So atleast one might be disposed to assume. 

In what relation do the perceptive faculties stand to the expressive?Is it possible to cultivate either group without regard to the other?It must be admitted that the methods employed in the ordinaryelementary school seem to be governed by the assumption that theperceptive and the expressive faculties are two distinct groups whichadmit of being separately trained. In the ordinary Drawing lesson, for example, the child is trying to express what he does not evenpretend to have perceived; whereas in the ordinary History or Sciencelesson the process is reversed, and the child pretends to perceivewhat he makes no attempt to express. 

But is the assumption correct? Do the two groups of faculties admitof being separately trained? Is it possible to devote this hour orhalf-hour to the training of perception, and that to the trainingof expression? Surely not. Perception and expression are not twofaculties, but one. Each is the very counterpart and correlate, eachis the very life and soul, of the other. Each, when divorced fromthe other, ceases to be its own true self. When perception is real, living, informed with personal feeling, it must needs find foritself the outlet of expression. When expression is real, living, informed with personal feeling, perception--the child's ownperception of things--must needs be behind it. More than that. _Theperceptive faculties_ (at any rate in childhood) _grow through theinterpretation which expression gives them, and in no other way. Andthe expressive faculties grow by interpreting perception, and in noother way_. The child who tries to draw what he sees is training hispower of observation, not less than his power of expression. As hepasses and repasses between the object of his perception and hisrepresentation of it, there is a continuous gain both to his visionand to his technique. The more faithfully he tries to render hisimpression of the object, the more does that impression gain in truthand strength; and in proportion as the impression becomes truer andstronger, so does the rendering of it become more masterly and morecorrect. So, again, if a man tries to set forth in writing his viewsabout some difficult problem--social, political, metaphysical, orwhatever it may be--the very effort that he makes to express himselfclearly and coherently will tend to bring order into the chaos andlight into the darkness of his mind, to widen his outlook on hissubject, to deepen his insight into it, to bring new aspects of itwithin the reach of his conscious thought. And here, as in the caseof the child who tries to draw what he sees, there is a continuousreciprocal action between perception and expression, in virtue ofwhich each in turn helps forward the evolution of the other. Even inso abstract and impersonal a subject as mathematics, the reaction ofexpression on perception is strong and salutary. The student whowishes to master a difficult piece of bookwork should try to writeit out in his own words; in the effort to set it out concisely andlucidly he will gradually perfect his apprehension of it. Were he tosolve a difficult problem, he would probably regard his grasp of thesolution as insecure and incomplete until he had succeeded in makingit intelligible to the mind of another. When perception is deeplytinged with emotion, as when one sees what is beautiful, or admireswhat is noble, the attempt to express it in language, action, or art, seems to be dictated by some inner necessity of one's nature. Themeaning of this is that the perception itself imperatively demandsexpression in order that, in and through the struggle of the artisticconsciousness to do full justice to it, it may gradually realise itshidden potentialities, discover its inner meaning, and find its trueself. 

Once we realise that expression is the other self of perception, itbecomes permissible for us to say that to train the perceptivefaculties--the faculties by means of which Man lays hold upon theworld that surrounds him, and draws it into himself and makes it hisown--is the highest achievement of the teacher's art. Even from thepoint of view of my primary truism, this conception of the meaningand purpose of education holds good. For according to that truism thebusiness of the teacher is to foster the growth of the child's soul;and the soul grows by the use of its perceptive faculties, which, byenabling it to take in and assimilate an ever-widening environment, cause a gradual enlargement of its consciousness and a proportionateexpansion of its life. But the perceptive faculties in their turngrow by expressing themselves; and unless they are allowed to expressthemselves--unless the child is allowed to express himself (forexpression, if it is genuine, is always self-expression)--theirgrowth will be arrested, and the mission which _all_ educationalistsassign to education will not have been fulfilled. 

The question is, then, Does the system of education which prevails inall Western countries provide for self-expression on the part of thechild?

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I mean by the words "original sin" what the plain, unsophisticated, believing Christian means by them. A modern poet, in a moment of impulsive orthodoxy, praises Christianity because it

 "taught original sin, The corruption of man's heart ... "

This definition is sufficiently accurate. "Original sin, " says theNinth Article of the Anglican Church, "... Is the fault andcorruption of the Nature of every man ... Whereby man is of his ownnature inclined to evil ... And therefore, in every person born intothe world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation. " How far thepopular interpretation of the doctrine of original sin coincides withthe latest theological refinement of the doctrine, I cannot pretendto say. When it finds it convenient to explain things away, theology, like Voltaire's Minor Prophet, "est capable de tout"; and the needfor reconciling the doctrine of original sin with the teaching ofmodern science has in recent years laid a heavy tax on itsingenuity. 

CHAPTER III

A FAMILIAR TYPE OF SCHOOL[6]

In this chapter I shall have in my mind a type of school which isfamiliar to all who are interested in elementary education. Whatpercentage of the schools of England are of that particular typeI cannot pretend to say. In the days of payment by results thepercentage was unquestionably very high. The system under which weall worked made that inevitable. The days of payment by results areover, but their consequences are with us still. The pioneer is abroadin the land, but he has had, and still has, formidable difficultiesto overcome. The percentage of routine-ridden schools is considerablylower than it used to be, and it is falling from year to year. Ofthis there can be no doubt. Each teacher in turn who reads thischapter will, I hope, be able to say that the school which is in mymind is not his. But I can assure him that there are thousands ofschools in which all or most of the evils on which I am about tocomment are still rampant; and I will add, for his consolation, thatit would be a miracle if this were not so. 

The first forty minutes of the morning session are given, in almostevery elementary school, to what is called _Religious Instruction_. This goes on, morning after morning, and week after week. The childwho attends school regularly and punctually, as many children do, will have been the victim of upwards of two thousand "Scripturelessons" by the time he leaves school. 

The question of religious education in elementary schools has longbeen the centre of a perfect whirlpool of controversial talk. Thegreater part of this talk is, to speak plainly, blatant cant. Everycandidate for a seat in the House of Commons thinks it incumbent uponhim to say something about religious education, but not one in ahundred of them has ever been present in an elementary school whilereligious instruction was being given. The Bishops of the EstablishedChurch wax eloquent in the House of Lords over the wickedness of a"godless education" and the virtue of "definite dogmatic teaching, "but it may be doubted if there is a Bishop in the House who has inrecent years sat out a Scripture lesson in a Church of Englandschool. It would be well if all who talked publicly about religiouseducation could be sentenced to devote a month to the personal studyof religious instruction as it is ordinarily given in elementaryschools. At the end of the month they would be wiser and sadder men, and in future they would probably talk less about religious educationand think more. 

The Scripture lesson, as it is familiarly called, is supposed to makethe children of England religious, in the special sense which eachchurch or sect attaches to that word, --to make them good Catholics, good Churchmen, good Wesleyans, good Bible Christians, good Jews. Butas those who are most in earnest about religion, and most sincere intheir religious convictions, unite in assuring us that England isrelapsing into paganism, it may be doubted if the religious educationof the elementary school child--a process which has been going on forhalf a century or more--has been entirely successful. While the factthat the English parent, who must himself have attended from 1, 500to 2, 000 Scripture lessons in His schooldays, is not under anycircumstances to be trusted to give religious instruction to his ownchildren, shows that those who control the religious education of theyouthful "masses" have but little confidence in the effect of theirsystem on the religious life and faith of the English people. 

They have good ground for their subconscious distrust of it. We haveseen that the vulgar confusion between information and knowledge isat the root of much that is unsound in education. There is no branchof education in which this confusion is so fallacious or so fatal asin that which is called religious. The process of convertinginformation into knowledge is a comparatively easy one when we aredealing with matters of detailed fact. Information as to the dates ofthe kings of England, as to the bays and capes of the British Isles, as to the exports and imports of Liverpool, as to the weights andmeasures of this or that country, is in each case readily convertibleinto knowledge of the given facts. But directly we get away from merefacts, and begin to concern ourselves with what is large, vague, subtle, and obscure, --with forces, for example, with causes, withlaws, with principles, --the difficulty of collecting adequate andappropriate information about our subject becomes great, and thedifficulty of converting such information into knowledge becomesgreater still. Information as to the dates and names of the Englishkings, and other historical facts, is easily converted into knowledgeof those facts, but it is not easily converted into knowledge ofEnglish history. Information as to the names and positions of capesand bays, as to areas and populations, and other geographical facts, is easily converted into knowledge of those facts, but it is noteasily converted into knowledge of geography. Information as toarithmetical rules and tables, as to weights and measures, and otherarithmetical facts, is easily converted into knowledge of thosefacts, but it is not easily converted into knowledge of arithmetic. In each case a _sense_ must be evolved if the information is to beassimilated, and so converted into real knowledge; and though it istrue that the sense in question grows, in part at least, by feedingon appropriate information, it is equally true that if, owing todefective training, the sense remains undeveloped, the informationsupplied will remain unassimilated, and the tacit assumption that thepossession of information is equivalent to the possession of realknowledge will delude both the teacher and the taught. It ispossible, as one knows from experience, for a boy to have masteredall the arithmetical rules and tables with which his master hassupplied him, and to have all his measures and weights at hisfingers' ends, and yet to be so destitute of the arithmetical senseas to give without a moment's misgiving an entirely nonsensicalanswer to a simple arithmetical problem, --to say, for example, as Ihave known half a class of boys say, that a _room_ is _five shillingsand sixpence wide_. Such a boy, though his head may be stuffed witharithmetical information, has no knowledge of arithmetic. 

The gulf between memorised information and real knowledge becomesdeep and wide in proportion as the subject matter is one whichdemands for its effective apprehension either intellectual effort oremotional insight. When both these variables are demanded, the gulfwidens and deepens at a ratio which is "geometrical" rather than"arithmetical"; and when a high degree of each is demanded, theseparation between knowledge and information is complete. 

The Art Master who should try to train the æsthetic sense of hispupils by making them learn by heart a string of propositions inwhich he had set out the artistic merits of sundry masterpieces ofpainting and sculpture, would expose himself to well-meritedridicule. So would the teacher who should try to train the scientificsense of his pupils by no other method than that of making themlearn scientific formulæ by heart. What shall we say, then, of theteacher who tries to train the religious sense of his pupils bysupplying them with rations of theological and theologico-historicalinformation? Whatever else we may mean by the word God, we mean whatis infinitely great, and therefore beyond the reach of human thought, and we mean what is "most high, " and therefore beyond the reach ofthe heart's desire. It follows that for knowledge of God the maximumof intellectual effort is needed, in conjunction with the maximum ofemotional insight; and it follows further that the gulf betweenknowledge of God and information about God is unimaginably wide anddeep, --so wide and so deep that out of our very attempts to span orfathom it the doubt at last arises whether the idea of acquiringinformation about God may not, after all, be the idlest of dreams. 

Nevertheless the pastors and masters of our elementary schools are, with few exceptions, engaged, _sanctâ simplicitate_, in trying tomake the children of England religious by cramming them withtheological and theologico-historical information, --information as tothe nature and attributes of God, as to the inner constitution ofhis being, as to his relations to Man and the Universe, as to hisreported doings in the past. And in order that the giving, receiving, and retaining of this unverifiable information may be regarded byall concerned as the central feature of the Scripture lesson, tothe neglect of all the other aspects of religious education, thespiritual "powers that be" (and also, I am told, some of the LocalEducation Authorities) have decreed that the schools under theirjurisdiction shall be subjected to a yearly examination in"religious knowledge" at the hands of a "Diocesan Inspector, " or someother official. 

To one who has convinced himself, as I have, that a right attitudetowards the thing known is of the essence of knowledge, and thatreverence and devotion--to go no further--are of the essence of aright attitude towards God, the idea of holding a formal examinationin religious knowledge seems scarcely less ridiculous than the ideaof holding a formal examination in unselfishness or brotherly love. The phrase "to examine in religious knowledge" has no meaning for me. The verb is out of all relation to its indirect object. What theDiocesan Inspector attempts to do cannot possibly be done. The testof religious knowledge is necessarily practical and vital, not formaland mechanical. Even if I were to admit, for argument's sake, thatthe information with which we cram the elementary school childbetween 9. 5 and 9. 45 a. M. Had been supernaturally communicated by Godto Man, my general position would remain unaffected. For experiencehas amply proved that a child--or, for the matter of that, a man--mayknow much theology and even be "mighty in the Scriptures, " and yetshow by his conduct that his religious sense has not been awakened, and that therefore he has no knowledge of God; just as we have seenthat a child may know by heart all arithmetical rules and tables, andyet show, by his helplessness in the face of a simple problem, thathis arithmetical sense has not been awakened, and that therefore hehas no knowledge of arithmetic. 

The time given to religious instruction is, to make a generalstatement, the only part of the session in which the children arebeing prepared for a formal _external_ examination. That being so, itis no matter for wonder that many of the glaring faults of method andorganisation which the examination system fostered in our elementaryschools between the years 1862 and 1895, and which are now beingabandoned, however slowly, reluctantly, and sporadically, during thehours of "secular" instruction, still find a refuge in the Scripturelesson. Overgrouping of classes, overcrowding of school-rooms, collective answering, collective repetition, scribbling on slates, and other faults with which inspectors were only too familiar inbygone days, are still rampant while religious instruction is beinggiven. [7] The Diocesan Inspector is an examiner, pure and simple, andis never present when the Scripture lesson is in progress. Whether hewould find anything to criticise if he were present, may be doubted. I have frequently been told by teachers that it is his demand for agood volume of sound, when he is catechising the children, whichkeeps alive during the Scripture lesson the pestilent habit ofcollective answering, in defiance of the obvious fact that what iseverybody's business is nobody's business, and that an experiencedbell-wether can easily give a lead to a whole class. An inconvenienttrain service may compel H. M. Inspector to be present when religiousinstruction is being given; but though he may find much to deplorein what he sees and hears, he must abstain from criticism, and becontent to play the _rôle_ of the man who looks over a hedge while ahorse is being stolen. 

In most elementary schools religion is taught on an elaboratesyllabus which is imposed on the teacher by an external authority, and which therefore tends to destroy his freedom and his interest inthe work. It is not his business to take thought for the religioustraining of his pupils, to consider how the religious instinct maybest be awakened in them, how their latent knowledge of God maybest be evolved. His business is to prepare them for their yearlyexamination, to cram them with catechisms, hymns, texts, andcollects, and with stories of various kinds, --stories from thefolk-lore of Israel, from the history of the Jews, from the Gospelnarratives. To appeal to the reasoning powers of his pupils would beforeign to his aim, and foreign, let me say in passing, to the wholetradition of religious teaching in the West. The burden of preparingfor an examination, whatever the examination may be, falls mainly onthe faculty of memory. This is a rule to which there are very fewexceptions. When the examination is one in "religious knowledge, " theburden of preparing for it falls wholly on the faculty of memory. To appeal to the reasoning powers of the scholars might conceivablyprovoke them to ask inconvenient questions, and might even giverise to a spirit of rationalism in the school, --the spirit which"orthodoxy" has always regarded as the very antipole to religiousfaith. 

But what of the child's emotional faculties? Will not the beauty ofthe Gospel stories, will not the sublimity of the Old Testamentpoetry, make their own appeal to these? They might do so if they wereallowed to exert their spiritual magnetism. But what chance havethey? The chilling shadow of the impending examination falls uponthem and cancels their educative influence. It is not because theGospel stories are full of beauty and spiritual meaning that thechild has to learn them, but because he will be questioned on them bythe Diocesan Inspector. It is not because certain passages from theOld Testament are poetry of a high order that the child commits themto memory, but because he may have to repeat them to the DiocesanInspector. We cannot serve God and Mammon, --the God of poetry and theinward life, the Mammon of outward results. The thing is not to bedone, and the pretence of doing it is a mockery and a fraud. Thecompulsory preparation of the plays of Shakespeare and other literarymasterpieces for a formal examination, too often gives the schoolboy, or the college student, a permanent distaste for English literature. The study of the Ancient Classics for the Oxford "Schools" or theCambridge "Tripos" too often gives the studious undergraduate apermanent distaste for the literatures of Greece and Rome. Does itnot follow _a fortiori_ that to cram a young child, for the purposesof a formal examination, to cram him, year after year, with theidyllic stories of the New Testament and the poetic beauties of theOld, will in all probability go a long way towards blighting in thebud the child's latent capacity for responding to the appeal, not ofthe Bible alone, but of spiritual poetry as such?

I do not wish to suggest that the religious instruction given inour elementary schools is always formal and mechanical. There areteachers who can break through the toils of any system, howeverdeadly, and give life to their teaching in defiance of conditionswhich would paralyse the energies of lesser men. As I write, I recalltwo teachers of elementary schools, who, in spite of having toprepare their pupils for diocesan inspection, succeeded in quickeningtheir religious instincts into vital activity. The first was aschoolmaster, --a "strong Churchman, " and a sincerely religious man. The second was a woman of genius, whose extraordinary sympathy withand insight into the soul of the child, enabled her to give free playto all his expansive instincts, and in and through the evolution ofthese to foster the growth of his religious sense. I can never feelquite sure that this teacher fully realised how deeply, and yethealthily, religious her children were. If she did not, I can butapply to her what Diderot said to David the painter, when the latterconfessed that he had not intended to produce some artistic effectwhich the former had discovered in one of his pictures: "Quoi! c'està votre insu? C'est encore mieux. " To make children religious withoutintending to do so is a profoundly significant achievement, forit means that the fatal distinction between religious and seculareducation has been "utterly abolished and destroyed. "

Both these teachers fell, as it happened, under the ban of theDiocesan Inspector's displeasure. The schoolmaster took over aschool which was not only inefficient in the eyes of the EducationDepartment, in respect of instruction and discipline, but was alsotainted in its upper classes with moral depravity. He speedilyrestored it to efficiency, and reformed its moral tone. Inaccomplishing these salutary changes, he relied mainly on an appealwhich he made, in all manly sincerity, to the religious sense of theolder boys. The faith in human nature which prompted him to make thisappeal was justified by the response which it evoked. In less than ayear the school was transformed beyond recognition. In less than twoyears it was one of the best in its county; indeed in respect ofmoral tone and religious atmosphere it was perhaps _the_ best. Meanwhile the work of cramming the children for the yearly diocesanexamination must have fallen into arrears; for the school, whichunder my friend's incompetent predecessor had always been classed as"Excellent, " sank to the level of "Good" in the year after he left, and in the following year to the level of "Fair. " Any one who has anyacquaintance with the reports of the Diocesan Inspector knows thatthe summary mark "Fair, " when employed by him, is equivalent toutter damnation. 

The schoolmistress always had a horror of formal teaching, and aspecial horror of cramming young children for formal examinations;and I can only wonder that her downfall was so long delayed. Sooneror later, if she was to remain true to her own first principles, herwork was bound to incur the condemnation of the Diocesan Inspector. 

Nevertheless, having read hundreds of diocesan reports, and realisedhow lavish of praise and chary of blame the Diocesan Inspectorusually is, I am inclined to suspect that the comparative failureof the children on the examination day was not the sole or even thechief cause of the severe censure which these two schools received. I am inclined to think that in each case the inspector recognised inthe exceptional religious vitality of a school which was deficient, from his point of view, in religious knowledge, an implicit challengeto his own preconceived notions, and that, without for a momentintending to be unfair, he responded to this challenge by giving theschool a strongly adverse report. Immorality and irreligiousnessas such are comparatively venial offences in the eyes of religiousorthodoxy. What it cannot tolerate is that men should be moral andreligious in any but the "orthodox" ways. 

Apart from these two exceptional cases, there are of course hundredsand even thousands of teachers whose personal influence is a partialantidote to the numbing poison which is being distilled but surely, from the daily Scripture lesson. But the net result of giving formaland mechanical instruction on the greatest of all "great matters" isto depress the spiritual vitality of the children of England to apoint which threatens the extinction of the spiritual life of thenation. My schoolmaster friend, who, besides being deeply religious(in the best sense of the word), is a man of sound judgment and wideand varied experience, has more than once assured me that religiousinstruction, as given in the normal Church of England school (hisexperience has been limited to schools of that type), is paganisingthe people of England, --paganising them because it presents religionto them in a form which they instinctively reject, accepting it atfirst under compulsion, but turning away from it at last withdeep-seated weariness and permanent distaste. 

The boy who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says tohimself when he leaves school: "If this is religion, I will have nomore of it, " is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is tobe honoured rather than blamed for having realised at last that thechaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grainwhich, unknown to himself, his inmost soul demands. 

That England is relapsing into paganism is, as we have seen, thesincere conviction of many earnest Christians. Why this should be so, they cannot understand. In their desire to account for so distressinga phenomenon, they will have recourse to any explanation, howeverfar-fetched and fantastic, rather than acknowledge that it is theScripture lesson in the elementary school which is paganising themasses. If the Churches could have their way, they would doubtlesstry to mend matters by doubling the hours that are given toreligious instruction, by making the Diocesan Inspector's visita half-yearly instead of a yearly function, and by cramming thechildren for it with redoubled energy. In their refusal to reckonwith human nature, they are true to the first principles of theirreligion and their philosophy. But it is possible to buy consistencyat too high a price. The laws and tendencies of Nature are what theyare; and it is madness, not heroism, to ignore them. To those whorefuse to reckon with human nature, the day will surely come whenhuman nature, evolving itself under the stress of its own forces andin obedience to its own laws, will cease to take account of them. [8]

When the hands of the clock point to a quarter to ten, the religiouseducation of the child is over for the day, and his secularinstruction has begun. That the religious education of the childshould be supposed to end when the Scripture lesson is over, is thelast and strongest proof of the fundamental falsity of thatconception of religion on which, as on a quicksand, his education, religious and secular, has been based. 

 After Scripture comes as a rule Arithmetic. During the former lessonthe teacher, acting under compulsion, does his best, as we have seen, to deaden the child's spiritual faculties. During the latter, he notinfrequently does his best to deaden the child's mental faculties. Ineach case he is to be pitied rather than blamed. The conditions underwhich he works, and has long worked, are too strong for him. If weare to understand why secular instruction, as given in our elementaryschools, is what it is, we must go back for half a century or so andtrace the steps by which the "Education Department" forced elementaryeducation in England into the grooves in which, in many schools, it is still moving, and from which even the most enlightened andenterprising teachers find it difficult to escape. 

In 1861 the Royal Commission (under the Duke of Newcastle asChairman), which had been appointed in 1858 in order to inquire into"the state of popular education in England, and as to the measuresrequired for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instructionto all classes of the people, " issued its report, in which itrecommended _inter alia_ that the Grants paid to elementary schoolsshould be expressly apportioned on the examination of individualchildren. This recommendation was carried into effect in the LoweRevised Code of 1862; and from that date till 1895 a considerablepart of the Grant received by each school was paid on the results ofa yearly examination held by H. M. Inspector on an elaborate syllabus, formulated by the Department and binding on all schools alike. On theofficial report which followed this examination depended thereputation and financial prosperity of the school, and the reputationand financial prosperity of the teacher. [9] The consequent pressureon the teacher to exert himself was well-nigh irresistible; and hehad no choice but to transmit that pressure to his subordinates andhis pupils. The result was that in those days the average school wasa hive of industry. 

But it was also a hive of misdirected energy. The State, inprescribing a syllabus which was to be followed, in all the subjectsof instruction, by all the schools in the country, without regard tolocal or personal considerations, was guilty of one capital offence. It did all his thinking for the teacher. It told him in precisedetail what he was to do each year in each "Standard, " how he was tohandle each subject, and how far he was to go in it; what width ofground he was to cover; what amount of knowledge, what degree ofaccuracy was required for a "pass, " In other words it provided himwith his ideals, his general conceptions, his more immediate aims, his schemes of work; and if it did not control his methods in alltheir details, it gave him (by implication) hints and suggestionswith regard to these on which he was not slow to act; for it told himthat the work done in each class and each subject would be testedat the end of each year by a careful examination of each individualchild; and it was inevitable that in his endeavour to adapt histeaching to the type of question which his experience of theyearly examination led him to expect, he should gradually deliverhimself, mind and soul, into the hands of the officials of theDepartment, --the officials at Whitehall who framed the yearlysyllabus, and the officials in the various districts who examinedon it. 

What the Department did to the teacher, it compelled him to do to thechild. The teacher who is the slave of another's will cannot carryout his instructions except by making his pupils the slaves ofhis own will. The teacher who has been deprived by his superiorsof freedom, initiative, and responsibility, cannot carry out hisinstructions except by depriving his pupils of the same vitalqualities. The teacher who, in response to the deadly pressure of acast-iron system, has become a creature of habit and routine, cannotcarry out his instructions except by making his pupils as helplessand as puppet-like as himself. 

But it is not only because mechanical obedience is fatal, in thelong run, to mental and spiritual growth, that the regulation ofelementary or any other grade of education by a uniform syllabus isto be deprecated. It is also because a uniform syllabus is, in thenature of things, a bad syllabus, and because the degree of itsbadness varies directly with the area of the sphere of educationalactivity that comes under its control. It is easy for us of theTwentieth Century to laugh at the syllabuses which the Departmentissued, without misgiving, year after year, in the latter half of theNineteenth. We were all groping in the dark in those days; and ourwhole attitude towards education was so fundamentally wrong that theabsurdities of the yearly syllabus were merely so much by-play inthe evolution of a drama which was a grotesque blend of tragedy andfarce. But let us of the enlightened Twentieth Century try our handsat constructing a syllabus on which all the elementary schools ofEngland are to be prepared for a yearly examination, and see ifwe can improve appreciably on the work of our predecessors. Someimprovement there would certainly be, but it would not amount to verymuch. Were the "Board" to re-institute payment by results, and werethey, with this end in view, to entrust the drafting of schemes ofwork in the various subjects to a committee of the wisest and mostexperienced educationalists in England, the resultant syllabus wouldbe a dismal failure. For in framing their schemes these wise andexperienced educationalists would find themselves compelled to takeaccount of the lowest rather than of the highest level of actualeducational achievement. What is exceptional and experimental cannotpossibly find a place in a syllabus which is to bind all schools andall teachers alike, and which must therefore be so framed that theleast capable teacher, working under the least favourable conditions, may hope, when his pupils are examined on it, to achieve with decentindustry a decent modicum of success. Under the control of a uniformsyllabus, the schools which are now specialising and experimenting, and so giving a lead to the rest, would have to abandon whatever wasinteresting in their respective curricula, and fall into line withthe average school; while, with the consequent lowering of thecurrent _ideal_ of efficiency, the level of the average school wouldsteadily fall. A uniform syllabus is a bad syllabus, for this if forno other reason, that it is compelled to idealise the average; andthat, inasmuch as education, so far as it is a living system, growsby means of its "leaders, " the idealisation of the average isnecessarily fatal to educational growth and therefore to educationallife. 

It was preordained, then, that the syllabuses which the Departmentissued, year by year, in the days of payment by results should havefew merits and many defects. Yet even if, by an unimaginable miracle, they had all been educationally sound, the mere fact that all theteachers in England had to work by them would have made them potentagencies for evil. To be in bondage to a syllabus is a misfortune fora teacher, and a misfortune for the school that he teaches. To be inbondage to a syllabus which is binding on all schools alike, is agraver misfortune. To be in bondage to a bad syllabus which isbinding on all schools alike, is of all misfortunes the gravest. Orif there is a graver, it is the fate that befell the teachers ofEngland under the old _régime_, --the fate of being in bondage to asyllabus which was bad both because it had to come down to the levelof the least fortunate school and the least capable teacher, and alsobecause it was the outcome of ignorance, inexperience, andbureaucratic self-satisfaction. 

Of the evils that are inherent in the examination system as such--ofits tendency to arrest growth, to deaden life, to paralyse the higherfaculties, to externalise what is inward, to materialise what isspiritual, to involve education in an atmosphere of unreality andself-deception--I have already spoken at some length. In the days ofpayment by results various circumstances conspired to raise thoseevil tendencies to the highest imaginable "power. " When inspectorsceased to examine (in the stricter sense of the word) they realisedwhat infinite mischief the yearly examination had done. The children, the majority of whom were examined in reading and dictation out oftheir own reading-books (two or three in number, as the case mightbe), were drilled in the contents of those books until they knewthem almost by heart. In arithmetic they worked abstract sums, inobedience to formal rules, day after day, and month after month;and they were put up to various tricks and dodges which would, itwas hoped, enable them to know by what precise rules the variousquestions on the arithmetic cards were to be answered. They learneda few lines of poetry by heart, and committed all the "meanings andallusions" to memory, with the probable result--so sickening mustthe process have been--that they hated poetry for the rest of theirlives. In geography, history, and grammar they were the victims ofunintelligent oral cram, which they were compelled, under pains andpenalties, to take in and retain till the examination day was over, their ability to disgorge it on occasion being periodically tested bythe teacher. And so with the other subjects. Not a thought was given, except in a small minority of the schools, to the real training ofthe child, to the fostering of his mental (and other) growth. To gethim through the yearly examination by hook or by crook was the oneconcern of the teacher. As profound distrust of the teacher was thebasis of the policy of the Department, so profound distrust of thechild was the basis of the policy of the teacher. To leave the childto find out anything for himself, to work out anything for himself, to think out anything for himself, would have been regarded as aproof of incapacity, not to say insanity, on the part of the teacher, and would have led to results which, from the "percentage" point ofview, would probably have been disastrous. 

There were few inspectors who were not duly impressed from 1895onwards by the gravity of the evils that inspection, as distinguishedfrom mere examination, revealed to them; but it may be doubtedif there were many inspectors who realised then, what some amongthem see clearly now, that the evils which distressed them weresignificant as symptoms even more than as sources of mischief, --assymptoms of a deep-seated and insidious malady, of the gradualossification of the spiritual and mental muscles of both the teacherand the child, of the gradual substitution in the elementary schoolof machinery for life. 

For us of the Twentieth Century who know enough about education tobe aware of the shallowness of our knowledge of it, and of theimperfection of the existing educational systems of our country, itmay be difficult to realise that in the years when things were attheir worst, at any rate in the field of elementary education, theNation in general and the "Department" in particular were wellcontent that things should remain as they were, --well content thatthe elementary school should be, not a nursery of growing seedlingsand saplings, but a decently efficient mill, and that year after yearthis mill should keep on grinding out its dreary and meaningless"results. " But in truth that ignorant optimism, that cheap contentwith the actual, was a sure proof that things _were_ at theirworst;--for

 "When we in our viciousness grow hard, (O misery on't) the wise gods seal our eyes In our own filth; drop our clear judgments: make us Adore our errors";

and the multiform discontent with education in its present stage ofdevelopment, which is characteristic of our own generation, and whichis in some ways so confusing and disconcerting, and so unfavourableto the smooth working of our educational machinery, has the merit ofbeing a healthy and hopeful symptom. 

But bad as things were in those days, there was at least oneredeeming feature. The children were compelled to _work_, to exertthemselves, to "put their backs into it. " The need for this wasobvious. The industry of the child meant so much professionalreputation and, in the last resort, so much bread and butter to histeacher. It is true that the child was not allowed to do anything byor for himself; but it is equally true that he had to do prettystrenuously whatever task was set him. He had to get up his two (orthree) "Readers" so thoroughly that he could be depended upon to passboth the reading and the dictation test with success. He had to workhis abstract sums in arithmetic correctly. He had to take in andremember the historical and geographical information with which hehad been crammed. And so forth. There must be no shirking, noslacking on his part. His teachers worked hard, though "not accordingto knowledge"; and he must do the same. Active, in the higher senseof the word, he was never allowed to be; but he had to be activelyreceptive, strenuously automatic, or his teacher would know thereason why. 

Such was the old _régime_. Its defects were so grave and so vitalthat, now that it has become discredited (in theory, if not inpractice), we can but wonder how it endured for so long. As aningenious instrument for arresting the mental growth of the child, and deadening all his higher faculties, it has never had, and Ihope will never have, a rival. Far from fostering the growth ofthose great expansive instincts--sympathetic, æsthetic, andscientific--which Nature has implanted in every child, it set itselfto extirpate them, one and all, with ruthless pertinacity. As apartial compensation for this work of wanton destruction, it made thechild blindly obedient, mechanically industrious, and (within verynarrow limits) accurate and thorough. I have described it at somelength because I see clearly that no one who does not realise whatthe elementary school used to be, in the days of its sojourn in theLand of Bondage, can even begin to understand why it is what it isto-day. 

Having for thirty-three years deprived the teachers of almost everyvestige of freedom, the Department suddenly reversed its policy andgave them in generous measure the boon which it had so long withheld. Whether it was wise to give so much at so short a notice may bedoubted. What is beyond dispute is that it was unwise to expect sogreat and so unexpected a gift to be used at once to full advantage. A man who had grown accustomed to semi-darkness would be dazzled tothe verge of blindness if he were suddenly taken out into broaddaylight. This is what was done in 1895 to the teachers of England, and it is not to be wondered at that many of them have been purblindever since. For thirty-three years they had been treated as machines, and they were suddenly asked to act as intelligent beings. Forthirty-three years they had been practically compelled to doeverything for the child, and they were suddenly expected to give himfreedom and responsibility, --words which for many of them hadwell-nigh lost their meaning. To comply with these unreasonabledemands was beyond their power. The grooves into which they had beenforced were far too deep for them. The routine to which they hadbecome accustomed had far too strong a hold on them. The one changewhich they could make was to relax their own severe pressure on thechild. This they did, perhaps without intending to do it. Indeed, now that there was no external examination to look forward to, thepressure on the child may be said to have automatically relaxeditself. What happened--I will not say in all schools, but in far toomany--was that the teaching remained as mechanical and unintelligentas ever, that the teacher continued to distrust the child and to doeverything for him, but that the child gradually became slacker andless industrious. Not that his teacher wished him to "slack, " butthat the stimulus of the yearly examination had been withdrawn at atime when there was nothing to take its place. Exercise is in itselfa delightful thing when it is wholesome, natural, and rational;but when it is unwholesome, unnatural, and irrational, it will notbe taken in sufficient measure except in response to some strongexternal stimulus. Under the old examination system an adequatestimulus had been supplied by the combined influence of competitionand fear (chiefly the latter). When the examination system wasabolished, that stimulus necessarily lost its point. Had it then beenpossible for the teacher to make the exercise which his pupils wereasked to take wholesome, natural, and rational, a new stimulus--thatof interest in their work--would have been applied to the pupils, andthey would have exerted themselves as they had never done before. But it was not possible for the average teacher to execute at amoment's notice a complete change of front, and it was unwise of theDepartment to expect him to do so. Apart from an honourable minority, who had always been in secret revolt against the despotism of theCode, the old teachers were helpless and hopeless. The younger oneshad been through the mill themselves, first in the Elementary School, then in the Pupil-Teacher Centre, and then in the Training College(both the latter having been in too many cases crammingestablishments like the Elementary School); and when they went backto work under a head teacher who was wedded to the old order ofthings, they found no difficulty in falling in with his ways andcarrying out his wishes. If a young teacher, fresh from anexceptionally enlightened Training College, became an assistant underan old-fashioned head teacher, he soon had the "nonsense knocked outof him, " and was compelled to toe the line with the rest of thestaff. 

But it was not only because the teachers of England had gotaccustomed to the Land of Bondage, that they shrank from entering thePromised Land. There was, and still is, another and a strongerreason. Wherever the teacher looks, he sees that the examinationsystem, with its demand for machine-made results, controls education;and he feels that it is only by an accident that his school hasbeen exempted (in part at least) from its pressure. The Board ofEducation still examine for labour certificates, for admission asuncertificated assistants, for the teacher's certificate. They expecthead teachers to hold terminal examinations of all the classes intheir schools. They allow Local Authorities to examine children intheir schools as formally and as stringently as they please, and tohold examinations for County Scholarships, for which children fromelementary schools are eligible. Admission to secondary schools ofall grades depends on success in passing entrance examinations. Sodoes admission to the various Colleges and Universities. In theschools which prepare little boys for the "Great Public Schools, "the whole scheme of education Is dominated by the headmaster's desireto win as many entrance scholarships as possible. In the "GreatPublic Schools" the scheme of education is similarly dominated bythe headmaster's desire to win as many scholarships as possibleat the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. In the Universities all theundergraduates without exception are reading for examinations ofvarious kinds, --pass "schools, " honour "schools, " Civil Serviceexaminations, and the like. Officers in the Army and Navy have neverdone with examinations; and there is not a single profession whichcan be entered through any door but that of a public examination. Wherever the teacher looks he sees that examinations are held in highhonour, and that the main business of teachers of all grades is toproduce results which an outside examiner would accept assatisfactory; and he naturally takes for granted that the productionof such results is the true function of the teacher, whether hissuccess in producing them is to be tested by a formal examination ornot. The air that he breathes is charged with ideas--ideas about lifein general and education in particular--which belong to the order ofthings that he is supposed to have left behind him, and are fiercelyantagonistic to those as yet unrecognised ideas which give the neworder of things its meaning, its purpose, and its value. 

How can we expect the teacher to look inward when all the conditionsof his existence, not as a teacher only but also as a citizen and aman, conspire to make him look outward? But if the Fates are againsthis looking inward, to what purpose has he been emancipated from thedirect control of a system which had at least the merit of being inline with all the central tendencies of Western civilisation? Howdoes it profit him to be free if, under the pressure of thosetendencies, the chief use that he makes of his freedom is to grindout from his pupils results akin to those which were asked for in thedays of schedules and percentages? Freedom was given him in orderthat he might be free to take thought for the vital welfare of hispupils. Or, if freedom was not given to him for that purpose, it werebetter that it had been withheld from him until those who were ableto give or withhold it had formed a juster conception of its meaning. 

The truth is that the exemption of the elementary school, and of italone among schools, from the direct pressure of the examinationsystem, is an isolated and audacious experiment, which is carried onunder conditions so unfavourable to its success that nothing but ahigh degree of intelligence and moral courage (not to speak oforiginality) on the part of the teacher can make it succeed. Can wewonder that in many cases the experiment has proved a failure?

At the end of the previous chapter I asked myself whether theeducation that was given in the ordinary elementary school tended tofoster self-expression on the part of the child. We can now see whatthe answer to this question is likely to be. For a third of acentury--from 1862 to 1895--self-expression on the part of the childmay be said to have been formally prohibited by all who wereresponsible for the elementary education of the children of England, and also to have been prohibited _de facto_ by all the unformulatedconditions under which the elementary school was conducted. In 1895the formal prohibition of self-expression ceased, but the _de facto_prohibition of it in the ordinary school is scarcely less effectiveto-day than it was in the darkest days of the old _régime_. For

 "The evil that men do lives after them, "

and the old _régime_, though nominally abrogated, overshadows usstill. When I say this I do not merely mean that many teachers whowere brought up under the old _régime_ have been unable to emancipatethemselves from its influence. I mean that the old _régime_ wasitself the outcome and expression of traditional tendencies whichare of the essence of Western civilisation, of ways of thinkingand acting to which we are all habituated from our earliest days, and that these tendencies and these ways of thinking and actingovershadow us still. The formal abrogation of the old _régime_ countsfor little so long as the examination system, with its demand forvisible and measurable results and its implicit invitation to cramand cheat, is allowed to cast its deadly shadow on education assuch, --and so long as the whole system on which the young of allclasses and grades are educated is favourable to self-deception onthe part of the teacher and fatal to sincerity on the part of thechild. Constrained by every influence that is brought to bear uponhim to judge according to the appearance of things, the teacher canill afford to judge righteous judgment, --can ill afford to regardwhat is outward and visible as the symbol of what is inward andspiritual, can ill afford to think of the work done by the childexcept as a thing to be weighed in an examiner's balance or measuredby an examiner's rule. 

Things being as they are in the various grades of education and inthe various strata of social life, it is inevitable that theeducation given in many of our elementary schools should be based, in the main, on complete distrust of the child. In such schools, whatever else the child may be allowed to do, he must not be allowedto do anything by or for himself. He must not express what he reallyfeels and sees; for if he does, the results will probably fall shortof the standard of neatness, cleanness, and correctness whichan examiner might expect the school to reach. At any rate, theexperiment is much too risky to be tried. In the lower classesthe results produced would certainly be rough, imperfect, untidy. Therefore self-expression must not be permitted in that part of theschool. And if not there, it must not be permitted anywhere, for thelonger it is delayed the greater will be the difficulty of startingit and the greater the attendant risk. The child must not expresswhat he really perceives; and as genuine perception forces for itselfthe outlet of genuine expression, he must not be allowed to exercisehis perceptive faculties. Instead of seeing things for himself, hemust see what his teacher directs him to see, he must feel what histeacher directs him to feel, he must think what his teacher directshim to think, and so on. But to forbid a child to use his ownperceptive faculties is to arrest the whole process of his growth. 

I will now go back to the _Arithmetic_ lesson. During the years inwhich the children in elementary schools were examined individuallyin reading, writing, and arithmetic, the one virtue which wasinculcated while the arithmetic lesson was in progress was that ofobedience to the formulated rule. On the yearly examination day itwas customary to give each child four questions in arithmetic, ofwhich only one was a "problem. " Two sums correctly worked secureda "pass"; and it was therefore possible for the child to achievesalvation in arithmetic by blindly obeying the various rules withwhich his teacher had equipped him. He had, indeed, to decide forhimself in each case which rule was to be followed; but he did this(in most schools), not by thinking the matter out, but by followingcertain by-rules given him by his teacher, which were based on acareful study of the wording of the questions set by the inspector, and which held good as long as that wording remained unchanged. Forexample, if a subtraction sum was to be dictated to "Standard II, "the child was taught that the number which was given out first was tobe placed in the upper line, and that the number which came next wasto be subtracted from this. He was not taught that the lesser of thetwo numbers was always to be subtracted from the larger; for in orderto apply that principle he would have had to decide for himself whichwas the larger of the two numbers, and the consequent mental effortwas one which his teacher could not trust him to make. It is truethat in his desire to save the child from the dire necessity ofthinking, the teacher ran the risk of being discomfited by a suddenchange of procedure on the part of an inspector. The inspector, forexample, who, having been accustomed to say "From 95 take 57, " choseto say, for a change, "Take 57 from 95, " would cause widespread havocin the first two or three schools that were the victims of hisunlooked-for experiment. But the risks which the teacher ran whotaught his pupils to rely on trickery rather than thought were worthrunning; for the inspectors, like the teachers and the children, wereever tending to become creatures of routine, and the vagaries ofthose who had the reputation of being tiresomely versatile could beprovided against--largely, if not wholly--by increased ingenuity onthe part of the teacher, and increased attention to tricky by-ruleson the part of the child. 

The number of schools in which arithmetic is intelligently and evenpractically taught is undoubtedly much larger than it was in the daysof payment by results; but there are still thousands of schools inwhich obedience to the rule for its own sake is the basis of allinstruction in arithmetic. Now to live habitually by rule instead ofby thought is necessarily fatal, in every field of action, to thedevelopment of that _sense_ or perceptive faculty, on which rightaction ultimately depends. Following his reputed guide blindly, mechanically, and with whole-hearted devotion, the votary of the rulenever allows his intuition, his faculty of direct perception andsubconscious judgment, to play even for a moment round the matterson which he is engaged; and the result is that the faculty inquestion is not merely prevented from growing, but is at lastactually blighted in the bud. This is but another way of saying whatI have already insisted upon, --that to forbid self-expression on thepart of the child is to starve his perceptive faculties intonon-existence. 

There is no folly perpetrated in the elementary school of to-day forwhich there are not authoritative precedents to be found in theconduct of one or other of the two great schools which the God ofWestern theology is supposed to have opened for the education of Man. And it is in that special development of the Legal School whichis known as Pharisaism that we shall look for a precedent for theconventional teaching of arithmetic in our elementary schools. Theultra-legalism of the Pharisee in the days of Christ finds its exactcounterpart in the ultra-legalism of the child who has been taughtarithmetic by the methods which the yearly examination fostered, andwhich are still widely prevalent. In the one case there was, in theother case there is, an entire inability on the part of the zealousvotary of the rule to estimate the intrinsic value of the results ofhis blind and unintelligent action. The sense of humour, which is anecessary element in every other healthy sense, and which so oftenkeeps us from going astray, by suddenly revealing to us the inherentabsurdity of our proposed action, is one of the first faculties tosuccumb to the blighting influence of an ultra-legal conception oflife. As an example of the unwavering seriousness of the Pharisee inthe presence of what was intrinsically ridiculous, let us take hisattitude towards the problem of keeping food warm for the Sabbathday. "According to Exodus xvi. 23, it was forbidden to bake and toboil on the Sabbath. Hence the food, which it was desired to eat hoton the Sabbath, was to be prepared before its commencement, and keptwarm by artificial means. In doing this, however, care must be takenthat the existing heat was not increased, which would have been'boiling. ' Hence the food must be put only into such substances aswould maintain its heat, not into such as might possibly increase it. 'Food to be kept warm for the Sabbath must not be put into oil-dregs, manure, salt, chalk, or sand, whether moist or dry, nor into straw, grape-skins, flock, or vegetables, if these are damp, though it mayif they are dry. It may, however, be put into clothes, amidst fruits, pigeons' feathers, and flax tow. R. Jehudah declares flax towunallowable and permits only coarse tow. '"[10] Following his ruleout, step by step, with unflinching loyalty, into these ridiculousconsequences, the Pharisee had entirely lost the power of seeing thatthey were ridiculous, and was well content to believe, with Jehudah, that the difference between keeping food warm in coarse tow and inflax tow was the difference between life and death. This _reductioad absurdum_ of legalism is exactly paralleled, in many of ourelementary schools, in the answers to arithmetical questions given bythe children. The "Fifth Standard" boys who told their inspector, asan answer to an easy problem, that a given room was five shillingsand sixpence wide, had followed out their rule--they hadunfortunately got hold of a wrong rule--step by step, till it ledthem to a conclusion, the intrinsic absurdity of which they were oneand all unable to see. [11] There are many elementary schools inEngland in which a majority of the answers given to quite easyproblems would certainly be wrong, and a respectable minority of themludicrously wrong. Nor is this to be wondered at; for though thetypes of problems that can be set in elementary schools are notnumerous, to provide his pupils with the by-rules which shall enablethem in all, or even in most cases, to determine which of therecognised rules are appropriate to the given situation, passes thewit of the teacher. But if the helplessness of so many elementaryscholars in the face of an arithmetical problem is lamentable, stillmore lamentable is the fact that the scholar is seldom met with who, having given an entirely wrong answer to an easy problem, is able tosee for himself that, whatever the right answer may be, the answergiven is and must be wrong. So fatal to the development of thearithmetical sense is the current worship of the rule for its ownsake, and so deadly a narcotic is the conventional arithmetic lessonto all who take part in it!

 It is not in the arithmetic lesson, then, that provision isordinarily made for the development of a sense, or perceptivefaculty, through the medium of self-expression on the part of thechild. On the contrary, the very _raison d'être_ of the arithmeticlesson, as it is still given in many schools, is to destroy thearithmetical sense, and make the child an inefficient calculatingmachine, which, even when working, is too often inaccurate andclumsy, and which the slightest change of environment throws atonce and completely out of gear. 

After the arithmetical lesson come, as a rule, lessons in "_Reading_"and "_Writing_"--in reading in some classes, in writing in others. The first thing that strikes the visitor who enters an ordinaryelementary school while a reading lesson is in progress, is that thechildren are not reading at all, in the accepted sense of the word. They are not reading to themselves, not studying, not mastering thecontents of the book, not assimilating the mental and spiritualnutriment that it may be supposed to contain. They are standing up, one by one, even in the highest class of all, and reading aloud totheir teacher. 

Why are they doing this? Is it in order that their teacher may showthem how to master the more difficult words in their reading lesson?This may be the reason, in some schools; but there are others, perhaps a majority, in which the teacher tells his pupils the wordsthat puzzle them instead of helping them to make them out forthemselves. Besides, if reading were properly taught in the lowerclasses, the children in the upper classes would surely be able tomaster unaided the difficulties that might confront them. 

Or is it in order that elocution may be cultivated? But elocution isseldom, if ever, cultivated in the ordinary elementary school, theveriest mumbling on the part of the child being accepted by histeacher (who follows him with an open book in his hand), providedthat he can read correctly and with some attempt at "phrasing. "Indeed, the indistinct utterance of so many school children may beattributed to the fact that they have read aloud to their teachersfor many years, and that during the whole of that time a very lowstandard of distinctness has been accepted as satisfactory. 

Or is it in order that the teacher may help his pupils to understandwhat they are reading? This may be one of his reasons for hearingthem read aloud; but so far as the higher classes are concerned it isa bad reason, for the older the child the more imperative is it thathe should try to make out for himself the meaning of what he reads;and the teacher who spoon-feeds his pupils during the reading lessonis doing his best to make them incapable of digesting the contents ofbooks for themselves. 

No, there are two chief reasons why the teacher makes children ofeleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen years of age read aloud to himas if they were children of six or seven. The first reason is thatthe unemancipated teacher instinctively does to-day what he didtwenty years ago, and that twenty years ago, when children wereexamined in reading from their own books, the teacher heard them readaloud, day after day in order that he might make sure that they knewtheir books well enough to pass the inspector's test. The secondreason, which is wider than the first, and may be said to include andaccount for it, is that the reading-aloud lesson fits in with thewhole system of Western education, being the outcome and expressionof that complete distrust of the child which is, and always has been, characteristic of the popular religion and philosophy of the West. Ifyou ask the teacher why the children, even in the highest classes, are never allowed to work at such subjects as history and geographyby themselves, he will tell you frankly that he cannot trust them todo so, that they do not know how to use a book. And he cannot seethat in giving this excuse he is condemning himself, and making openconfession of the worthlessness of the training that he has given tohis pupils. 

Whatever else the reading-aloud lesson may be, it is a dismal wasteof time. Child after child stands up, reads for a minute or so, andthen sits down, remaining idle and inert (except when an occasionalquestion is addressed to him) for the rest of the time occupiedby the so-called lesson. In this, as in most oral lessons, theelementary school child passes much of his time in a state which isneither activity nor rest, --a state of enforced inertness combinedwith unnatural and unceasing strain. Activity is good for the child, and rest, which, is the complement of activity, is good for thechild; but the combination of inertness with strain is good forneither his body nor his mind. Indeed, it may be doubted if there isany state of mind and body which is so uneducational as this, or sounfavourable to healthy growth. 

 But the main objection to the reading-aloud lesson is, I repeat, thatwhile it is going on the children are not reading at all, in theproper sense of the word, not attacking the book, not enjoying it, not extracting the honey from it. And the consequences of theinability to read which is thus engendered are far-reaching anddisastrous. The power to read is a key which unlocks many doors. Oneof the most important of these doors--perhaps, from the strictlyscholastic point of view, _the_ most important--is the door of study. The child who cannot read to himself cannot study a book, cannotmaster its contents. It is because the elementary school child cannotbe trusted to do any independent study, that the oral lesson, orlecture, with its futile expenditure of "chalk and talk, " is soprominent a feature in the work of the elementary school. And it isbecause the oral lesson necessarily counts for so much, that theover-grouping of classes, with all its attendant evils, is so widelypractised. The grouping together of "Standards" V, VI, and VII, withthe result that the children who go through all those Standards arecompelled to waste the last two years of their school life, is apractice which is almost universal in elementary schools of a certainsize. And there are few schools of that size in which those Standardscould not be broken up into two, if not three, independent classes, if the children, whose ages range as a rule between eleven andfourteen, could be trusted to work by themselves. In many cases thisover-grouping is wholly inexcusable, the headmaster having no classof his own to teach, and being therefore free to do what obviouslyought to be done, --to separate the older and more advanced childrenfrom the rest of the top class, and form them into a separate class(a real top class) for independent study and self-education under hisdirection and supervision. But so strong is the force of habit, andso deeply rooted in the mind of the teacher is distrust of the child, that it is rare to find the head teacher to whom the idea of breakingup an over-grouped top class has suggested itself as practicable, oreven as intrinsically desirable. 

We owe it, then, to the reading-aloud fetich that in many of ourschools the children are compelled to spend the last two (or eventhree) years of their school life--the most important years of allfrom the point of view of their preparation for the battle oflife--in marking time, in staying where they were. It is to thoseyears of enforced stagnation that the reluctance of the ex-elementaryscholar to go on with his education is largely due; for no one cankeep on moving who is not already on the move, and the desire tocontinue education is scarcely to be looked for in one who has beengiven to understand that his education has come to an end. But thereis another and a shorter cut from the conventional reading lesson tothe early extinction of the child's educational career. The child wholeaves school without having learned how to use a book, will findthat the one door through which access is gained to most of the hallsof learning--the door of independent study--is for ever slammed inhis face. Not that he will seriously try to open it; for with theability to read the desire to read will have aborted. The distrust ofthe child, on which Western education is based, is a bottomless gulfin which educational effort, whatever form it may take or in whateverquarter it may originate, is for the most part swallowed up and madeas though it had not been. The child who leaves school at the age offourteen will have attended some 2, 000 or 3, 000 reading lessons inthe course of his school life. From these, in far too many cases, hewill have carried nothing away but the ability to stumble withtolerable correctness through printed matter of moderate difficulty. He will not have carried away from them either the power or thedesire to read. 

In the days of percentages, instruction in "_Writing_" below StandardV was entirely confined to handwriting and spelling; and even in thehigher Standards the teacher thought more about handwriting andspelling than any other aspect of this composite subject. Nowhandwriting and spelling are merely means to an end, --the end ofmaking clear to the reader the words that have been committed topaper by the writer. But it is the choice rather than the settingout of words that really matters, and the name that we give to thechoosing of words is Composition. The excessive regard that hasalways been paid in our elementary schools to neat handwriting andcorrect spelling is characteristic of the whole Western attitudetowards education. No "results" are more easily or more accuratelyappraised than these, and it follows that no "results" are morehighly esteemed by the unenlightened teacher. For wherever theoutward standard of reality has established itself at the expense ofthe inward, the ease with which worth (or what passes for such) canbe measured is ever tending to become in itself the chief, if not thesole, measure of worth. And in proportion as we tend to value theresults of education for their measureableness, so we tend toundervalue and at last to ignore those results which are toointrinsically valuable to be measured. 

 * * * * *

Hence the neglect of _Composition_ in so many elementary schools. Imean by composition the sincere expression in language of the child'sgenuine thoughts and feelings. The effort to "compose, " whetherorally or on paper, is one of the most educational of all efforts;for language is at once the most readily available and the mostsubtle and sympathetic of all media of expression; and the effortto express himself in it tends, in proportion as it is sincereand strong, to give breadth, depth, and complexity to the child'sthoughts and feelings, and through the development of these to weavehis experiences into the tissue of his life. But sincerity ofexpression is not easily measured, and the true value of the thoughtsand feelings that are struggling to express themselves in a child'scomposition is beyond the reach of any rule or scale; whereasneatness of handwriting and correctness of spelling are, as we haveseen, features which appeal even to the carelessly observant eye. 

Knowing this, the teacher takes care that the exercise-books of hispupils shall be filled with neat and accurate composition exercises, and that some of the neatest and most accurate of these shall beexhibited on the walls of his school. The visitor whose eye rangesover these exercises and goes no further may be excused if he formsa highly favourable opinion of the school which can produce suchseemingly excellent work. But let him spend a morning in the school, and see how these "results" have been produced. He will probablychange his mind as to their value. The teaching of composition inthe ordinary elementary school is too often fraudulent and futile. Indeed, there is no lesson in which the teacher's traditionaldistrust of the child goes further than in this. In the lower classesthe child is taught how to construct simple sentences (as if hehad never made one in the previous course of his life), and he isnot trusted to do more than this. He listens to a so-called objectlesson, and when it is over he is told to write a few simplesentences about the Cow or the Horse, or whatever the subject of thelesson may have been; and lest his memory (the only faculty which heis allowed to exercise) should fail him, the chief landmarks of thelesson are placed before him on the blackboard. This string of simplesentences reproduced from memory passes muster as composition. Andyet that child began to practise oral composition at the age ofeighteen months, and at the age of three was able to use complexsentences with freedom and skill. In the upper classes thecomposition is too often as mechanical, as unreal, and as insincereas in the lower. Sometimes a given subject is worked out by theteacher with the class, the children, one by one, suggestingsentences, which are shaped and corrected by the teacher and thenwritten up on the blackboard, until there are enough of them to fillone page of an ordinary exercise book. Then the whole essay (if onemust dignify it with that name) is copied out, very neatly andcarefully, by every child in the class; and the result is shown tothe inspector as original composition. At other times or in otherschools the class teacher does not go quite so far as this. Hecontents himself with talking the subject over with the class, andthen writing a series of headings[12] on the blackboard. Or, again, trusting to the child's red-hot memory, he will allow him to writeout what he remembers of an object-lesson, or a history lesson, orwhatever it may be. Composition exercises which are the genuineexpression of genuine perception, which have behind them what thechild has experienced, what he has felt or thought, what he has read, what he has studied, are the exception rather than the rule; forin such exercises there would probably be faults of spelling, faults of grammar, colloquialisms, careless writing (due to thechild's eagerness), and so forth; and the work would therefore beunsatisfactory from the showman's point of view. The child's naturalcapacity for expressing himself in language is systematically starvedin order that outward and visible results, results which will winapproval from those who judge according to the appearance of things, may be duly produced. 

The case of oral composition in the unemancipated elementary schoolis even more hopeless than that of written composition. The latterhas a time set apart for it on the time-table, and is at any ratesupposed to be taught. The former is wholly ignored. Many teachersseem to have entirely forgotten that the desire and the ability totalk are part of the normal equipment of every healthy child. Therewas, indeed, a time when children were taught to answer questionsin complete sentences even when one-word answers would have amplysufficed. For example, when a child was asked how many pence therewere in a shilling, he was expected to answer, "There are twelvepence in a shilling"; when he was asked what was the colour of snow, he was expected to answer, "The colour of snow is white "; and so on. And both he and his teacher flattered themselves that this waste ofwords was oral composition! In point of fact the sentence in each ofthese cases was worth no more, as an effort of self-expression, thanits one important word--_twelve_, _white_, or whatever it might be;and the child, who was allowed to think that he had produced a realsentence, had in effect done no more than envelop one real word in ahollow formula. There are still many schools in which this ridiculouspractice lingers, and in which it constitutes the only attempt atoral composition that the child is allowed to make. Where it has diedout the idea of teaching oral composition has too often died with it. Young children are, as a rule, voluble talkers, with a considerablecommand of language. But it not infrequently happens that at theclose of his school life the once talkative child has lapsed into astate of sullen taciturnity. In common with other vital faculties, his power of expressing himself in speech has withered in therepressive atmosphere to which he has so long been exposed. 

It is in the oral lesson that one would expect oral composition tobe taught or at any rate practised. In such subjects as _History_, _Geography_, _English_, _Elementary Science_, the teaching in mostelementary schools is mainly, if not wholly, oral. In the days ofpayment by results separate and variable grants were given for thesesubjects; and which, if either, of two grants should be recommendeddepended in each case on the result of an oral examination conductedby H. M. Inspector, the employment of a written test in any classbeing strictly forbidden by "My Lords. " In this examination proofof the possession of information was all that the inspector coulddemand; and the quickest and easiest way of obtaining such proofwas to ask the class questions which could be briefly answered bythe children individually. Questions which were designed to testintelligence might, of course, have been asked, and in some districtswere freely asked; but to have reduced the grant because the childrenfailed to answer these would have provoked an outcry; while, had theinspector asked questions which demanded long answers, he would, inthe limited time at his command, have given but few children thechance of showing that they had been duly prepared for theexamination. The consequence was that the oral lesson on a "classsubject" usually took the form of stuffing the children with pelletsof appropriate information, some of which they would, in allprobability, have the opportunity of disgorging when they werequestioned by the inspector on the yearly "parade day. "

Not only, then, did the official examination in history, geographyand elementary science direct the teaching of these subjects intochannels in which the golden opportunities that they offer for thepractice of written composition were perforce thrown away, but alsothe examination was so framed that even the practice of oralcomposition, in preparation for it, was actively discouraged. And theneglect of composition acted disastrously on the teaching of thesubjects in question; for wherever self-expression on the part of thechild is forbidden, the appropriate "sense, " or perceptive faculty, cannot possibly evolve itself, --perception and expression being, aswe have elsewhere seen, the very life and soul of each other; and inthe absence (to take pertinent examples) of the historical or thegeographical sense, the possession of historical or geographicalinformation cannot possibly be converted into knowledge of historyor geography. The prompt, accurate, and general answering which wasrewarded by the award of the higher grants for "class subjects" was, in nine cases out of ten, the outcome of assiduous and unintelligentcram, --a mode of preparation for which the policy of the EducationDepartment was mainly responsible. 

 But when separate grants ceased to be paid for class subjects, werenot the teachers free to teach them by rational methods? No doubtthey were--in theory. In point of fact they were in bondage to thestrongest of all constraining influences, --the force of inveteratehabit. For twenty years they had taught the class subjects by the onesafe method of vigorous oral cram. This method had answered theirpurpose, and it was but natural that they should continue to teach byit. What happened, when separate grants ceased to be paid, was thatthe need for responsiveness on the part of the scholar graduallylessened. The pellets of information were still imparted, but itbecame less and less incumbent upon the teacher to see that hispupils were ready to disgorge them at a moment's notice. And so thecramming lesson gradually transformed itself into a _lecture_, inwhich the teacher did all or nearly all the talking, while thechildren sat still and listened or pretended to listen, an occasionalyawn giving open proof of the boredom from which most of them weresuffering. 

That is the type of oral lesson which is most common at the presentday. "Results" in history, geography, nature study and English areseldom asked for by the inspector; and the teacher takes but littletrouble to produce them. But his distrust of the child is as firmlyrooted as ever, and his unwillingness to allow the child to work byor for himself is as strong as it ever was. The consequence is thatthere are many schools in which the teacher now does everythingduring the oral lesson, while the child does as nearly as possiblenothing. Formerly the child was at any rate allowed (or ratherrequired) to be actively receptive. Now he is seldom allowed to doanything more active than to yawn. And all the time he is secretlylonging to energise--to do something with himself--to use his mental, if not his physical faculties--to work, if not to play. One mighthave thought that in the history and geography lessons, if in noother, "Standards VI" and "VII" (where the numbers were too smallto admit of these standards having a teacher to themselves) wouldbe separated from "Standard V, " and allowed to work out their ownsalvation by studying suitable text-books under proper supervisionand guidance. But no; the force of habit is too strong for themachine-made teacher. Twenty years ago history and geography were"class subjects, " and as such were taught orally to whole classes ofchildren. And they must still be taught as "class subjects, " evenif this should involve the "Sixth" and "Seventh Standards" beingbrigaded with, and kept down for one or even two years to, the levelof the "Fifth, "--kept down, it would seem, for no other purpose thanthat of being the passive recipients of the teacher's windy "talk, "and the helpless witnesses of his futile "chalk, " and of having theirown activities paralysed and their own powers of expression starvedinto inanition. 

I will deal with one more "secular" subject before I bring thissketch to a close. There are still many schools in which the hoursthat are set apart for _Drawing_ are devoted in large measure to theslavish reproduction of flat copies. A picture of some familiarobject--outlined, shaded, or tinted as the case may be, and notinfrequently highly conventionalised--hangs in front of the class;and the children copy it, stroke by stroke, and curve by curve, andput in the shading and lay on washes of colour. As long practice atwork of this kind develops a certain degree of manual dexterity, andas the free use of india-rubber is permitted and even encouraged, thechild's finished work may be so neat and accurate as to become worthyof a place on the school wall. But what is the value, what is themeaning of work of this kind? When such a drawing lesson as I havedescribed is in progress, the divorce between perception andexpression is complete. And as each of these master faculties is thevery life and soul of the other, their complete divorce from oneanother involves the complete eclipse of each. The child who copiesa flat copy does not perceive anything except some other person'sreproduction of a scene or object; and even this he does notnecessarily grasp as a whole, his business being to reproduce it withflawless accuracy, line by line. Indeed, it may well happen that hedoes not even know what the picture or diagram before him is intendedto represent. Nor is he expressing anything, for he has not made hismodel in any sense or degree his own. Thus, during the whole of alesson in which the perceptive and expressive faculties are supposedto be receiving a special training, they are lying dormant and inert. Each of them is, for the time being, as good as dead. And each ofthem will assuredly die if this kind of teaching goes on for verylong, die for lack of exercise, die wasted and atrophied by disuse. The extent to which the copying of copies can injure a child's powerof observation exceeds belief. I have seen a bowl placed high abovethe line of sight of a class of fifty senior boys, each one of whom(his memory being haunted, I suppose, by some diagram which he hadonce copied) drew it as if he were looking into it from above. Notone of those boys could see the bowl as it really was, or ratheras it really was to be seen. A child who had never drawn a strokein his life, but whose perceptive faculties had not been deadenedby education, would have sketched the bowl more correctly thanany of those quasi-experts. And with the wasting of the power ofobservation, the executive power is gradually lost; for perceptionis ever interpenetrating, reinforcing, and stimulating expression;and when the eye is blind, the hand, however skilful its meremanipulation may be, necessarily falters and loses its cunning. 

Four or five years ago, had one entered an elementary school whiledrawing was being taught, such a lesson as I have just describedwould have been in progress in ninety-nine cases out of everyhundred. Since then a systematic warfare has been waged by the Boardagainst the "flat copy"; and though it is still very far fromextinct, there is now perhaps an actual majority of schools in whichits use has been discontinued. But the number of schools in whichdrawing from the object is effectively taught, though increasingsteadily, is still small. In those schools, indeed, the results aresurprisingly good, --so good as to justify, not only the new gospel ofdrawing from the object, but also the whole gospel of educationthrough self-reliance and self-expression. But elsewhere there hasbeen but little improvement, except so far as it may be better todraw from an object without guidance, or with quite ineffectiveguidance, than to draw from a flat copy. In some schools the formulaor "tip" is beginning to take the place of the flat copy. There is aformula for the tulip, a formula for the snowdrop, a formula for thedaffodil, and so on; and the children draw from these formulæ whilethe actual flowers are before them and they are making believe toreproduce them. In other schools an object is placed before theclass, and the teacher draws this for them on the blackboard, explaining to them in detail how it ought to be drawn; and when hehas finished, the children pretend to draw the object, but reallycopy his blackboard copy of it. In this, as in other matters, theteacher who has become a victim of routine will give a facile butmainly "notional" assent to the suggestions that are placed beforehim, will promise to try them, and will make an unintelligent andhalf-hearted attempt to do so, but will as often as not slide backinto practices which do not materially differ from those which heprofesses to have abandoned. The pressure of the whole system ofWestern education--not to speak of Western civilisation--will be toostrong for him. The flat copy, with its demand for mechanical workand servile obedience, fits into that system. Drawing from theobject, with its demand for initiative and self-reliance, does not. Hence the attractive force of the former, --a secret attractive forcewhich will neutralise the efforts that the teacher consciously makesto free himself from its influence, and will arm him, as witha hidden shirt of mail, against the missionary zeal of hisinspector. [13] Even the zeal of the inspector will be affected by hispossible inability to harmonise his gospel of self-expression indrawing with any general system of self-education. It is because theeducational reformer is fighting, in his sporadic attempts at reform, against his own deepest conviction, that he achieves so little evenin the particular directions in which he sees clearly that reform isneeded. 

But how, it will be asked, is such a school as I have described to bekept going? The whole _régime_ must be eminently distasteful to thehealthy child, and it can scarcely be attractive to his teacher. Bywhat motive force, then, is the school to be kept in motion, --inmotion, if not along the path of progress, at any rate along thewell-worn track of routine? By the only motive force whichthe religion and the civilisation of the West recognise aseffective, --the hope of external reward, with its complement, thefear of external punishment. From highest to lowest, from the headteacher of the school to the youngest child in the bottom class, allthe teachers and all the children are subjected to the pressure ofthis quasi-physical force. The teachers hope for advancement andincrease of salary, and fear degradation and loss of salary, or atany rate loss of the hoped-for increment. [14] The children hope formedals, books, high places in their respective classes, and otherrewards and distinctions, and fear corporal and other kinds ofpunishment. The thoroughly efficient school is one in which thismotive force is duly transmitted to every part of the schoolby means of a well-planned and carefully-elaborated machinery, analogous to that by which water and gas are laid on at everytap in every house in a well-governed town. Only those who areintimately acquainted with the inside of the elementary school canrealise to what an extent the machinery of education has in recentyears encroached upon the vital interests of the school and the timeand thought of the teacher. In schools which are administered bybusiness-like and up-to-date Local Authorities, this encroachment isbecoming as serious as that of drifting sands on a fertile soil. Time-tables, schemes of work, syllabuses, record books, progressbooks, examination result books, and the rest, --hours and hours arespent by the teachers on the clerical work which these mechanicalcontrivances demand. And the hours so spent are too often whollywasted. The worst of this machinery is that, so long as it workssmoothly, all who are interested in the school are satisfied. Butit may all work with perfect smoothness, and yet achieve nothingthat really counts. I know of hundreds of schools which are to allappearance thoroughly efficient, --schools in which the machinery ofeducation is as well contrived as it is well oiled and cleaned, --andyet in which there is no vital movement, no growth, no life. Fromhighest to lowest, all the inmates of those schools are cheatingthemselves with forms, figures, marks, and other such empty symbols. 

The application of the conventional motive force to the schoolchildren goes by the name of _Discipline_. If the pressure at eachtap is steady, constant, and otherwise effective, the discipline isgood. If it is variable, intermittent, and otherwise ineffective, the discipline is bad. The life of the routine-ridden school is soirksome to the child, that if he is healthy and vigorous he will longto find a congenial outlet for his vital energies, which are as arule either pent back (as when he sits still listening to a lecture), or forced into uninteresting and unprofitable channels. When thisdesire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of"naughtiness, " and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulnessof his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child ina state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulatedactivity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in thechild's life is free, natural, spontaneous, wells up from an evilsource. If educational progress is to be made, that source must becarefully sealed. As an educator, the teacher must do his bestto reduce the child to the level of a wire-pulled puppet. As adisciplinarian, he must overcome the child's instinctive repugnanceto being subjected to such unworthy treatment. The better the"discipline" of the school, the easier it will be for the mechanicaleducation given in it to achieve its deadly work. 

In making this sketch of what is still a common type of elementaryschool, my object has been to provide myself with materials foranswering the question: Does elementary education, as at presentconducted in this country, tend to foster the growth of the child'sfaculties? If my sketch is even approximately faithful to itsoriginal, the answer to the question, so far at least as thousands ofschools are concerned, must be an emphatic No. For in the school, asI have sketched it, the one end and aim of the teacher is to preventthe child from doing anything whatever for himself; and whereindependent effort is prohibited, the growth of faculty must needs bearrested, the growth of every faculty, as of every limb and organ, being dependent in large measure on its being duly and suitablyexercised by its owner. If this statement is true of faculty as such, and of effort as such, still more is it true of the particularfaculties which school life is supposed to train, the faculties whichwe speak of loosely as perceptive, --and of the particular effort bywhich alone the growth of the perceptive faculties is effected, themany-sided effort which we speak of loosely as self-expression. Farperception and expression are, as I have endeavoured to prove, theface and obverse of the same vital process; and the educationalpolicy which makes self-expression, or, in other words, sincereexpression, impossible, is therefore fatal to the outgrowth of thewhole range of the perceptive faculties. 

The education given in thousands of our elementary schools is, then, in the highest degree anti-educational. The end which educationought to aim at achieving is the very end which the teacher laboursunceasingly to defeat. The teacher may, indeed, contend that hisbusiness is not to evoke faculty but to impart knowledge. The answerto this argument is that the type of education which impedes theoutgrowth of faculty is necessarily fatal to the acquisition ofknowledge. For the teacher can no more impart knowledge to his pupilsthan a nurse can impart flesh and blood to her charges. What theteacher imparts is information, just as what the nurse imparts isfood; and until information has been converted into knowledge thechild is as far from being educated as the infant, whose foodremains unassimilated, is from being nourished. The teacher may pumpinformation into the child in a never-ending stream; but so long ashe compels the child to adopt an attitude of passive receptivity, andforbids him to react, through the medium of self-expression, on thefood that he is receiving, so long will the food remain unassimilatedand even undigested, and the soul and mind of the child remainuneducated and unfed. 

Whether, then, we concern ourselves, as educationalists, with thegrowth of the child's whole nature, or with the growth of his masterfaculties, or again with the growth of those special "senses"which evolve themselves in response to the stimulus of specialenvironments, we see that in each case the effect of the teacher'spolicy of distrust and repression is to arrest growth. When thestern supernaturalist reminds us that the child's nature isintrinsically evil, and that therefore in arresting its growtheducation renders him a priceless service, we answer that, inarresting the growth of the child's nature as a whole, educationarrests the growth of all the master faculties of his being, andthat there are some at least among these which, even in the judgmentof the supernaturalist, imperatively need to be trained. When thestrait-laced, result-hunting teacher reminds us that his solebusiness is to teach certain subjects, and that therefore he cannotconcern himself with growth, we answer that, in neglecting to fostergrowth, he makes it impossible for the child to put forth a special"sense, " a special faculty of direct perception, in response to eachnew environment, and so (for reasons which have already been given)incapacitates him for mastering any subject. There is always onepoint of view, if no more, from which my primary assumption--thatthe function of education is to foster growth--is seen to be atruism. And from that point of view, if from no other, the failureof the routine-ridden school to fulfil its destiny is seen to befinal and complete. 

Yet to say that elementary education, as it is given in such aschool, tends to arrest growth, is to under-estimate its capacity formischief. In the act of arresting growth it must needs distortgrowth, and in doing this it must needs deaden and even destroy thelife which is ever struggling to evolve itself. It is well that fromtime to time we should ask ourselves what compulsory education hasdone for the people of England. How much it has done to civiliseand humanise the masses is beginning to be known to all who areinterested in social progress, and I for one am ready to second anyvote of thanks that may be proposed to it for this invaluableservice. [15] But when we ask ourselves what it has done to _vitalise_the nation, we may well hesitate for an answer. Twenty years ago, inthe days of "schedules" and "percentages, " elementary education was, on balance, an actively devitalising agency. The policy of theEducation Department made that inevitable. But things have changedsince then; and it is probable that the balance is now in favour ofthe elementary school. But the balance, though growing from year toyear, is as yet very small compared with what it will be when theteacher, relieved from the pressure of the still prevailing demandfor "results, " is free to take thought for the vital interests of thechild. 

Whom shall we blame for the shortcomings of our elementary schools?The Board of Education? Their Inspectors? The Teachers? The TrainingColleges? The Local Authorities? We will blame none of these. We willblame the spirit of Western civilisation, with its false philosophyof life and its false standard of reality. 

Shall we blame the Board because, in the days when they calledthemselves the Department, they made the teachers of England theserfs of their soul-destroying Code? For my own part I prefer tohonour the Board, not only because on a certain day they liberatedtheir serfs by a departmental edict, but also and more especiallybecause, in defiance of the protests and criticisms of Members ofParliament, employers of labour, Chairmen of Education Committees, and others, in defiance of the ubiquitous pressure of Westernexternalism and materialism, in defiance of the trend of contemporaryopinion, in defiance of their own practice, --for they themselves arean examining body whose nets are widely spread, --they refuse torevoke the gift of freedom, which they gave, perhaps over-hastily, tothe teachers of England, and continue to exempt them, so far as theirown action is concerned, from the pressure of a formal examination ona uniform scheme of work. 

Shall we blame the teachers as a body because too many of them aremachine-made creatures of routine? For my own part I honour theteachers as a body, if only because here and there one of them hasdared, with splendid courage, to defy the despotism of custom, oftradition, of officialdom, of the thousand deadening influences thatare brought to bear upon him, and to follow for himself the path ofinwardness and life. To blame the average teacher for being unable toresist the pressure to which he is unceasingly exposed would bealmost as unfair as to blame a pebble on the seashore for beingunable to resist the grinding action of the waves, and would illbecome one who has special reason to remember how the Department, inits misguided zeal for efficiency, strove for thirty years or moreto grind the teachers of England to one pattern in the mill of"payment by results. " It is to a certificated teacher that, as aneducationalist (if I may give myself so formidable a title), "I owemy soul. " And there are many other teachers to whom my debts, thoughless weighty than this, are by no means light. Most of the failingsof the elementary teachers are wounds and strains which adverse Fatehas inflicted on them. Most of their virtues are their own. 

Shall we blame the Training Colleges because, with an unhappy pastbehind them, they have yet many things to unlearn?

Shall we blame the local Education Authorities because, with anunknown future before them, they have yet many things to learn?

No, I repeat, we will blame none of these. We will lay the blame onbroader shoulders. We will blame our materialistic philosophy oflife, which we complacently regard--orthodox and heretics alike--as"_The_ truth"; and we will blame our materialised civilisation, whichwe complacently regard--cultured and uncultured alike--ascivilisation, pure and simple, whatever lies beyond its confinesbeing lightly dismissed as "barbarism. " These are the forces againstwhich every teacher, every manager, every inspector, who strives foremancipation and enlightenment, has to fight unceasingly. If thefight is an unequal one; if there are many would-be reformers whohave shrunk from it; if there are others who retired from it early inthe day; if there are others, again, who have been crushed init;--we will blame the forces of darkness for these disasters; wewill not blame their victims. On the contrary, we will honour all whohave fought and fallen; for when the cause is large and worthy ofdevotion, failure in the service of it is only less triumphant thansuccess. But if there is honour for failure what shall be the guerdonof success? What tribute shall we pay to those who have fought andwon?

For there are some who have fought and won. 

FOOTNOTES:

[6] It must be clearly understood that throughout thischapter the school that I have in mind is one for "older children"only. Whatever may be the defects of the elementary infant schools, an excessive regard for outward and visible results is not one ofthem. Exemption from the pressure of a formal external examinationhas meant much more to them than to the schools for older children;and the atmosphere of the good infant schools is, in consequence, freer, happier, more recreative, and more truly educative than thatof the upper schools of equivalent merit. And when we compare gradewith grade, we find that the superiority of the elementary infantschools is still more pronounced. The "Great Public Schools, " and thecostly preparatory schools that lead up to them, may or may not beworthy of their high reputation; but as regards facilities for theeducation (in school) of their "infants, " the "classes" areunquestionably much less fortunate than the "masses. "

[7] Not long ago I happened to enter the Boys' Department ofan urban Church School at about 9. 15 a. M. The Headmaster was sittingat his desk, drawing up schemes of "secular" work. All the boys above"Standard III"--94 in number--were grouped together, listening, orpretending to listen, to a "chalk-and-talk" lecture on "Prayer" [ofwhich there are apparently five varieties, viz. , (1) Invocation, (2)Deprecation, (3) Obsecration, (4) Intercession, (5) Supplication]. The Headmaster explained to me that "of course it was only during theScripture lesson" that this overgrouping went on. The lecture onPrayer was given by a young Assistant-master, whose naive delight inthe long words that he rolled out _ore rotundo_ and then chalked upon the blackboard, had blinded him to the obvious fact that he wasmaking no impression whatever on his audience. The boys, one and all, reminded me forcibly of the "white-headed boy" in Dickens' villageschool, who displayed "in the expression of his face a remarkablecapacity of totally abstracting his mind from the spelling on whichhis eyes were fixed. "

[8] There are many elementary schools which the DiocesanInspector does not enter. In the "Provided" or "Council" Schools"undenominational Bible teaching" takes the place of the "definitedogmatic instruction in religious knowledge" which is tested byDiocesan Inspection. But even when undogmatic Bible teaching isgiven, the shadow of an impending examination, external or internalas the case may be, too often sterilises the efforts of the teacher. Not that the efforts of the teacher would in any case be productiveso long as the attitude of popular thought towards the Bible remainedunchanged. To go into this burning question would involve me in anunjustifiable digression; but I must be allowed to express myconviction that the teaching of the Bible in our elementary schoolswill never be anything but misguided and mischievous until those whoare responsible for it have realised that the Old Testament is theinspired literature of a particular people, and have ceased to regardit as the authentic biography of the Eternal God. It is to thecurrent misconception of the meaning and value of the Bible, and theconsequent misconception of the relation of God to Nature and to Man, that the externalism of the West, which is the source of all thegraver defects of modern education, is (as I contend) largely due;and it is useless to try to remedy those defects so long as we allowour philosophy of life to be perennially poisoned at its highestsprings. 

[9] In far too many cases the teacher received a certainproportion of the Grant; and in any case his value in the markettended to vary directly with his ability to secure a large Grant forhis school by his success in the yearly examination. 

[10] _The Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ_, by Dr. Emil Schürer. 

[11] Here is another example of the mental blindness whichrule-worship in Arithmetic is apt to induce. The boys in a large"Standard II, " who had been spending the whole year in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing tens of thousands, were giventhe following sum: A farmer had 126 sheep. He bought nine. How manyhad he then? Out of 50 boys, one only worked the sum correctly. Ofthe remaining 49, about a third _multiplied_ 126 by 9, another third_divided_ 126 by 9, while the remaining third _subtracted_ 9 from126. 

[12] Reinforced in many cases by suggestive words. Irecently found myself in an urban school while the "Fourth Standard"boys were doing "Composition. " The subject--Trees--had already beendealt with in a preparatory "talk. " In front of the class was ablackboard, on which were written the following words:

 "fruit, flowers, I. _Roots_ tough, strong, stretch, extend. II. _Trunk_ thick, branches, bark. III. _Branches_ strong, tough, leaves. IV. _Leaves_ green, shapes, sizes, beautiful, clothe, autumn, brown. "

I am told that sometimes as many as twelve headings are given, eachwith its own list of suggestive words. 

[13] I was recently present at a large gathering of teacherswho had assembled to discuss the teaching of Drawing and otherkindred topics. The district is one in which the gospel of self-helpin Drawing has been preached with diligence and with much apparentsuccess. One of the teachers, who was expected to support the Boardin their crusade against the "flat copy, " played the part of Balaamby reading out letters from certain distinguished R. A. 's, in whichthe use of the flat copy in elementary schools was openly advocated. It was evident that those distinguished R. A. 's knew as much aboutelementary education as the man in the street knows about navaltactics, for the arguments by which they supported their paradoxicalopinions were worth exactly nothing. But the salvos of applause, renewed again and again, which greeted the extracts from theirletters showed clearly in which direction the current of subconsciousconviction was running in that evangelised and apparently converteddistrict. 

[14] There are few teachers who do not also work from highermotives than these; but there are very few who are exempt from thepressure of these. 

[15] It is pleasant to read that at Southend on EasterMonday (1910) there were 65, 000 excursionists and only two cases ofdrunkenness. It is also pleasant to hear from an officer who hasserved for many years in India that the modern English privatesoldier in India is an infinitely superior being to his predecessors, and that India could not now be held by the old type of Britishsoldier. We must not, however, forget that the "old type" conqueredIndia. 

PART II

WHAT MIGHT BE

OR

THE PATH OF SELF-REALISATION

CHAPTER IV

A SCHOOL IN UTOPIA

Having painted in gloomy colours some of the actualities ofelementary education, I will now try to set forth its possibilities. In opposing the actual to the possible, I am perhaps running the riskof being misunderstood. The possible, as I conceive it, is no mere"fabric of a dream. " What are possibilities for the elementaryschool, as such, are already actualities in certain schools. Were itnot so, I should not speak of them as possibilities. I do not pretendto be a prophet, in the vulgar sense of the word. The ends which I amabout to set before managers and teachers are ends which have beenachieved, and are being achieved, _under entirely normal conditions_, in various parts of the country, and which are therefore notimpracticable. There are many elementary schools in England in whichbold and successful departures have been made from the beaten track;and in each of these cases what is at present a mere possibility formost schools has been actually realised. And there is one elementaryschool at least in which the beaten track has been entirelyabandoned, with the result that possibilities (as I may now callthem) which I might perhaps have dismissed on _a priori_ grounds astoo fantastic for serious consideration, have become part of theeveryday life of the scholars. 

 That school shall now become the theme of my book; for I feel that Icannot serve the cause of education better than by trying to describeand interpret the work that is being done in it. The school belongsto a village which I will call Utopia. It is not an imaginaryvillage--a village of Nowhere--but a very real village, which can bereached, as all other villages can, by rail and road. It nestles atthe foot of a long range of hills; and if you will climb the slopethat rises at the back of the village, and look over the levelcountry that you have left behind, you will see in the distance thegleaming waters of one of the many seas that wash our shores. Thevillage is fairly large, as villages go in these days of ruraldepopulation; and the school is attended by about 120 children. Thehead teacher, whose genius has revolutionised the life, not of theschool only, but of the whole village, is a woman. I will call herEgeria. She has certainly been my Egeria, in the sense that whatevermodicum of wisdom in matters educational I may happen to possess, Iowe in large measure to her. I have paid her school many visits, andit has taken me many months of thought to get to what I believe to bethe bed-rock of her philosophy of education, --a philosophy which Iwill now attempt to expound. 

Two things will strike the stranger who pays his first visit to thisschool. One is the ceaseless activity of the children. The other isthe bright and happy look on every face. In too many elementaryschools the children are engaged either in laboriously doingnothing, --in listening, for example, with ill-concealed yawns, to_lectures_ on history, geography, nature-study, and the rest; orin doing what is only one degree removed from nothing, --workingmechanical sums, transcribing lists of spellings or pieces ofcomposition, drawing diagrams which have no meaning for them, andso forth. But in this school every child is, as a rule, activelyemployed. And bearing in mind that "unimpeded energy" is a recognisedsource of happiness, the visitor will probably conjecture that thereis a close connection between the activity of the children and thebrightness of their faces. 

That the latter feature of the school will arrest his attention isalmost certain. Utopia belongs to a county which is proverbial forthe dullness of its rustics, but there is no sign of dullness on theface of any Utopian child. On the contrary, so radiantly bright arethe faces of the children that something akin to sunshine seemsalways to fill the school. When he gets to know the school, thevisitor will realise that the brightness of the children is of twokinds, --the brightness of energy and intelligence, and the brightnessof goodness and joy. And when he gets to know the school as well as Ido, he will realise that these two kinds of brightness are in theiressence one. 

Let me say something about each of them. 

The Utopian child is alive, alert, active, full of latent energy, ready to act, to do things, to turn his mind to things, to turn hishand to things, to turn his desire to things, to turn his whole beingto things. There is no trace in this school of the mental lethargywhich, in spite of the ceaseless activity of the teachers, pervadesthe atmosphere of so many elementary schools; no trace of the fatalinertness on the part of the child, which is the outcome of five orsix years of systematic repression and compulsory inaction. The airof the school is electrical with energy. We are obviously in thepresence of an active and vigorous life. 

And the activity of the Utopian child is his own activity. It isa fountain which springs up in himself. Unlike the ordinaryschool-child, he can do things on his own account. He does not wait, in the helplessness of passive obedience, for his teacher to tell himwhat he is to do and how he is to do it. He does not even wait, inthe bewilderment of self-distrust, for his teacher to give him alead. If a new situation arises, he deals with it with promptitudeand decision. His solution of the problem which it involves may beincorrect, but at any rate it will be a solution. He will have faceda difficulty and grappled with it, instead of having waited inertlyfor something to turn up. His initiative has evidently been developed_pari passu_ with his intelligence; and the result of this is that hecan think things out for himself, that he can devise ways and means, that he can purpose, that he can plan. 

In all these matters the Utopian child differs widely and deeply fromthe less fortunate child who has to attend a more ordinary type ofelementary school. But when we turn to the other aspect of theUtopian brightness, when we consider it as the reflected light ofgoodness and joy, we find that the difference between the twochildren is wider and deeper still. There are many schools outsideUtopia that pride themselves on the excellence of their discipline;but I am inclined to think that in some at least of these theself-satisfaction of the teacher is equivalent to a confession offailure. There was a time when every elementary school received alarge grant for instruction and a small grant for discipline; andinspectors were supposed to report separately on each of theseaspects of the school's life. A strange misconception of the meaningand purpose of education underlay this artificial distinction; but onthat we need not dwell. Were an inspector called upon to report onthe discipline of the Utopian school, his report would be brief. There is no discipline in the school. There is no need for any. Thefunction of the strict disciplinarian is to shut down, and, ifnecessary, sit upon, the safety-valve of misconduct. But in Utopia, where all the energies of the children are fully and happilyemployed, that safety-valve has never to be used. Each child in turnis so happy in his school life that the idea of being naughty neverenters his head. One cannot remain long in the school withoutrealising that in its atmosphere

 Love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. 

It recently happened that on a certain day one of theassistant-teachers had to go to a hospital, that another had to takeher there, that the third was ill in bed, and that Egeria--the onlyavailable member of the staff--was detained by one of the managersfor half-an-hour on her way to school. The school was thus leftwithout a teacher. On entering it, Egeria found all the children intheir places and at work. They had looked at the time-table, hadchosen some of the older scholars to take the lower classes, and hadsettled down happily and in perfect order. This incident proves todemonstration that the _morale_ of the school has somehow or otherbeen carried far beyond the limits of what is usually understood bydiscipline. I have seen historical scenes acted with much vigour bysome of the children in the first class, and applauded with equalvigour by their class-mates, while all the time the children in thesecond class, who were drawing flowers in the same room, never liftedtheir eyes from their desks. Yet no children can laugh more merrilyor more unrestrainedly than these, or make a greater uproar when itis fitting that they should do so. 

And if there is no need for punishment, or any other form ofrepression, in this school, it is equally true that there is no needfor rewards. To one who has been taught to regard competition inschool as a sacred duty, and the winning of prizes as a laudableobject of the scholar's ambition, this may seem strange. But so itis. No child has the slightest desire to outstrip his fellows or riseto the top of his class. Joy in their work, pride in their school, devotion to their teacher, are sufficient incentives to industry. Were the stimulus of competition added to these, neither the zeal northe interest of the children would be quickened one whit, but adiscordant element would be introduced into their school life. Happyas he obviously is in his own school life, it would add nothing tothe happiness of the Utopian to feel that he had outstripped hisclass-mates and won a prize for his achievement. So far, indeed, arethese children from wishing to shine at the expense of others, thatif they think Egeria has done less than justice to the work of someone child, the rest of the class will go out of their way to call herattention to it. If some children are brighter, cleverer, and moreadvanced than others, the reward of their progress is that they areallowed to help on those who lag behind. This is especiallynoticeable in Drawing, in which the pre-eminence of one or twochildren has again and again had the effect of lifting the work ofthe whole class to a higher level. But the laggards are as far frombeing discouraged by their failure as are the more advanced scholarsfrom being puffed up by their success. From the highest to thelowest, all are doing their best and all are happy together. 

From morals to manners the transition is obvious and direct. Be theexplanation what it may, the whole atmosphere of this school isevidently fatal to selfishness and self-assertion; and in such anatmosphere good manners will spring up spontaneously among thechildren, and will scarcely need to be inculcated, for the essence ofcourtesy is forgetfulness of self and consideration of others in thesmaller affairs of social life. The general bearing of the Utopianchildren hits the happy mean between aggressive familiarity anduncouth shyness, --each a form of self-conscious egoism, --just astheir bearing in school hits the happy mean between laxity and undueconstraint. They welcome the stranger as a friend, take his goodwillfor granted, take him into their confidence, and show him, tactfullyand unostentatiously, many pretty courtesies. And they do all this, not because they have been drilled into doing it, but because it istheir nature to do it, because their overflowing sympathy andgoodwill must needs express themselves in and through the channels ofcourtesy and kindness. There is no trace of sullen self-repression inthis school. Accustomed (as we shall presently see) to expressthemselves in various ways, the children cannot entertain kindlyfeelings without seeking some vent for them. But whether their kindlyfeelings lead them to dance in a ring round their own inspector, singing "For he's a jolly good fellow, " or to escort anothervisitor, on his departure, through the playground with theirarms in his, their tact, --which is the outcome, partly of theirself-forgetfulness, partly of the training which their perceptivefaculties are always receiving, --is unfailing, and they never allowfriendliness to degenerate into undue familiarity. 

There is one other feature of the school life which I cannot passover. I have never been in a school in which the love of what isbeautiful in Nature is so strong or so sincere as in this. Theæsthetic sense of the Utopian child has not been deliberatelytrained, but it has been allowed, and even encouraged, to unfolditself; and the appeal that beauty makes to the heart meets inconsequence with a ready response. Of the truth of this statementI could, if necessary, give many proofs. One must suffice. Thechildren, who are adepts at drawing with brush and pencil, wander infield and lane with sketch-books in their hands; and one of them atleast was so moved by the beauty of a winter sunrise, as seen fromhis cottage window, that, in his own words, he felt he _must_ try topaint it, the result being a water-colour sketch which I have shownto a competent artist, who tells me that the _feeling_ in the sky isquite wonderful. 

In this brief preliminary sketch of the more salient features of theUtopian school, I have, I hope, said enough to show that its scholarsdiffer _toto coelo_ from those who attend that familiar type ofschool which I have recently described. Yet the Utopian children aremade of the same clay as the children of other villages. If anything, indeed, the clay is heavier and more stubborn in Utopia thanelsewhere. Some ten or twelve years ago, when Egeria took charge ofthe school, the children were dull, lifeless, listless, resourceless. Now they are bright, intelligent, happy, responsive, overflowing withlife, interested in many things, full of ability and resource. Howhas this change been wrought? Not by veneering or even inoculatingthe children with good qualities, but simply by allowing their betterand higher nature to evolve itself freely, naturally, and underfavourable conditions. 

That the child's better and higher nature is his real nature, is theassumption--let me rather say, the profound conviction--on whichEgeria's whole system of education has been based. In basing it onthis assumption, she has made a bold departure from the highway whichhas been blindly followed for many centuries. We have seen that thebasis of education in this country, as in Christendom generally, isthe doctrine of original sin. It is taken for granted by those whotrain the child that his nature, if allowed to develop itself freely, will grow in the wrong direction, and will therefore lead him astray;and that it is the function of education to counteract thistendency, to do violence to the child's nature, to compel it by mainforce to grow (or make a pretence of growing) in the right direction, to subject it to perpetual repression and constraint. The wild whoopsto which children so often give vent, when released from school, showthat a period of unnatural tension has come to an end; and in these, and in the further conduct of the released child--in the roughness, rudeness, and bad language, of which the passer-by (especially intowns) not infrequently has to complain--we see a rebound from thisstate of tension, an instinctive protest against the constraint towhich he has been subjected for so many hours. The result of all thisis that the child leads two lives, a life of unnatural repression andconstraint in school, and a life--also unnatural, though it issupposed to be the expression of his nature--of reaction and protestout of school. Such a dislocation of the child's daily life is notlikely to conduce to his well-being; while the teacher's assumptionthat his _rôle_ in school is essentially active, and that of thechild essentially passive, will lead at last to his turning his backon the root-idea of growth, to his forgetting that the child is aliving and therefore a growing organism, to his regarding the childas clay in his hands, to be "remoulded" by him "to his heart'sdesire, " or even as a _tabula rasa_, on which he is to inscribe wordsand other symbols at his will. 

In Utopia the training which the child receives may be said to bebased on the doctrine of original goodness. It is taken for grantedby Egeria that the child is neither a lump of clay nor a _tabularasa_, but a "living soul"; that growth is of the very essence ofhis being; and that the normal child, if allowed to make naturalgrowth under reasonably favourable conditions, will grow happily andwell. It is taken for granted that the potencies of his nature arewell worth realising; that the end of his being--the ideal typetowards which the natural course of his development tends to takehim--is intrinsically good; in fine, that he is _by nature_ a "childof God" rather than a "child of wrath. " It is therefore taken forgranted that growth is in itself a good thing, a move in the rightdirection; and that to foster growth, to make its conditions asfavourable as possible, to give it the food, the guidance, and thestimulus that it needs, is the best thing that education can do forthe child. 

It is further taken for granted that the many-sided effort to growwhich is of the essence of the child's nature is the mainspring of, and expresses itself in, certain typical instincts which no one whostudies the child with any degree of care can fail to observe; andthat by duly cultivating these instincts, --_expansive_ instincts, asone may perhaps call them, since each of them tends to take the childaway from his petty self, --the teacher will make the best possibleprovision for the growth of the child's nature as a whole. 

Above all, it is taken for granted that the growth which the childmakes must come from within himself; that no living thing can growvicariously; that the rings of soul-growth, like the rings oftree-growth, must be evolved from an inner life; that the teachermust therefore content himself with giving the child's expansiveinstincts fair play and free play; and that, for the rest, he must asfar as possible efface himself, bearing in mind that not he, but thechild, is the real actor in the drama of school life. 

But though so much is left to the child in Utopia, and so muchdemanded of him, it is not feared that the effort to grow will berepugnant to him. On the contrary, it is taken for granted that ingrowing, in developing his expansive instincts, the child will befollowing the lines and obeying the laws of his own nature; that hewill be fulfilling the latent desires of his heart; that he will beseeking his own pleasure; in fine, that he will be leading a happylife. 

All this is taken for granted in Utopia, and the child's life istherefore one of unimpeded, though duly guided and stimulated, activity. Every instinct that makes for the expansion and elevation(for growth is always upward as well as outward) of the child'snature is given the freest possible play, and the whole organisationof the school is subordinated to this central end. 

In order to find out what are the instincts which make for theexpansion and elevation of the child's nature, and which educationought therefore to foster, we must do what Egeria has always done, wemust observe young children, and study their ways and works. Nowevery healthy child wants to eat and drink, and to run about. Hereare two instincts--the instinctive desire for physical nourishment, and the instinctive desire for physical exercise--through whichNature provides for the growth of the body. How does she provide forthe growth of what we have agreed to call the soul? We need notbe very careful observers of young children in order to satisfyourselves that, apart from physical nourishment and exercise, thereare six things which the child instinctively desires, namely:

 (1) to talk and listen: (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word): (3) to draw, paint, and model: (4) to dance and sing: (5) to know the why of things: (6) to construct things. 

Let us consider each of these instincts, and try to determine itsmeaning and purpose. 

(1) The child instinctively desires to enter into communion withother persons, --his parents, his brothers and sisters, his nurse, hisgoverness, his little friends. He wants to talk to them, to tell themwhat he has done, seen, felt, thought; and he wants to hear what theyhave to tell him, --not only of what they themselves have done, butalso of what other persons and other living things have done, inother times, in other countries, in other worlds. Later on, thedesire to talk and listen will develop into the desire to write andread; but the desire will still be one for communion, for intercoursewith other lives. 

We will call this the _communicative instinct_. 

(2) The child desires, not only to enter into communion with otherpersons and other living things, but also, in some sort, to identifyhis life with theirs. Watch him when he is playing with otherchildren, or even when he is alone, except for the companionship ofhis dolls and toys. He is pretty sure to be _acting_, playing atmake-believe, pretending to be something that he is not, somegrown-up person of his acquaintance, some hero of history orromance, some traveller or other adventurer, some giant, dwarf, orfairy, some animal, wild or tame. He plays the part of one or otherof these, and his playmates play other parts, and so a little dramais enacted. If he has no playmates, his dolls have to play theirparts, or his toy animals have to be endowed with life, so that theymay become fellow-actors with him on the stage that he has selected. No instinct is more inevitable, more sure to energise, than this. 

We will call it the _dramatic instinct_. 

In both these instincts the child is struggling to grow, to expandhis being, by going out of himself, through the medium of sympathyand imagination--twin aspects of the same vital tendency--into thelives of other living beings. We will therefore call these the_Sympathetic Instincts_, and place them in a class by themselves. 

(3) From his very babyhood the child delights in colour, and at avery early age he learns to love and understand pictures. Then comesthe desire to make these for himself. Give him pencil and paper, givehim chalk, charcoal, a paint-box, and other suitable materials, andhe will set to work of his own accord to depict what he sees or hasseen, either with his outward or his inward eye. Give him a lump ofclay, and he will try to mould it into the likeness of somethingthat has either attracted his attention, or presented itself to hisimagination. In all these attempts he is trying, unknown to himself, to express his perception of, and delight in, the visible beauty ofNature. This instinct will expand, in the fullness of time, into astrong and subtle feeling for visible beauty, and into a restlessdesire to give expression to that feeling. 

We will call this the _artistic instinct_, the word _artistic_ beingused, for lack of a more suitable term, in its narrow andconventional sense. 

(4) While the child is still a baby in arms, his mother will sing tohim, and dance him on her knee. This is her first attempt to initiatehim into the mystery of music; and the response that he makes to herproves that she is a wise teacher, and is appealing to a genuinelynatural faculty. It will not be long before he begins to dance andsing for himself. Watch the children in a London court or alley whena barrel-organ appears on the scene. Without having any one to director teach them, they will come together and dance in couples, oftenwith abundant grace and charm. Nature is their tutor. Her own rhythm, of which the musician must have caught an echo, is passing throughtheir ears into their hearts and into their limbs. No instinct isso spontaneous as this. A child will whistle or sing while his mindis engaged on other things. If he is happy he will dance about asnaturally, and almost as inevitably, as the leaves dance when thebreeze passes through them. 

We will call this the _musical instinct_. So elemental is it that manshares it, in some degree, with other living things. The birds areaccomplished musicians, and their movements, and those of many othercreatures, are full of rhythm and grace. 

In both these instincts the child is struggling to grow, to expandhis being, by going out of himself, in response to the attractiveforce of beauty, into that larger life which is at the heart ofNature, but which is not ours until we have made it our own. We willtherefore call these the _Æsthetic Instincts_, and place them in aclass by themselves. 

(5) From a very early age the child desires to know the why andwherefore of things, to understand how effects are produced, todiscover new facts, and pass on, if possible, to their causes. Inresponse to the pressure of this instinct, the child breaks his toysin order that he may find out how they work, and asks innumerablequestions which make him the terror and despair of his parents andthe other "Olympians. " No instinct is more insistent in the earlydays of the child's life. No instinct is more ruthlessly repressed bythose to whom the education of the child is entrusted. No instinctdies out so completely (except so far as it is kept alive by purelyutilitarian considerations) when education of the conventional typehas done its deadly work. It has been said that children go to schoolignorant but curious, and leave school ignorant and incurious. Thisgibe is the plain statement of a patent truth. 

We will call this the _inquisitive instinct_. 

(6) After analysis comes synthesis. The child pulls his toys topieces in order that he may, if possible, reconstruct them, and so bethe better able to control the working of them. The ends that he setsbefore himself are those which Comte set before the humanrace, --"savoir pour prévoir, afin de pouvoir: induire pour déduire, afin de construire. " The desire to make things, to build things up, to control ways and means, to master the resources of Nature, to puthis knowledge of her laws and facts to a practical use, is strong inhis soul. Give him a box of bricks, and he will spend hours inbuilding and rebuilding houses, churches, towers, and the like. Sethim on a sandy shore, with a spade and a pail, and he will spendhours in constructing fortified castles with deep, encircling moatsinto which the sea may be duly admitted. Or he will make harness andwhips of plaited rushes, armour of tea-paper, swords of tin-plate, boxes and other articles of cardboard, waggons, engines, and otherimplements of wood. 

We will call this the _constructive instinct_. 

In both these instincts the child is struggling to grow, to expandhis being, by going out of himself, through the correlated channelsof theory and practice, into what I may call the machinery ofNature's life, --an aspect of that life which reveals its mysteries toreason rather than to emotion, or (to use the language of Easternphilosophy) to the faculties that try to find order in the Many, rather than to those which try to hold intercourse with the One. [16]Whichever channel he may use, --and indeed they are not so much twochannels as one, for each in turn is for ever leading into and thenpassing out of the other, --his concern is always for "facts, " for theactualities of things, for "objective truth. " We will therefore callthese the _Scientific Instincts_, and place them in a class bythemselves. 

There are six instincts, then, --six formative and expansiveinstincts--which Nature has implanted in every normal child, andwhich education, so far as it aims at being loyal to Nature, shouldtake account of and try to foster. Two of these are _sympathetic_;two are _æsthetic_; two are _scientific_. In and through thesympathetic instincts the soul grows in the direction of _love_. Inand through the æsthetic instincts the soul grows in the direction of_beauty_. In and through the scientific instincts the soul grows inthe direction of _truth_. It is towards this triune goal that Natureherself is ever directing the growth of the growing child. Thesignificance of this conclusion will unfold itself as we proceed. 

These instincts manifest themselves in various ways, but chiefly inthe direction that they give to that very serious occupation of youngchildren which we call play. It is clear, then, that if theseinstincts are to be duly cultivated, the work of the school must bemodelled, as far as possible, on the lines which children, when atplay, spontaneously follow. This Egeria, with her inspired sagacity, has clearly seen; and she has taken her measures accordingly. InUtopia the school life of the child is all play, --play taken veryseriously, play systematised, organised, provided with amplematerials and ample opportunities, encouraged and stimulated inevery possible way. Each of the fundamental instincts that manifestthemselves in the child's play, and in doing so give a clearindication of Nature's aims in the child's life, and of thedirections in which she wishes him to grow, is duly ministered to inthis school, the current that wells up in and through it beingskilfully guided into a suitable channel, and every obstacle to itsfree development being carefully removed. But the guidance whichEgeria gives tends, as we shall see, to foster rather than fetter thefreedom of the child. When the current has been led into a suitablechannel, it is expected to shape its own further course, and even toimpose on itself the limits--the containing walls--which are neededif its depth and strength are to be maintained. 

Let us now consider each of the six instincts in turn, and see whatspecial steps Egeria takes to foster its growth. 

(1) _The Communicative Instinct_. 

Through this instinct the child goes out of himself into the lives ofother persons and other living things. The desire is in its essenceone for intercourse, for communion, for the interchange of thoughts, of feelings, of experiences. The normal child is, as we all know, aninveterate chatterbox; but he is also a rapt listener. If he desires, as he certainly does, to tell others about himself, he desires, in noless a degree, to hear about others, either from themselves, or fromthose who are best able to tell him about them. The balance betweenthe two desires is well maintained by Nature; and it should becarefully maintained by those who train the young, if thecommunicative instinct as a whole is to make healthy growth. 

In too many elementary schools the instinct is systematicallystarved, the scholars being strictly forbidden to talk amongthemselves, while their conversational intercourse with their teacheris limited to receiving a certain amount of dry information, andgiving this back, collectively or individually, when they areexpressly directed to do so. The child's instinctive desire toconverse, being deprived by education of its natural outlets, mustneeds force for itself the subterranean and illicit outlet ofwhispering in class, either under the teacher's nose, if he happensto be unobservant or indolent, or behind his back, if he happens tobe vigilant and strict. And as the child is forbidden to talk aboutthings which are wholesome and interesting, it is but natural that inhis surreptitious conversations he should talk about things whichare less edifying, things which are trivial and vulgar, or evenunwholesome and unclean. Children are naturally obedient andtruthful; but in their attempts to find outlets for healthyactivities which are wantonly repressed, they will go far down theinclined plane of disobedience and deceit. 

In Utopia free conversation is systematically encouraged. Noelementary school is supposed to open before 9 a. M. ; but Egeria is inthe habit of coming to school at 8. 45 or earlier, so that thechildren who wish to do so may come and talk to her freely about thethings that interest them, --what they have observed on their walks toor from school, what they have heard or read at home, what they thinkabout things in general, and so on. The school has a good library ofbooks which are worth reading, both in prose and verse. These thechildren read in school and out of school, and are thus brought intocommunication with other minds, with other times, with other lands. They are also accustomed to talk freely to one another about thebooks that they are reading. Whatever lesson may be going on, theyare encouraged to ask questions about the matter in hand, and even toexpress their own views about it. They go out into the playground ingroups and make up games and plays, discussing things freely amongthemselves. When they are preparing to act an historical scene or apassage from some dramatic author, they hold a sort of informalparliament, in which the actors are selected and various importantquestions are provisionally settled. They write letters in school toreal people. The older girls take the little ones in hand, and talkto them and draw them out. When an interesting phenomenon is noticed, _e. G. _ in a Nature ramble, the children are accustomed to discuss itin groups, and to try to think out among themselves its cause andits meaning. Gossip is of course discouraged; but it is scarcelynecessary for Egeria to proscribe it; for idle talk has no attractionfor children who are allowed to talk freely and frankly, at all timesand in all places, about things that are really worth discussing. Life is full of interest for children who are allowed, as these are, to take an active interest in it; and subjects of conversation aretherefore ever presenting themselves, in school and out of school, to the happy children of Utopia. This means that the life of eachindividual child is overflowing through many channels, an overflowwhich will carry the out-welling life into the lives of other livingbeings--human and infra-human, actual and imaginary--and even beyondthese, when it has been met and reinforced by other surging currents, into the impersonal life of Humanity and of Nature. 

(2) _The Dramatic Instinct_. 

Whatever else young children may be, they are all born actors; and ina school which bases its scheme of education on the actualities ofchild life, it is but natural that the dramatic instinct should befostered in every possible way. "Work while you work, and playwhile you play, " is one of those trite maxims which have beenunintelligently repeated till they have lost whatever value they mayonce have possessed. "Work while you play, and play while you work, "seems to be Egeria's substitute for it; and she would, I think, dowell to write those words over the porch of her school. 

In the ordinary elementary school a fair amount of acting goes onin the infant department, and an occasional attempt is made, inone of the higher classes of the upper department, to act a scenefrom Shakespeare or an episode in English history. But duringthe five years or so of school life which intervene between theinfant department and "Standard VI, " the dramatic instinct isas a rule entirely neglected; and the consequent outgrowth ofself-consciousness in the children is too often a fatal obstacle tothe success of the spasmodic attempts at dramatisation which aremade in the higher classes. 

In Utopia "acting" is a vital part of the school life of every class, and every subject that admits of dramatic treatment is systematicallydramatised. In History, for example, when the course of their studybrings them to a suitable episode, the children set to work todramatise it. With this end in view, they consult some advancedtext-book or historical novel or other book of reference, andhaving studied with care the particular chapter in which they areinterested, and having decided among themselves who are to play whatparts, they proceed to make up their own dialogues, and their owncostumes and other accessories. They then act the scene, puttingtheir own interpretation on the various parts, and receivingthe stimulus and guidance of Egeria's sympathetic and moeuticcriticism. Their class-mates and the rest of the children in the mainroom look on, with their history books open in front of them, andapplaud; and, by gradually familiarising themselves with the variousparts, qualify themselves half-unconsciously to act as under-studiesin the particular scene, and in due course to play their own parts asinterpreters of some other historical episode. I know of no treatmentof history which is so effective as this for young children. Theactual knowledge of the facts of history which a child carries awaywith him from an elementary school cannot well be large, and is, inmany cases, a negligible quantity. But the child who has once actedhistory will always be interested in it, and being interested in itwill be able, without making a formal study of it, to absorb itsspirit, its atmosphere, and the more significant of its facts. Nordo the advantages of the dramatic treatment of history end with thesubject itself. The actors in these historical scenes are, as I havesaid, expressing their own interpretation of the various parts, andtheir own perception of the meaning of each episode as a whole. Thismeans that they are training their imaginative sympathy, --asovereign faculty which of all faculties is perhaps the mostemancipative and expansive, --and training it, as I can testify, withstriking success; for the dramatic power which they display isremarkable, and can have been generated by nothing less thansympathetic insight into the feelings of the various historicalpersonages and the possibilities of the various situations. 

It is probable that History lends itself more readily to dramatictreatment than any other subject, but it is by no means the onlysubject that is dramatised in Utopia. An interest in Geography isawakened by scenes in foreign lands and episodes from books of travelbeing acted by the children. An interest in Arithmetic, by a shopbeing opened, which is well equipped with weights, measures, andcardboard money, and in which a salesman stands behind the counterand sells goods to a succession of customers. An interest inLiterature by the acting, with improvised costumes, of passages fromShakespeare's plays, or scenes from Scott's and Dickens' novels. Simple plays to illustrate Nature-study are acted by the youngerchildren; while the Folk Songs, which, as we shall see, play aprominent part in the musical life of the children, are acted aswell as sung. 

However rude and simple the histrionic efforts of the children maybe, they are doing two things for the actors. They are giving them aliving interest in the various subjects that are dramatised; and, byteaching them to identify themselves, if only for a moment, withother human beings, they are leading them into the path of tolerance, of compassion, of charity, of sympathy, --the ever-widening pathwhich makes at last for Nirvânic oneness with the One Life. [17]

(3) _The Artistic Instinct_. 

The desire to reproduce with pencil, paint, or clay the form andcolour of the outward world will, if duly cultivated, graduallytransform itself into the desire to feel, to understand, tointerpret, to express, not the form and colour only of the outwardworld, but also that less palpable but more spiritual quality whichwe call beauty. But in order that this transformation may take place, the child must always endeavour to reproduce with due fidelity themore palpable qualities of colour and form. In this endeavour hemust bring many faculties into play. He must observe closely andattentively. He must reflect on what he observes. He must reflect onwhat he himself is doing. He must compare his work with the original, and try to discover how far he has succeeded, and where he has goneastray. The more faithfully he tries to reproduce what he has seen, the clearer and surer will be his insight into the less palpableproperties of things, --into those details, those aspects, thosequalities, which do not reveal themselves to the first carelessglance, but which will gradually reveal themselves to those who willtake the trouble to discover them. When he is asked to reproducethings which are intrinsically beautiful--flowers, branches, buds, shells, butterflies, and the like--he begins to realise that if hiswork is to be successful, he must do justice to many impalpable, though not imperceptible, details which go to the making up ofbeauty. So the sense of beauty, the feeling for it, the desire tobring it into his work, grows up in his heart; and a new kind offidelity--fidelity to _feeling_ rather than to _fact_ (if I may speakfor the moment in the delusive language of dualism)--begins to weaveitself into his artistic consciousness. 

If there is any school in England in which fidelity to feeling hasevolved itself out of fidelity to fact, that school is in the villageof Utopia. Some ten or twelve years ago a decree went out fromWhitehall that Drawing was to be taught in all the elementary schoolsin England. Egeria at once took the children into her confidence, andsaid to them: "You have now got to learn to draw: you don't know howto draw, and I don't know how to draw, but we must all set to workand see what we can do. " A few years later the school was visited bythe inspector to whose zeal as a prophet, and skill as an expositorand teacher, the transformation in the teaching of drawing which isgradually taking effect in all parts of the country, has been largelydue. Here is the report[18] that he wrote after his visit--

"In this school the teaching of Drawing reaches the highesteducational level I have hitherto met with in our elementary schools, and the results are the genuine expression of the children's ownthoughts. Flat copies are not used, and the scholars evolve theirown technique, for the Head Teacher is not strong herself in thisrespect. The development of thought carries with it the developmentof skill, and this is clearly seen in the children's drawings, whichshow good form and proportion, some knowledge of light and shade, adelicate and refined perception of colour, and a wonderful power ofdealing with the difficulties of foreshortening. The central law isself-effort, --confidence and self-reliance follow. The spontaneousactivities of the children are duly recognised, and the latter decidewhat to draw, how to draw it, and the materials to be used. Onecannot remain long in the school without observing the absence ofthat timidity, that haunting fear of making a mistake, whichparalyses the minds and bodies of so many of our children. Under theinfluence of the Head Teacher the children become acute critics. Her methods coincide so exactly with those which I have long beenadvocating, that I give them in her own words--

"'I gave each child an ivy-leaf and said, "Now look well at it. " Wetalked about its peculiarities, looking at it all the time, and thenI told them to draw one, still looking back to the leaf from time totime. Then I examined their drawings. A good many were, of course, faulty. In those cases I did not say, "No, you are wrong; this is theway, " and go to the blackboard. I said, "In such and such a part isyours the same as the leaf? What is different? How can you alterit?" etc. , etc. I make _them tell me_ their faults. There was noblackboard demonstration. '

"From a careful examination of their work it is clear that thechildren have not only been taught to draw, but that they love andenjoy their drawing. Form and colour are not only seen, butunderstood and felt. The children are impelled by an irresistibledesire to reach and express the truth, and are thus carried alongan ever-moving path of educative action. "

I have already spoken of the love of visible beauty which is acharacteristic feature of the life of this school. It is in thedrawing lesson that this love of beauty has in the main evolveditself. Other influences have no doubt been at work. Nature-study andliterature, for example, have, as taught in this school, done much tofoster the children's latent love of beauty; but had drawing neverbeen taught, the influence of those subjects would have been muchless effective than it has been. It is in the struggle to expresswhat he perceives that the Utopian child has gradually strengthenedand deepened his perceptive powers, till his sight has transformeditself into insight, and form and colour have come to be interpretedby him through the medium of the beauty which is behind them, --hisfeeling of beauty having, little by little, been awakened and evolvedby his unceasing efforts to interpret the _vraie vérité_ of form andcolour, which, as he now begins to learn, are beauty's outward self. 

(4) _The Musical Instinct_. 

In the development of the artistic sense the path of imitation isfollowed until it leads at last to heights which it cannot scale. Thedevelopment of the musical sense takes from the first a widelydifferent path. Nature has a beautiful music of her own, but thechild seldom attempts to imitate this. Music belongs to the soul evenmore than to the outward world. So at least one feels disposed tothink. But perhaps it is more correct to say that in the presenceof music the provisional distinction between inward and outward, between the soul and the surrounding world, becomes wholly effaced. Expression is always the counterpart of perception; and we may restassured that the deep, subtle, and elusive feelings to which musicgives utterance have reality for their counterpart. The musician doesnot often reproduce in his compositions the audible sounds of theoutward world, --the voices of animals, the songs of birds, the rustleof leaves, the murmur of the sea, the sighing of the breeze, thethunder of the storm. What he does reproduce is the music that awakesin his soul when the emotions which these sounds kindle begin tostruggle for expression, --the music that is behind all the audiblesounds, and perhaps also behind all the inaudible vibrations ofNature, --the music that is in his heart because it is also at theheart of Nature, --_the rhythm of the Universe_, as one may perhapscall it for lack of a fitter phrase. It is the sense of this rhythmwhich inspires the great Composer when he builds up his masterpieces. It is the sense of this rhythm which inspires the child when, in thejoy of his heart, he breaks spontaneously into dance and song. Tobring the rhythm of the Universe into the daily life of the child, to give free play to his instinctive sense of its all-pervadingpresence, is one of the highest functions of the teacher. And themore carefully the sense of rhythm is cultivated, the more does ittend to spiritualise itself, and the more profound and more vital isthe life which it struggles to interpret and evolve. There is noinstinct which is so deeply seated as the musical. It is possible fora child, it is possible for a whole class of children, to sing out ofthe depths of the soul; and when this happens we may be sure that afountain of spiritual joy has been unsealed, and that a great andsacred mystery has been unveiled. There is a school in one of thepoorest slums of a large town, in which, some two or three years ago, the children were taught to sing, and the teachers to teach singing, by an inspired "master" who believes that to lift the sluices ofspiritual feeling is to quicken into ever-increasing activity itshidden springs; and neither the teachers nor the children have yetforgotten their lesson. The children are poor, pale, thin, unkempt, ill-clad, unlovely; but I am told that when they sing their faces aretransfigured, and they all become beautiful. 

Egeria is an accomplished musician, and though Utopia belongs to oneof the unmusical counties of England, she has found it easy to awakenthe musical instinct in the hearts of its children. A few years agoshe introduced the old English Folk Songs and Morris Dances into theschool. The children took to them at once as ducklings take to thewater; and within a year they were able to give an admirablysuccessful performance of some two dozen songs and dances in thevillage hall. Some of these had been rehearsed only once; but thechildren, thanks to their having been systematically trained toeducate themselves, are so versatile and resourceful that every itemon their programme was a complete success. The Folk Songs and MorrisDances are still the delight of the children. They are ever adding totheir repertory of songs; and when they go into the playground forrecreation, they at once form into small groups for Morris Dancing, the older children taking the little ones in hand, and initiatingthem into the pleasures of rhythmical movement. 

There is another way in which Egeria brings music into the lives ofthe children. In her own words, she "sets many of their lessons tomusic. " For example, when they are doing needlework or drawing or anyother quiet lesson, she plays high-class music to them, which forms abackground to their efforts and their thoughts, and which graduallyweaves itself, on the one hand into the outward and visible work thatthey are doing, and on the other hand into the mysterious tissue oftheir inward life. 

(5) _The Inquisitive Instinct_. 

As the inquisitive instinct makes the child an intolerable nuisanceto his ignorant and indolent elders, it is but natural that in theunenlightened school, as in the unenlightened home, it should beforcibly exterminated. It is through the agency of the formula "Don'tspeak till you are spoken to, " that its destruction is usuallyeffected. But under Egeria's ægis conversation in school hours is, as we have seen, freely encouraged, and the child's right to askquestions fully recognised; and one may therefore conjecture thatthis proscribed and outlawed instinct will find a safe asylum in herschool. Whatever lesson may be in progress, the Utopian children areallowed, and even expected, to seek for illumination whenever theyfind themselves in the dark, to pause inquiringly at every obstacleto their understanding what they have seen or heard or read. 

The encouragement which is given in Utopia to the child who seeks togratify his desire for knowledge, is positive as well as negative. When the obstacles which education usually places in his path havebeen removed, it is found that the whole atmosphere of the school isfavourable to the growth of his inquisitive instinct. At every turnhe is called upon to plan and contrive, and is thus made to realisehis own limitations, and to try to escape from them. Whatever he mayhave in hand, --be it the preparation for acting a new scene, or theinterpretation of a new Folk Song or Morris Dance, or the inventionof a new school game, or the thinking out some new way of treating a"subject, "--he is sure to find that knowledge is needed if he isto achieve success; and his desire for knowledge is thereforecontinually stimulated by the demands that his own initiative andactivity are ever making upon him. 

But it is in the "Nature lesson" that the inquisitive instinct findsin Utopia its freest scope and its fullest opportunity. To one whohad persuaded himself of the innate stupidity of the average Englishchild, a Nature lesson in Utopia would come as a revelation. He wouldlearn for the first time that, far from being innately stupid, theaverage English child has it in him to reach a very high level ofkeenness, acuteness, and intellectual activity. Whenever a lesson isgiven on a natural object, _e. G. _ a flower or a leaf, every child hasa specimen and a lens. The object is then closely and carefullyobserved, in the hope of discovering features in it which mightescape the unobservant. Whenever such features are discovered thechildren try to account for them. In these attempts they display muchingenuity and intelligence, and are led on by Egeria in the directionof the true explanation of each phenomenon, and the relation of thisto what they know of the object as a whole, and of its meaning andfunction. The eagerness of the children to volunteer explanations ofthe facts that they observe is only equalled by the intelligence withwhich they grasp the general bearing of the problems that confrontthem, and the resourcefulness and quickness of wit with which theymake repeated attempts to solve them. 

And these are not the only qualities to which the Nature lesson givesfree play. It is interesting to note that as on the one hand theinquisitive instinct is obviously near of kin to the communicative, so on the other hand it is ever tending to link itself to theartistic. The closeness of observation which is the basis of successin Nature-study, and by means of which the inquisitive instinct isfed and strengthened, is also the basis of success in drawing; andin each case it leads beyond itself into a region in which it has tobe supplemented by, and even transfigured into, imagination, thefaculty by means of which we observe what is at once impalpable andreal. [19] And in that region the distinction between truth and beautyis ever tending to efface itself. The master sculptor is always anaccomplished anatomist; and the genuine naturalist is a lover andadmirer, as well as a student, of Nature. It has been well said that"to see things in their beauty is to see them in their truth"; and itis perhaps equally, though more remotely, true that to see things intheir truth is to see them in their beauty. That being so, we neednot wonder that among the Utopian children the love of what isbeautiful in Nature has grown continuously with the growth of theirinterest in Nature-study, and that the inquisitive instinct is everReinforcing and being reinforced by the artistic. 

(6) _The Constructive Instinct_. 

Active, intelligent, resourceful, self-helpful, the Utopian childtakes to handwork of various kinds as readily and almost asspontaneously as the birds in spring-time take to the work ofnest-building. It must indeed be admitted that the systematicinstruction in Gardening, Cookery, and Woodwork which warrants thepayment of special grants for these "subjects" is not given. Butinformal gardening, informal cookery, and informal woodwork arevital features of the school life. Nor are the children's essays inhandwork limited to these subjects. Whatever implement, instrument, or other contrivance may be needed in order to illustrate orotherwise help forward the general work of the school will be made bythe children, so far as their technical ability and the resources ofthe school permit. For example, they will make fences, seats, frames, and sheds for their gardens, and "properties" and dresses for theirdramatic performances. They will illustrate their games and lessonsby means of simple modelling and paper-cutting. The older girls willdress dolls for the little ones to their own fancy, using their owndiscretion as regards material, style of dress, and method ofdress-making. And so on. 

But ready as the Utopian children are to use their hands, and cleveras they are at using them, it is not through manual activity onlythat the development of their constructive instinct is carried on. One of the characteristic features of the school is the largenessof the scale on which the constructive powers of the children areencouraged to energise, and the frequency and variety of the demandsthat are made upon them. The Utopian child is expected to educatehimself, not merely in the sense of doing by and for himself whatevertask may be set him, but also in the sense of devising new tasks forhimself, in thinking out new ways of treating the different subjectsthat appear on the school time-table, in taking thought for the wholescheme of his education. As the years go by, Egeria makes more andgreater demands on the initiative and the intelligence of thechildren, her aim being apparently to transform the school by slowdegrees into a self-governing community which, under her presidency, shall order its own life and work out its own salvation. This means, as I have lately pointed out, that at every turn the Utopian child isbeing called upon to plan and contrive; and this, again, means thathis constructive instinct, with his inquisitive instinct as its otherself, is being continually exercised on the widest possible fieldand under the most stimulating of all influences. The result ofthis is that reciprocal action is ever going on in his mind betweenthe faculties that acquire knowledge and the faculties that applyit, --action which makes for the rapid and healthy growth of both setsof faculties, and which is therefore ever tending to strengthen thechild's capacity for thinking and to raise the plane of its activity. 

What is the culture of the child's expansive instincts likely to dofor him?

I will weave into my answer to this question my knowledge of what hasbeen done and is being done in Utopia. 

It is through the medium of his own exertions that the evolution ofthe child's instincts is carried on by Egeria. It may be possible tolay veneers of information on the surface of a child's mind, butit is not possible to lay on veneers of growth; and growth, notinformation, is the end at which Egeria has always aimed. If a childis to grow, he must exercise his own limbs, his own organs, his ownfaculties. No one else can do this for him; and unless he does ithimself, it will never be done. The school life in Utopia istherefore one of constant activity. The habit of doing things, ofdoing things for himself, of doing things by himself, is graduallybuilt up in each child. There is no forced inertness in Utopia, no slackness, no boredom, no yawning. And the activity which ischaracteristic of the school is always the child's own activity. Thechild himself is behind everything that he does. The child himselfis expressing himself in his every action. Mechanical activity, thedoing of things, not merely at the bidding of another, but also underhis minutely detailed direction, is as foreign to the genius ofthe school as is the passivity of the helpless victims of theunenlightened teacher's "chalk and talk. "

The first consequence, then, of the training of the expansiveinstincts which is given in Utopia is the building up in each scholarof what I may call the habit of rational activity. In many schoolsthe energies of the child are systematically dammed back, till atlast the springs of his activity, finding that no demand is made uponthem, cease to flow. In Utopia the sluices, though always regulated, are permanently lifted, and the energies of the child are evermoving, with a strong and steady current, in whatever channel theymay have chanced to enter. So strong, indeed, and so steady is thecurrent that it maintains its movement long after the child has leftschool. The employers of labour in the neighbourhood of Utopia willtell you that there are no slackers or loafers in the yearly outputof the school. Egeria recently received a visit from one of herex-pupils, a girl of fourteen who is at home keeping house for herfather, and who said to her in the course of their conversation: "Ido just love washing days; I get up before six and start. Then, whenall the washing is done, I scrub everything bright in the copperwhile I have the hot soapsuds. " Accustomed as he (or she) is from his(or her) earliest days to sincere and fearless self-expression, theUtopian child is entirely incapable of indulging in cant; and thegenuineness of the sentiment which dictated those words is thereforeabove suspicion. To work vigorously, to do well whatever he (or she)has to do, is a real pleasure to the Utopian child. Indeed his wholebeing is a living response to the familiar precept: "Whatsoever thyhand findeth to do, do it with thy might. "

And what he does with his might is always well worth doing. Hisconstant effort to express himself has, as its necessary counterpart, a constant effort to find out what is worth expressing, to get to thetruth of things, to see things as they are. The consequent growthof his perceptive powers may be looked at from two points of view. On the one hand his growing capacity for getting on terms withthings--for feeling his way among them, for "getting, the hang" ofthem, for making himself at home with them, for learning their insand outs, for understanding their ways and works--will give him thepower of putting forth an appropriate _sense_ in response to thedemands of each new environment, and, through the medium of thissense, of converting information into knowledge. For this reason new"subjects" have no terror for Egeria and her pupils. Though she hasnever thought in subjects, she is ready to extend her curriculum inany direction in which she thinks that her children are likely tofind interest or profit. The versatility, the mental agility, of thechildren is as remarkable as their activity. The current of theirenergy is ready to adapt itself to every modifying influence, toevery change of geological formation, that it may encounter in itscourse, and to shape its channel or channels accordingly. 

On the other hand, as healthy vigorous growth is always upward (anddownward) as well as outward, the lateral extension of the child'sperceptive powers must needs be balanced in Utopia by the gradualelevation of his standpoint, with a corresponding widening of hisoutlook, and the proportionate deepening of his insight. When theschool life of the child is one of continuous self-expression, opportunities for "putting his soul" into what he says and does willoften present themselves to him; and if only a few of these are madeuse of, his outlook on life will widen, and his imaginative sympathywith life will deepen, to an extent which to one who had nevervisited Utopia might well seem incredible. I have spoken of theUtopian child's love of the beautiful. This is one aspect of thespiritual growth that he is always making. Other aspects of it arehis strong sympathy with life in all its forms, and a certain largeand free way of looking at things, which, as far as my experience ofschool children goes, is all his own. 

There is yet another aspect of his spiritual growth which is perhapsthe most vital and the most typical of all. When we say that thechild is growing both laterally and vertically (like a shapely tree), we mean that he is growing as a whole, as a living soul. Now thegrowth of the soul as such must needs take the form of outgrowth, ofescape from "self. " Growth is, in its essence, an emancipativeprocess; and though it sometimes intensifies selfishness and widensthe sphere of its activity, that is invariably due to its beingone-sided and therefore inharmonious and unhealthy. When the childor the man is growing as a living whole, with a happy, harmonious, many-sided growth, his growth is of necessity outgrowth, and he mustneeds be escaping from the thraldom of his lower and lesser self. This conclusion is no mere inference from accepted or postulatedpremises. What I have seen in Utopia has forced it upon me. Theunselfishness, the natural, easy, spontaneous self-forgetfulness, ofthe Utopian child, is the central feature of his moral life, --somarked and withal so unique a feature that its presence proves todemonstration, first, that growth of the right sort is necessarilyemancipative, and, next, that the growth made in Utopia is growthof the right sort. I have already commented on the singular charmof manner which distinguishes the children of Utopia. Theirself-forgetfulness, their entire lack of self-consciousness, isone source of this charm. The tactfulness which their life ofself-expression, and therefore of trained perception, tends toengender, is another. But the moral aspect of Utopianism is one ofsuch surpassing interest, and also of such profound significancefrom the point of view of my fundamental "truism, " that I must limitmyself for the moment to this passing reference to it, and reserveit for fuller treatment in the remaining chapters. 

I could easily make a long list of Utopian virtues and graces, but Imust content myself with touching on one more typical product ofEgeria's philosophy of education, --the joy which the children wear intheir faces and bear in their hearts. The sense of well-being whichmust needs accompany healthy and harmonious growth is realised by himwho experiences it as joy. The Utopian children are by many degreesthe happiest that I have met with in an elementary school, and Imust therefore conclude that all is well with them, that theirwell-being--the true end of all education--has been, and is being, achieved. If you look at any of them with more than a mere passingglance, you will be sure to win from him the quick response of asunny smile, --a smile which is half gladness, half goodwill. And thejoy of their hearts goes with them when their schooldays are over andthey begin to work for their bread. Last year one of the boys, onleaving school, found employment in a large field on the lower slopesof the hills, where he had to collect flints and pile them in heaps, his wage for this dull and tiresome work being no more than fivepencea day. But he found the work neither dull nor tiresome; for as hemarched up and down the field, collecting and piling the flints withcheery goodwill, he sang his Folk Songs with all the spontaneoushappiness of a soaring lark. 

Activity, versatility, imaginative sympathy, a wide and free outlook, self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joy of heart, --these arequalities which might be expected to unfold themselves under theinfluence of the Utopian training, and which do, in point of fact, flourish vigorously in the soil and atmosphere of Utopia. They arethe outcome of a type of education which differs radically from thatwhich has hitherto been accepted as orthodox, --differing from it withthe unfathomable difference between vital and mechanical obedience, between life and machinery. 

FOOTNOTES:

[16] The child is struggling to do this, and more than this. The search for order resolves itself into the search for cause; andthe search for cause will resolve itself, in the last resort, intothe greatest of all adventures, --the search for that pure essence ofthings on which all the deeper desires of the soul converge, whichimagination dreams of as absolute beauty, and reason as a beacon-lampof all-illuminating light, flashing forth alternately as absolutereality and absolute truth. 

[17] I shall perhaps be told that my extravagant idealism isout of place in a book on elementary education. To this possiblereproach I can but answer, in Mrs. Browning's words, that--

 It takes the ideal to blow a hair's breadth off The dust of the actual. 

My experience of Utopia has convinced me that in taking thought forthe education of the young it is impossible to be too idealistic, andthat the more "commonsensical" and "utilitarian" one's philosophy ofeducation, the shallower and falser it will prove to be. 

[18] An informal report to me, not a formal report to theBoard of Education. 

[19] Real, in the sense that the beauty of form and colouris more real than either form or colour, and that a law of Nature ismore real than an isolated fact. 

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION THROUGH SELF-REALISATION

Activity, versatility, imaginative sympathy, a large and freeoutlook, self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joy of heart, --arethere many schools in England in which the soil and atmosphere arefavourable to the vigorous growth of all these qualities? I doubt it. In the secondary schools, of all grades and types, the educationgiven is so one-sided, thanks to the inexorable pressure of thescholarship system, that the harmonious development of the child'snature is not to be looked for. In the elementary schools, from whichthe chilling shadow cast by thirty years of "payment by results" ispassing slowly--very slowly--away, the instinct of the teacher is todistrust the child and do everything, or nearly everything, for him, the result being that the whole _régime_ is still unfavourable to thespontaneous outgrowth of the child's higher qualities. There are ofcourse schools, both secondary and elementary, in which one or moreof the Utopian qualities flourish with considerable vigour. There areelementary schools, for example, in which the children, being allowedby enterprising teachers to walk in new paths without leadingstrings, have become unexpectedly active and versatile. And there areothers--mostly in the slum regions of great towns--in which thedevotion, the sympathetic kindness, and the gracious bearing of theteachers have won from the children the response of unselfishaffection, attractive manners, and happy faces. [20] Yet even in theseexceptional cases it may be doubted if the development of theparticular quality or qualities for which the school is distinguishedreaches the high-water mark which is reached in each and all of theseven qualities in Utopia. As for the elementary schools which remainfaithful, as so many still do, to the traditions of the oldrégime, --if in these any of the seven qualities manage to resist theadverse influences to which they are all exposed, they have at bestbut a starved and stunted life. 

I have spoken much and with unsparing frankness of the shortcomingsof our elementary schools. The time has come for me to say withemphasis that however grave and however numerous may be the defectsof elementary education in England, they are defects which it shareswith all other branches of education, and which England shares withall other Western lands. The plain truth is that education as such isa failure in the West, a failure in the sense that the very qualitieswhich it ought to foster--the cardinal virtues, mental, moral, andspiritual, which are present in embryo in every child, waiting to berealised--are not merely neglected by it, in its insane ardour for"results, " but are also exposed, in most of its schools, to stronglyadverse influences. And the reason why education as such is a failurein the West is that from its earliest days it has been a housedivided against itself, those who were and are responsible forit having been under the influence of two mutually destructiveassumptions, which they have vainly tried to reconcile with oneanother. 

The first of these assumptions is my initial "truism, "--that thefunction of education is to foster growth. This is admitted, implicitly if not directly, by all who think and speak abouteducation, and even, in their unguarded moments, by most of thosewho teach. It is generally admitted, for example, that such mentalqualities as attention, memory, judgment, intelligence, reason, such moral qualities as loyalty, courage, truthfulness, kindness, unselfishness, such semi-moral qualities as cleanliness, orderliness, carefulness, alertness, industry, punctuality, are capable of beingdeveloped by education. It is further admitted that such specialqualities as literary or artistic taste, the mathematical or thehistorical sense, an aptitude for business or finance, are readyto evolve themselves, in response to the fostering influence ofpractical experience directed by skilful teaching. It is admitted, in other words, that there is much in human nature, apart from whatis purely or mainly physical, which is both capable and worthy ofcultivation, and which education ought therefore to try to cultivate. 

So far, so good. These admissions, with the fundamental admissionwhich underlies them all, might form the basis of a sound philosophyof education, if they were not liable to be stultified and evennullified by the counter assumption that human nature is innatelyevil and corrupt. For from the latter assumption has followed, bothlogically and naturally, a theory of education which is not merelyunfavourable but fatal to growth. If human nature is innately evil, if it has no inborn capacity for goodness or truth, what is there init that is worth training? So far as the "great matters" of life areconcerned, the child must be educated by being told in minute detailwhat to do, and by being alternately bribed and bullied into doingit. As he can neither think, nor believe, nor desire, nor do whatis right, he must be told what to think, what to believe, what todesire, what to do; and as it is assumed that the tasks set him byhis teacher will not be intrinsically attractive, he must be inducedto perform them by the threat of external punishments and the promiseof external rewards. In other words, in the spheres of religion andmorals, so far as these can be walled off from the rest of humanlife, he must be educated, not by being helped to grow, but by beingcompelled to obey; and as the spheres of religion and morals cannotpossibly be walled off from the rest of human life, the idea ofeducating the child through the medium of passive and mechanicalobedience will gradually extend its influence over all the otherdepartments and aspects of his home and school life, his innatesinfulness finding its equivalent, in secular matters, in his innatehelplessness and stupidity, while in the place of the creeds, codes, and catechisms by which his spiritual welfare is provided for, hewill be fed during the hours of secular instruction on rations ofinformation, formulated rules, and minute directions of variouskinds. Under this _régime_ of wire-pulling on the part of the teacherand puppet-like dancing on the part of the child, the growth ofthe child's faculties, --of the whole range of his faculties, forthey will all come under the blighting influence of the currentmisconception of the bent of his nature and the consequentunder-estimate of his powers, --far from being fostered, will besystematically thwarted and starved. This is the fate which might beexpected to befall the child if the doctrine of his innate sinfulnesswere allowed to dominate his education; and this is the fate whichhas befallen and is befalling him in all grades of society and in allthe countries of the West. 

It is the doctrine of original sin, of the congenital depravity ofman's nature, which blocks the way to the reform of education, --blocksthe way to it by compelling education to become the destroying angelinstead of the foster-nurse of the child's expanding life. Incriticising the defects of our educational system, we have too longmistaken symptoms for causes, and believed that we were removing thelatter when we were only palliating or at best excising the former. To pinch off a withered bud, to lop off a withered limb, of thediseased tree of education, to train in this or that direction abranch which is as yet unaffected, is but lost labour so long asthe tree is being slowly poisoned at its roots by a fundamentalmisconception of the character and capacity of the child. It is timethat we should reconsider our whole attitude towards human nature. The widespread belief that sundry faculties, physical, mental, andmoral, admit of being cultivated and ought to be cultivated in theschoolroom--a belief which is ever affirming itself against theeducational systems and practices that are ever giving it thelie--may surely be construed into an admission that my primary truismis at least a truth. If this is so, if the business of the teacheris, as I contend, to help the child to grow, healthily, vigorously, and symmetrically, on all the planes of his being, the inference isirresistible that education will achieve nothing but failure untilits foundations have been entirely relaid. For faith in the inherentsoundness, in the natural goodness, of the seed or sapling, orwhatever else he may undertake to rear, is the first condition ofsuccess on the part of the grower. And to ask education to bring tosane and healthy maturity the plant which we call human nature, andin the same breath to tell it that human nature is intrinsicallycorrupt and evil, is to set it an obviously impracticable task. Onemight as well supply a farmer with the seeds of wild grasses andpoisonous weeds, and ask him to grow a crop of wheat. Growth can anddoes transform potential into actual good, but no process of growthcan transform what is innately evil into what is finally good. Apoisonous seed will ripen of inner necessity into a poisonous plant;and the more carefully it is fed and tended, the larger and strongerwill the poisonous plant become. 

The time has come, then, for us to throw to the winds thetime-honoured, but otherwise dishonoured and discredited, belief thatthe child is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity, and thattherefore his nature, if allowed to obey its own laws and follow itsown tendencies, will ripen into death, instead of into a largerand richer life. I shall perhaps be told that if this belief isabandoned, other religious beliefs will go with it. Let them go. Theyhave kept bad company, and if they cannot dissociate themselves fromit, they had better share its fate. What is real and vital in ourreligious beliefs will gain incalculably by being disengaged fromwhat may once have had a life and a meaning of its own but is nownothing better than a morbid growth. To tell a man that, apart from amiracle, he is predestined to perdition, is the surest way to sendhim there; and it is probable that the doctrine of his own innatedepravity is the deadliest instrument for achieving his ruin, thatMan, in his groping endeavours to explain to himself the dominantfacts of his existence, has ever devised. 

Nor is the practical failure of the doctrine--its failure to achieveany lasting result but the strangulation of Man's expanding life--theonly proof that it is inherently unsound. There is positive proofthat the counter doctrine, the doctrine of Man's potential goodness, is inherently true. We have seen that the great arterial instinctswhich manifest themselves in the undirected play of young children, are making for three supreme ends, --the sympathetic instincts for thegoal of _Love_, the artistic instincts for the goal of _Beauty_, thescientific instincts for the goal of _Truth_. We have seen, in otherwords, that the push of Nature's forces in the inner life of theyoung child is ever tending to take him out of himself in thedirection of a triune goal which I may surely be allowed to call_Divine_. If we follow towards "infinity" the lines of love, ofbeauty, and of truth, we shall begin at last to dream of an idealpoint--the meeting-point of all and the vanishing-point of each--forwhich no name will suffice less pregnant with meaning or lesssuggestive of reality than that of God. It is towards God, then, nottowards the Devil, that the ripening, expansive forces of Naturewhich are at work in the child, are directing the process of hisgrowth. We are taught that Man is by nature a "child of wrath. " Themore closely we study his ways and works when, as a young child, heis left (more or less) to his own devices, the stronger does ourconviction become that he is by nature a "child of God. " Those whoare in a position to speak tell us that the normal child is bornphysically healthy. If the men of science would study the other sidesof his being as carefully as they have studied his physique, theywould, I feel sure, be able to tell us that he is also born mentally, morally, and spiritually healthy, and that on these sides, as well ason the physical side, his growth might be and ought to be a naturalmovement towards perfection. For some of my readers such arguments asthese are perhaps too much in the air to be convincing. Well, then, let us appeal to experience. Let us see what the systematiccultivation of his natural faculties has done for the child inUtopia. I have already pointed out that the unselfishness of thechildren--the complete absence of self-seeking and self-assertion--isone of the most noticeable features of the life of their school. Nowthere is no place for moral teaching on the time-table of theschool: and I can say without hesitation that the direct inculcationof morality is wholly foreign to Egeria's conception of education. How, then, has the emancipation of the child from the first enemy ofMan's well-being--from all those narrowing, hardening, anddemoralising influences which we speak of collectively as egoistic orselfish--been effected in Utopia? By no other means than that ofallowing the child's nature to unfold itself, on many sides of itsbeing and under thoroughly favourable conditions. The twofold desirewhich we all experience, --to accept and rest in the ordinaryundeveloped self, and at the same time to exalt and magnify it, --isthe surest and most fruitful source of moral evil. Indeed, it may bedoubted if there is any source of moral evil, apart from those whichare purely sensual, which has not at least an underground connectionwith this. If we are to "cap" this deadly fountain, and so prevent itfrom desolating human life, we must realise, once and for all, thatthe two desires which master us cannot be simultaneously gratified;that we cannot both rest in the ordinary self and magnify it; that wecan magnify it only by _making it great_, by helping it to grow. Whenwe have realised this, we shall be ready to receive the furtherlesson that in proportion as the self magnifies itself by the naturalprocess of growth, so does its desire to magnify itself gradually dieaway, --die away with the dawning consciousness that in and throughthe process of its growth it is outgrowing itself, forgetting itself, escaping from itself, that the thing which so ardently desired to bemagnified is in fact ceasing to be. This vital truth, --which myvisits to Utopia have borne in upon me, --that healthy and harmoniousgrowth is in its very essence _out_growth or escape from self, hasdepths of meaning which are waiting to be fathomed. For one thing, itmeans, if it has any meaning, that what is central in human natureis, not its inborn wickedness but its infinite capacity for good, notits rebellious instincts and backsliding tendencies but itsmany-sided effort to achieve perfection. 

We must now make our choice between two alternatives. We must decide, once and for all, whether the function of education is to fostergrowth or to exact mechanical obedience. If we choose the latteralternative, we shall enter a path which leads in the direction ofspiritual death. If we choose the former, we must cease to haltbetween two opinions, and must henceforth base our system ofeducation, boldly and confidently, on the conviction that growth isin its essence a movement towards perfection, and therefore thatself-realisation is the first and last duty of Man. 

It is by answering possible objections to Utopianism that I shallbest be able to unfold Egeria's philosophy of education. I shallperhaps be told that in my advocacy of that philosophy _I ampreaching dangerous doctrines; that the only alternative forobedience is the lawlessness of unbridled licence; and that anarchy, social, moral, and spiritual, is the ultimate goal of the path whichI am urging the teacher to enter. _ Let me point out, in answer tothis protest, that it is mechanical obedience which I condemn, notobedience as such. If I condemn mechanical obedience, I do sobecause it is unworthy of the name of obedience, because the higherfaculties of Man's being, the faculties which are distinctivelyhuman--reason, imagination, aspiration, spiritual intuition, and thelike--take no part in it, because it is the obedience of anautomaton, not of a living soul. What I wish to oppose to it is_vital obedience_, obedience to the master laws of Man's being, obedience to the laws which assert themselves as central and supreme, obedience more particularly to those larger and obscurer laws whichobedience itself helps us to discover, obedience in fine to thathierarchy of laws--(the superior law always claiming the fullermeasure and the higher kind of obedience)--which, if we are to usethe Divine Name, we must needs identify with the will of God. Obedience, in this sense of the word, is a sustained and soul-deepeffort in which all the higher faculties of Man's being take part, an effort which is in some sort a voyage of discovery, the doing ofthe more obvious duty being always rewarded by the deepening of thedoer's insight and the widening of his outlook, and by the consequentunveiling to him of the way in which he is to walk and the goal atwhich he is to aim. That the path of soul-growth is the path of vitalobedience can scarcely be doubted. The effort to grow is alwayssuccessful just so far as it implies knowledge of the laws of thenature that is unfolding itself, and readiness to obey those laws;and so far as it is successful, it carries with it the outgrowth ofthe very faculties by which knowledge--the higher knowledge whichmakes further growth possible--is to be gained. Here, aselsewhere, there is an unceasing interaction between perception andexpression, between knowledge of law and obedience to law, what isgiven as obedience being received back as enlightenment, and what isreceived as enlightenment being given back as larger, fuller, andmore significant obedience. 

And, be it carefully observed, it is obedience to the laws of humannature, not obedience to the idiosyncrasies of the individual nature, which the process of soul-growth at once implies and makes possible. Growth is, in its essence, a movement towards that perfect type whichis the real self of each individual in turn, and the approach towhich involves the gradual surrender of individuality, and thegradual escape from the ordinary self. A man is to cling to andaffirm his individuality, not in order that he may rest in it andmake much of it, but in order that he may outgrow it and pass farbeyond it in that one way--the best way for him--which it, and italone, is able to mark out for him. In other words, he is to asserthis individual self in order that he may universalise himself in hisown way, and not in obedience to the ruling of custom and authority, in order that he may escape from himself through the real outlet ofsincere self-expression, and not through the sham outlet of hypocrisyand cant. 

What I may call the Utopian scheme of education, far from making forantinomianism and anarchy, is the sworn enemy of individualism andtherefore, _a fortiori_, of everything that savours of licence. It isthe conventional type of education, with its demands for mechanicalobedience to external authority, which leads through despotism tosocial and political chaos. The whole _régime_ of mechanicalobedience is favourable, in the long run, to the development ofanarchy. Let us take the case of a church or an autocracy whichdemands implicit obedience from its subjects, and is prepared toexact such obedience by the application of physical force or itsmoral equivalent. What will happen to it when its subjects begin toask it for its credentials? The fact that it has always demanded fromthem literal rather than spiritual obedience, and that, in itsapplication of motive force, it has appealed to their baser desiresand baser fears, makes it impossible for it to justify itself totheir higher faculties, rational or emotional, and makes it necessaryfor it to meet their incipient criticism with renewed threats ofpunishment and renewed promises of reward. But the very fact that itis being asked for its credentials means that the force on which ithas hitherto relied is weakening, that its power to punish andreward, which has always been resolvable into the power to makepeople believe that it can punish and reward, is being called inquestion and is therefore crumbling away. And behind that power thereis nothing but chaos. For the _régime_ of mechanical obedience, byarresting the spontaneous growth of Man's higher nature, and bymaking its chief appeal to his baser desires and baser fears, becomesof necessity the foster-mother of egoism; and when egoism, whichmakes each man a law to himself and the potential enemy of his kind, is unrestrained by authority, the door is thrown wide open toanarchy, and through anarchy to chaos. This is what is happening inthe West, in our self-conscious and critical age. In every field ofhuman action, in religion, in politics, in social life, in art, inletters, authority is being asked for its credentials; and as thisdemand, besides being a disintegrating influence, is a sign that theforce on which authority relies is weakening, it is not to bewondered at that there is a steady drift in many Western countries inthe direction of anarchy, --religious, political, social, artistic, literary, --or that this _régime_ of incipient anarchy is taking theform of an ignoble scramble for wealth, for power, for position, forfame, for notoriety, for anything in fine which may serve to exalt aman above his fellows, and so minister to the aggrandizement of hislower self. 

In this drift towards anarchy the school is playing its part. I donot wish to suggest that the boys and girls of this or any otherWestern country are beginning to ask their teachers for theircredentials, or are likely to rise in rebellion against them. Thepreparation for anarchy that is going on in the school is not onlyquite compatible with what is known as "strict discipline, " but isalso, in part at least, the effect of it. What is happening is thatin an acutely critical age the _régime_ of mechanical obedience toexternal authority which has been in force in the West for nearly2000 years, and which is now taking its victims straight towardsanarchy, is being carefully rehearsed in our schools of all types andgrades. During the years when human nature is most pliable (owing toits richness in sap), most easily trained, and most amenable toinfluence, good or evil, the child's spontaneous effort to outgrowhimself and so escape from his lower self, --an end which is not to bereached except by the path of free self-expression, --is persistentlythwarted till at last it dies away; blind and literal obedience toexternal authority, for which the consent of his higher facultiesis not asked, and in the giving of which they are not allowed totake part, is persistently exacted from him till at last hishigher faculties cease to energise, and his lower nature begins tomonopolise the rising sap of his life; in order to enforce the blindobedience that is asked for, an appeal is made, by an elaboratesystem of external rewards and external punishments, to his selfishdesires and ignoble fears; while the examination system, withits inevitable accompaniments of prizes and class-lists, makes aspecial appeal to his competitive instincts, --instincts which areanti-social, and may even, in extreme cases, become anti-human intheir tendency. And when authority has thus been presented to him, ina form which he has never been expected to welcome, and when, by thesame process, the growth of his higher self has been arrested, andhis anarchical instincts--his selfishness and self-assertion--havebeen systematically cultivated, the critical spirit and temper willbe deliberately aroused in him, especially if he happens to attendone of those secondary schools which are regarded as highly efficientbecause their lists of University distinctions and other "successes"are inordinately long; for the education given to him in such aschool by his scholarship-hunting teachers is of necessity so bookishand so one-sided that his intellectual, dialectically criticalfaculties are apt to become hypertrophied, while other facultieswhich might have kept these in check are neglected and starved. Theproduct of such a system of education, --benumbed or paralysed on manysides of his being by the repressive _régime_ to which he has so longbeen subjected, but vigorously alive on the sides of egoism andintellectual criticism, --will be an anarchist _in posse_ (unless, indeed, his vitality has been depressed by his school-life below thepoint at which reaction becomes possible);--an anarchist _in posse_, even though, in his terror of anarchism in others, he should become apillar of the Established Church of his country, a J. P. Of his townor county, and an active member of the nearest ConservativeAssociation. 

In Utopia, on the other hand, where selfishness is outgrown andforgotten, and where the spirit of comradeship and brotherhoodpervades the school, there can be no preparation for anarchy, if onlyfor the reason that there is no authority--no despotic authority, forcibly imposing its will on the school _ab extra_--to bepotentially dethroned. For all her scholars, Egeria is the verysymbol and embodiment of love, the centre whence all happy, harmonious, life-giving, peace-diffusing influences radiate, and towhich, when they have vitalised the souls of the children andtransformed themselves into sentiments of loyalty and devotion, theyall return. I am not exaggerating a whit when I say that the Utopianschool is an ideal community, a community whose social system, instead of being inspired by that spirit of "competitive selfishness"which makes "each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost" itsmotto, seems to have realised the Socialistic dream of "Each for all, and all for each. "

I shall perhaps be asked _what provision is made in Utopia forenabling the children to go through the drudgery of school-life, tomaster the "3 R's, " to "get up" the various subjects which the Codeprescribes, and so forth_. To this question there is but one answer:the best possible provision. "Qui veut la fin veut les moyens. " Inthe life of organised play which the children lead, attractive endsare ever being set before them. If they are to achieve these ends, they must take the appropriate means. What children in other schoolsmight regard as drudgery, the Utopian takes in his stride. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are means to ends beyond themselves, endswhich are constantly presenting themselves to the Utopian. If he isto gratify his communicative instinct, he must learn to read andwrite. If he is to gratify his dramatic instinct, he must, _interalia_, read with intelligence books of reference which would beconsidered too advanced for the ordinary school-child. If he is togratify his inquisitive and constructive instincts, he must learnto count, measure, and calculate. For whatever means may have tobe taken, must be taken by him. Egeria, as he knows well, willdo nothing for him which he can reasonably be expected to do forhimself. There are subjects, such as drawing, dancing, and singing, which are, or at any rate ought to be, intrinsically delightful, as being natural channels of self-expression. There are othersubjects, such as history, geography, and English, which can be madedelightful by being treated dramatically. The word "drudgery" has nomeaning for the Utopian child. A group of children in the highestclass recently committed to memory the whole "Trial Scene" of the_Merchant of Venice_--some 300 lines or so of blank verse--in orderthat they might give themselves the pleasure of acting it. Theyaccomplished this feat in a little more than a month. In the ordinaryelementary school the child who has committed 150 lines to memoryin the course of a year has done all that is required of him. Thegetting up of a subject is drudgery only when the child can see nomeaning in what he is doing, only when the getting up of the subjectis regarded as an end in itself. In Utopia no subject, apart fromthose which I have spoken of as intrinsically delightful, is taughtfor its own sake. Subjects are taught there either as the means todesired ends, or because they afford opportunities for the trainingof the expansive instincts, the gratification of which is a purepleasure to every healthy child. 

But not only does the Utopian child, with his eyes always fixed ondesirable ends, find a pleasure in doing things which other childrenare wont to regard as drudgery, but he has the further advantage ofbeing able to master with comparative facility what other childrenfind difficult as well as distasteful. From first to last, thetraining given in Utopia makes, as we have seen, for the developmentof faculty. In my last chapter I set forth in detail some of the waysand means by which Egeria tries to cultivate the expansive instinctsof her pupils. Behind all these ways and means stands the mastermethod--or shall I say the master principle?--of self-expression. Recognising, as she does, that each of the expansive instincts is adefinite expression of the soul's spontaneous effort to grow, and aclear indication of a particular direction in which Nature wishes thesoul to grow, --and recognising, as she also does, that the businessof growing must be done by the growing organism and cannot bedelegated to any one else, --Egeria entrusts the work ofself-realisation to the child himself, and makes no attempt torelieve him of an obligation which no one but himself can discharge. 

Now self-realisation is a twofold process. In the absence of a fitterand more adequate word, I have applied the term _perceptive_ to thosefaculties by means of which we lay hold upon the world that surroundsus, and draw it into ourselves and make it our own. And I havecontended that this group of faculties has, as its counterpartand correlate, another group of faculties which I have called_expressive_, --the faculties by means of which we go out of ourselvesinto the world that surrounds us, and give ourselves to it and try toidentify ourselves with it, --and that the relation between these twogroups is so vital and so intimate that each in turn may be regardedas the very life and soul of the other. In words which I have alreadyused, the perceptive faculties, at any rate in childhood, growthrough the interpretation which expression gives them, and in noother way, and the expressive faculties grow by interpretingperception, and in no other way. That these two groups of facultiesare, as it were, the reciprocating engines by means of which thevital movement which we call self-realisation is effected, is theconviction on which Egeria's whole scheme of education may be said tobe pivoted. In Utopia self-expression is the medium through which theexpansive instincts are encouraged to unfold themselves. And thislife of self-expression has as its necessary counterpart thecontinuous development of the perceptive faculties along the wholerange of the child's nature. 

Hence the all-round capacity of the Utopian child. The development ofhis perceptive faculties which his life of self-expression tends toproduce, takes many forms. One of these, and one which in some sortunderlies and interpenetrates all the rest, is the outgrowth of whatI may call the _intuitional_ faculty, --a general capacity for gettinginto touch with any new environment in which the child may findhimself, of subconsciously apprehending its laws and properties, offeeling his way through its unexplored land. It is by means of thiscapacity for putting forth a new _sense_ in response to the stimulusof each new environment, that the Utopian child is able to masterwith comparative ease the various subjects which he is expected tolearn. And not with ease only, but with effect. It is, as we haveseen, through the action of an appropriate sense, and in no otherway, that the information which is supplied to the scholar, when heis learning this or that subject, is converted into _knowledge_, andis so made available both for the further understanding of the givensubject and for the nutrition of the scholar's own inner life. 

From every point of view, then, the Utopian scholar has a markedadvantage, in respect of the things with which education is supposedto be mainly concerned--the mastery of subjects and the acquisitionof knowledge--over the product of the conventional type of school. Whatever the Utopian may have to learn, is a pleasure to him eitherfor its own sake or as a means to some desirable end. Whatever he mayhave to learn, he learns with comparative ease, because hisperceptive faculties have been systematically trained, and he istherefore at home, in greater or lesser degree, in any newenvironment. And whatever he may have to learn, he learns witheffect, because he is able to digest the information that hereceives, and convert it into knowledge, and so retain it in the formin which it will best conduce both to his further progress in thatparticular branch of study and to the general building up of hismind. 

In the ordinary result-hunting school the scholar fares verydifferently from this. As a rule, he takes but little pleasure in hiswork, for subjects which have their chief value as means to desirableends are presented to him as ends in themselves, and as such arerightly regarded by him as meaningless and therefore as intolerablydull; while subjects which are either intrinsically attractive, asbeing natural channels of self-expression, or potentially attractiveas providing opportunities for self-expression, have no attractionfor him, as in neither case is self-expression on his part permitted. Again, he finds great difficulty in mastering the subjects on histime-table, or even in making the first step towards mastering them, for, owing to his perceptive faculties as a whole having beenstarved by the repressive _régime_ which denied them the outletof expression, he has not evolved the power of putting forth anappropriate sense in response to the stimulus of a new environment, and is therefore helpless in the presence of what is unfamiliar orunexpected. One of his faculties, his memory, has indeed beenhypertrophied by being unduly exercised, and his capacity forreceiving information is in consequence unhealthily great; butbecause he lacks, in this case or in that, the _sense_ which mightenable him to digest the information received and convert it intoknowledge, the food with which he has been crammed speedily passesthrough him, undigested and unassimilated, and the hours which he hasspent in acquiring information will have done as little for hisprogress in the given subject as for the general growth of his mind. 

The difference between the two schemes of education--that whichexacts mechanical obedience, and that which seeks to fostergrowth--may be looked at from another point of view. Under theformer, interference with what I may call the subconscious processesof Nature is at its maximum. Under the latter, at its minimum. Inorder to realise what this means let us suppose that suchinterference were possible where fortunately it is and must ever beimpossible, --in the first and second years of the child's life. Fortunately for the child, it is impossible for us to educate him, in any formal sense of the word, until he has mastered his mothertongue. Were it otherwise, his mother tongue would never be mastered. Before he reaches the age of two the child accomplishes themarvellous feat of acquiring an entirely new language. While he islearning it Nature is his only teacher, and under her tuition hemasters the new language without the least strain and with completesuccess. But let us suppose that it was possible for a teacher of theconventional type to give minute directions to a child by some othermedium of expression than that of language. And let us suppose thatsuch a teacher made up her mind that she, and not Nature, was toteach the child his mother tongue. One can readily imagine what wouldhappen. The teacher would probably have a theory that no child shouldbegin to talk till he was two or even two and a half years old; andif so, the child would be kept in a state of enforced dumbness tillhe reached that age. In any case, he would be strictly forbiddento speak till his teacher gave him formal permission to do so. Half-an-hour in the morning, and half-an-hour in the afternoon wouldprobably be set aside for the language lesson. For so many weeks ormonths the child would be strictly limited to words of two or threeletters. For so many more weeks or months, to words of four or fiveletters. Things which had names of more than the prescribed numberof letters would be kept away from the child; or, if that wasimpossible, he would not be allowed to talk about them. For half ayear perhaps he would be limited to the use of nouns and verbs. Prepositions might then be introduced into his vocabulary; and, later, adjectives and adverbs. And so on; and so on. And the outcomeof all this elaborate training would be that the child would neverlearn to talk his mother tongue. 

It is by methods analogous in all respects to this that many of thesubjects on the time-table are taught in thousands of our schools. The teacher seems to imagine that he knows, fully and precisely, howeach subject ought to be taught; and instead of standing aside, andtrying to learn how Nature wishes this or that subject to be taught(if Nature can be said to take any interest in "subjects"), and thentrying to co-operate with her subconscious tendencies, he makes outhis elaborate scheme of instruction, sets before the child as thegoal of his efforts the production of certain formal results, anddrives him towards these with whip and bridle, satisfied that if hesucceeds in producing them, the subject will have been duly mastered. And all the time he will not have given a thought to what ishappening to the child's inner life. Yet it is more than probablethat the teacher's disregard of, and therefore incessant interferencewith, the subconscious processes of Nature has quite as disastrousresults in the teaching of composition, let us say, or drawing, as itwould certainly have in the hypothetical case of the teaching of thechild's mother tongue. 

But in truth the Utopian conception of what constitutes efficiencydiffers so radically from the current conception, that little is tobe gained by comparing them. If I am asked by those who value outwardand visible results for their own sake, whether the training given inUtopia is "efficient, " I can but answer: "Yes, but efficient in asense which you cannot even begin to understand, --efficient in thesense of developing faculty and fostering life, whereas the pricepaid for your boasted efficiency is the starvation of faculty and thedestruction of life. "

 * * * * *

"_But how_, " it will be asked, "_are the Utopian children, one andall, induced to exert themselves? The standard of activity in theschool is, on your own showing, exceptionally high. Much is expectedof the children. Yet there are no rewards for them to hope for, andno punishments for them to fear. How, then, are those who are bynature less energetic or less persevering than the rest to be inducedto rise to the level of the teacher's expectation?_" By implicationthis question has been answered again and again. But it deserves adirect answer, and I will try to give it one. 

To begin with, it is incorrect to say that there are no rewards orpunishments in Utopia. Outward rewards and outward punishments areentirely unknown there; but there are inward rewards to be had forthe seeking, and there are inward punishments to be feared, though itmust be admitted that the fear of them seldom overshadows, even fora passing moment, the sunlit life of the Utopian child. What inducesthe Utopian child to work is, in brief, delight in his work. He isallowed and even encouraged to energise along the lines which hisnature seems to have marked out for him, and in response to thestress of forces which seem to be welling up from the depths of hisinner life. Exertion of this kind is in itself a delight. Nature hastaken care to make all the exercises by which growth is fostered, atany rate in the days of childhood when growth is most rapid andvigorous, intrinsically attractive. Had she done otherwise she wouldhave failed to make due provision for the growth of Man's beingduring the years which precede the outgrowth of self-consciousness, and the possibility of self-discipline, of the narrower and sternerkind. 

And not only are the exercises by which healthy and harmonious growthis secured intrinsically attractive, but also the sense of well-beingwhich accompanies such growth is an unfailing source of happiness. InUtopia the end for which the children are working is not an externalreward or prize to be conferred on them if they achieve certainprescribed results, but rather the actual goal to which the path thatthey have entered is taking them, --a goal which is ever lighting thepath with its foreglow, and which is therefore at once an infinitelydistant lodestar and an ever present delight. For the consummation ofany process of growth is always the perfection, the final well-being, of the thing that grows; and therefore in each successive stage ofthe process there is a truer prefigurement of the perfection whichis being gradually achieved, and a fuller sense of that well-beingwhich, at its highest level, is perfection's other self. 

For the Utopian, then, to walk in the path of self-realisation is itsown reward; and to wander from that path is its own punishment. Butas the forces of Nature are all co-operating to keep the child inthe path of self-realisation, and as Egeria has allied herself withthose forces and is working with them in every possible way, therewards which the Utopian wins for himself are very many, while thepunishments which he inflicts on himself are very few. In otherwords, the pressure on him to exert himself is so strong, hisopportunities for exerting himself (under Egeria's sympathetic rule)are so many, and the pleasure of exerting himself is found to be sogreat, that the temptation to be idle or rebellious can scarcely besaid to exist. 

It is indeed in respect of the motives to exertion which theyrespectively supply, that the superiority of the Utopian to theconventional type of education is perhaps most pronounced. I havesaid that Egeria allies herself with the expansive forces of Nature. The teacher of the conventional type has to fight against thoseforces. Let us assume that the two teachers are on a level in respectof their capacity for influencing and stimulating their pupils, and let us indicate that level by the algebraical symbol _x_. Thenthe difference between the motive force which Egeria exerts, andthe motive force which her rival exerts, is the difference between_x_ + _y_, and _x_ - _y_, _y_ being used to symbolise the aggregatemotive force of the expansive tendencies of the child's inner nature. Such a difference is incalculable. The scheme of education which isbased on distrust of the child's nature and belief in its intrinsicsinfulness and stupidity, necessarily arrays against itself thehidden forces of that maligned and despised nature, and must needsovercome their resistance before it can hope to achieve its proposedend. While Egeria is helping Nature to provide suitable channels forthe various expansive tendencies that are at work in the child, andto guide them all into the central channel of self-realisation, herrival is engaged in digging a canal (to be filled, when finished, with dead, stagnant water) which is so designed that not only will nouse be made by it of the life stream of the child's latent energies, but also costly culverts and other works will have to be constructedfor it in order to divert and send to waste that troublesomecurrent. 

The waste of motive force which goes on under any scheme of educationthrough mechanical obedience, is indeed enormous. And what is mostlamentable is that the energies of the teacher are being largelywasted in the effort to neutralise the latent energies of the child. No wonder that, in order to produce his meagre and illusory, "results, " the teacher should have to resort to motive forces which, by appealing to the lower side of the child's nature, will enablehim to bear down the resistance, and, in doing so, to impede theoutgrowth of the higher, --to the hope of external rewards and thethreat of external punishments. And no wonder that, owing to theteacher having to work unceasingly against the grain of thechild's nature, of these two demoralising forces, the fear ofpunishment--which, if not the more demoralising, is certainly themore wasteful of energy--should bulk the more largely in the eyesof the child. 

In fine, then, whereas the conventional type of education is sowasteful of motive force that it dissipates the greater part of theteachers' and the scholars' energies in needless friction, --inUtopia, on the other hand, there is such an economy of motive forcethat the very joy which, under its scheme of education, alwaysaccompanies the child's expenditure of energy, and which might beregarded as merely a waste by-product, becomes in its turn a powerfulincentive to further exertion. 

 * * * * *

"_But is there not too much joy in Utopia? Is not the sky toocloudless? Is not the atmosphere too clear? Does the Utopian neveract from a sense of duty? Has he never to do anything that isdistasteful to him?_" This objection raises an interesting question. Is the function of the sense of duty to enable us to do distastefulthings? And if so, are we to regard it as the highest of motives tomoral action? In the days when Kant's idea of the "moral imperative"was in the ascendant, the belief got abroad that the essence ofvirtue was to do what you hated doing. Looking back to my Oxforddays, I recall some doggerel lines, of German origin, in which thisbelief finds apt expression. A disciple who is in trouble about hissoul says to his master:

 "Willing serve I my friends, but do it, alas! with affection, And so gnaws me my heart, that I'm not virtuous yet. "

To this the master replies:

 "Help except this there is none: you must strive with might to contemn them, And with horror perform then what the law may enjoin. "

If this conception of morality is correct, if it is true that theatmosphere of the virtuous life should be one of horror and even ofhatred, then it must be admitted that the Utopian children arereceiving a seriously defective education. But the "if" is a largeone; and for my part I incline to the belief that love, as a motiveto action, is better than hatred, joy than horror, sunshine thangloom. 

The day will indeed come when the Utopian--a child no longer--willhave to do things, either for his own sake or in order to dischargeobligations to others, which will be, or will seem to be, against thegrain even of his happy nature; and the sense of duty will then haveto come to his aid. But there is no reason why he, or his teachers, should anticipate that day. To compel him, while still a child, towork against the grain of his nature, when there was no real need forthis, would not be the best preparation for the trials that awaithim. To compel him to spend the greater part of his school-life indoing what was distasteful to him, would be the worst possiblepreparation for them. 

For, to begin with, the sense of duty is not the highest motive toaction. A far higher motive is love. If the sense of duty to God, forexample, had not devotion to God and love of God behind it, theobject of one's worship would be a malignant rather than a beneficentdeity, a devil rather than a God. Or let us take the case of a childwho is dangerously ill, and who needs to be carefully and evendevotedly nursed. By whom will he be the more effectively nursed, --byhis mother who loves him passionately, or by a hired nurse who cannotbe expected to love him but who has a strong sense of duty to heremployers? (I am assuming that as regards professional skill, andthe sense of duty to God, the two women are on a level. ) Surely themother, sustained by love in the endurance of sleeplessness andfatigue, and in the exercise of that unceasing vigilance which letsno symptom escape it, will be the better nurse. Love, as a motive tomoral action, has the immense advantage over the sense of duty ofbeing able to rob the hour of trial of its gloom, by strengtheningthe lover to make light of labour and difficulty till at last thesense of effort is lost in the sense of joy. But if love is thehighest of all motives, is it not well that the child's life shouldas far as possible, and for as long as possible, be kept under itsinfluence, to the exclusion of other motives. We have seen that theUtopian child takes many things in his stride which other childrenwould regard as distasteful. If they are not distasteful to him, thereason is that he does them, not from a sense of duty, but under theinspiration of love, --love of life, love of Egeria, love of hisschoolmates, love of his school. And the longer he can remain on thehigh plane of love, the better it will be for his after life. 

And when the time comes for him to yield himself to the "saving arms"of duty, he will have had the best of all preparations for that hourof trial, for he will have been braced and strengthened for it by themost moralising of all disciplines, that of growth. What is the senseof duty? We too seldom ask ourselves this question. Is it not afeeling of obligation, of being in debt, to some person, or persons, or institution, or society, or even to some invisible Power;--toa friend, for example, a relative, a dependent, an employer, a"contracting party, " a commanding officer, --or, again, to one's tradeor profession, to one's political party, to one's church, to one'scountry, --or, in the last resort, to God? And is not this feelingaccompanied by the secret conviction that until the debt has beenliquidated, to the best of the debtor's ability, justice will nothave been done? The sense of duty is, I think, a derivative sense, an offshoot from the more primitive sense of justice, --a sense soprimitive that it may almost be said to have made possible our sociallife. If this is so, if the sense of duty is resolvable into thesense of justice, then the training which is given in Utopia--atraining which makes for healthy and harmonious growth, and therefore(as we have seen) for outgrowth or escape from self--is the bestpreparation for a life of duty, that can possibly be given. For underits influence the sense of justice, which is essentially a socialinstinct, knowing no distinction between oneself and one's neighbour, will be relieved of the hostile pressure of its arch-enemy, theanti-social instinct of selfishness, [21] and will therefore makerapid and vigorous growth. The sense of justice is, as might beexpected, strongly developed in the selfless atmosphere of Utopia, where indeed it has helped, in no small degree, to evolve thewonderful social life of the school; and, that being so, there is nofear but what the Utopian will be sustained by the sense of duty whenthe time comes for him to work against the grain of his nature. Buthowever strong may be his sense of duty, he will always have thegreat advantage of being seldom called upon to do what he dislikes, and therefore of being able to keep the fibre of his sense of dutyfrom being either unduly relaxed or unduly hardened by overwork; forhe has been accustomed from his earliest days to make light of, andeven find a pleasure in, what is usually accounted drudgery, and hehas been accustomed to work, in school and out of school, under theinspiration of joy and love. 

_But is the education given in Utopia useful?_ I wish I knew who wasasking this question, for I cannot hope to answer it to hissatisfaction until I know what is his standard of values. What enddoes he set before the teachers of our elementary schools? If hewould tell me this, I might be able to say Yes or No to his question. 

At present there seems to be no agreement among educationalists, professional or amateur, as to what constitutes usefulness ineducation. Those who belong to the "upper classes" are apt to assumethat the "lower orders" will have been adequately educated when theyhave been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, needlework, and"religion, " subjected to a certain amount of repressive discipline, and compelled to go to church or chapel. If, after having passedthrough this mill, the children of the "lower orders" do not developinto good men and women and useful citizens, it is not theireducation which is to blame, but the inborn sinfulness of theircorrupt and fallen natures. Such an education is regarded by thosewho advocate it as pre-eminently _useful_. There is no nonsense aboutit, no cant of idealism, no taint of socialism. It keeps the "lowerorders" in their places, and forbids them to dream of rising above"that state of life unto which it" has pleased "God to call them. " Asit is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the conventional type of education, my objection to it is that it makes the best possible provision forsecuring the end which the conventional type seems to have setbefore itself, --in other words, for depressing the vitality of thechild, for starving his faculties, for arresting his growth. Assuch, it has not even the merit of being sordidly useful; forunless stupidity is a better thing than intelligence, slowness thanalertness, helplessness than initiative, lifelessness than vitalactivity, the child who has passed through that dreary mill will befar less effective, even as a day-labourer, than the child whoseschool-life has been one of continuous and many-sided growth. It isstrange that the reactionary members of the "upper classes" should betoo short-sighted to discern this obvious truth. But perhaps theyhave a secret conviction that by so educating the "lower orders" asto make them slow and stupid, helpless and lifeless, they will be thebetter able to keep them in a state of subservience to and dependenceon themselves. [22] If this is so, there is method in the madness ofthe "upper classes"; and their conception of the course thateducation ought to take has the merit of being entirely true to theirbasely selfish conception of the end that education ought to serve. 

I have alluded to this pseudo-utilitarian theory, not because it isintrinsically worthy of serious attention, but because there isundoubtedly a strong and influential current of opinion which sets inits direction. There are other advocates of a "useful" education whoseem to regard the elementary school, not as a training ground forgood men and women, but as a kind of technical institute in which thechildren are to be trained for the various callings by which, whenthey grow up, they will have to earn their daily bread. This theoryneed not be seriously considered, for its inherent absurdity hascaused it to be tacitly abandoned by all whose opinion carriesweight; and the more reasonable theory that the education given inthe elementary school should be as far as possible adapted to theenvironment of the school--that it should be given a rural bias, forexample, or a marine bias, or even an urban bias--has begun to takeits place. That it should ever have found advocates is interesting asshowing how easy it is for unenlightened public opinion tomisinterpret the word "useful. "[23]

There is a third class of critics, composed for the most part ofmembers of Local Education Committees, who seem to think that abilityto pass a "leaving" examination is the only valid proof of theusefulness of elementary education. If these influential critics, whoare showing in various ways that they care more for machinery thanfor life, could have their will, they would probably revert to the"good old days" of cut-and-dried syllabuses, formal examinations ofindividual scholars, percentages of passes, and the like. As I havealready taken pains to explain what the _régime_ of the "good olddays" really meant, I need not waste my time in exposing thefallacies which underlie this conception of "usefulness. "

Here, then, are three distinct standards of usefulness in elementaryeducation. According to the first, education is useful in proportionas it tends, by repressing the activities and atrophying thefaculties of the scholars, to keep the "lower orders" in theirplaces, and in so doing to provide the "upper classes" with asufficiency of labourers and servants. According to the second, it isuseful in proportion as it is able to prepare the scholars for theirvarious callings in after life. [24] According to the third, inproportion as it enables the scholars to pass with credit certain"leaving" and other examinations of a formal type. 

I will now assume that the end of education is to produce, or at anyrate contribute to the production of, good men and women; and thatthe education given in elementary schools is useful in exactproportion as it serves this end. I am not using the word "good" inits Sunday School sense. Nor does the word suggest to my mind thatblend of stupidity, patience, and submissiveness which sometimespasses for "goodness" when the "upper classes" are taking thought forthe welfare of the "lower orders. " The good man, as I understand thephrase, is a good son, a good brother, a good husband, a good father, a good citizen, a good townsman, a good workman, a good servant, agood master. In fine, he is a good specimen of his kind, wellgrown and well developed, efficient on all the planes of hisbeing, --physical, mental, moral, spiritual. This conception of whatconstitutes useful education differs radically from those which Ihave just been considering; but I believe that when it has beenadequately expounded, and submitted to the judgment of those whoseopinion is worth having, it will not be seriously gainsaid. 

If education is useful in proportion as it tends to produce good menand women, the education given in Utopia is useful to the highestdegree. For a child cannot become a good man (or woman) except by_growing_ good; and if he is to grow good, his nature must be allowedto develop itself freely and harmoniously (for just so far as it isnormal and healthy it is necessarily making for its own perfection), and the one end and aim of the teacher must be to stimulate anddirect this process of spontaneous growth. This, as we have seen, isthe one end and aim of Egeria; and it is therefore clear that sheis taking effective steps--the most effective that can possiblybe taken--to produce good men and women. We have but to name thequalities which are characteristic, as we have already seen, of herpupils and ex-pupils, --activity, versatility, imaginative sympathy, a large and free outlook, self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joyof heart, --in order to convince ourselves that those who have passedthrough the Utopian school are on the high road which leads to"goodness. " So obvious is all this, that in defining the word"useful" I may be said to have decided the question in favour ofUtopia; and what is now in dispute is not whether Utopianism is"useful, " in any sense of the word, but whether my sense of the wordis the right one. 

I cannot go much further into this question without exceeding thelimits of the theme which I am handling in this chapter. For inconsidering the after life of the Utopian child, I am entering aregion in which the idea of _education_ begins to merge itself in thelarger idea of _salvation_; and though education, as begun in Utopia, is in its essence a life-long process, I must pay some heed to thelimits which tradition and custom have imposed on the meaning of theword. 

But before I close this chapter I must be allowed to give oneillustration in support of my contention that the education given inUtopia is useful. Of the many complaints that are brought against theoutput of our elementary schools, one of the most serious is that theboys and girls who have recently left school are voracious readers ofa vicious and demoralising literature which seems to be provided fortheir special benefit. The reason why they take so readily to thisgarbage is that they have lost their appetite for wholesome food. They are not interested in healthy literature, in Nature-study, inmusic, in art, in handicraft, --in any pursuit which might take themout of themselves into a larger and freer life; and so they fallvictims to the allurements of a literature which appeals to theirbaser, more sensual, and more selfish instincts, --the very instinctswhich growth (in the true sense of the word) spontaneously relegatesto a subordinate position and places under effective control. It isthe inertness, the apathy, the low vitality of the average child offourteen, which is the cause of his undoing. His taste for false andmeretricious excitement--a taste which may lead him far along thedownward path--is the outcome of his very instinct to live, aninstinct which, though repressed by the influences that have chokedits natural channels, cannot resign itself to extinction, and atlast, in its despairing effort to energise, forces for itself theartificial outlet of an imaginative interest in vice and crime. 

The "young person" who, on leaving school, becomes a voraciousdevourer of unwholesome literature, cannot be said to have receiveda "useful" education. That vice and crime--whether practised orimagined--are in the first instance artificial outlets, outlets whichthe soul would not use if its expansive instincts were duly fostered, is proved by the absence of "naughtiness" in the Utopian school, and the absence of any taste for morbid excitement amongst Utopianex-scholars. The unwholesome literature which gives so much concernto those who are interested in the welfare of the young, is unknownin Utopia. And in this, as in other matter, the "goodness" of thechildren and "young persons" is due, not to any lack of life andspirit, but to the very abundance of their vitality. Apart from thefact that vigorous growth, whether in plant or animal or human soul, is in itself a sure prophylactic against the various evils to whichgrowing life is exposed, the Utopians are guarded against the dangerof demoralising books and demoralising amusements by their many-sidedinterest in life. Their instinct to live, finding natural andadequate outlets in many directions, has no need to force for itselfthe artificial outlet of morbid excitement, --an outlet for imprisonedenergies, which has too often proved an opening to a life of vice andcrime. There is a Shakespeare in every cottage in Utopia; but theadvocates of a repressive and restrictive education for the "lowerorders" need not be alarmed at this, for the Utopians, who have foundthe secret of true happiness, are freer than most villagers fromsocial discontent. Nor are Egeria's ex-pupils less efficient aslabourers or domestic servants because they are interested in goodliterature, in Nature-study, in acting, or because they can stilldance the Morris Dances and sing the Folk Songs which they learned inschool. 

FOOTNOTES:

[20] I am thinking more particularly of some of the RomanCatholic schools in the Irish quarter of Liverpool, where thesingularly kind and gracious bearing of the teaching "sisters"towards their poor, ill-fed, and ill-clad pupils is an educativeinfluence of incalculable value. 

[21] The sense of justice, which would give to each his due, and therefore not more than his due to oneself, seems to hold thebalance between selfishness and love, being as it were, equidistantfrom the greed and self-indulgence of the former and the lavishnessand self-devotion of the latter. If this is so, and if the sense ofduty is, as I have suggested, an offshoot from the sense of justice, one can understand why, on the one hand, the sense of duty should beneeded to hold the self-seeking instincts in check, and why, on theother hand, it should be an altogether lower and weaker motive thanlove, by which indeed, _in its own interest_, it should always beready to be superseded. 

[22] I was once present when the Utopian children were goingthrough a programme of Folk Songs and Morris Dances in the villagehall. A lady who was looking on remarked to me: "This is all veryfine; but if this sort of thing goes on, where are we going to findour servants?" The selfishness of this remark is obvious. What isless obvious, but more significant, is its purblindness. In point offact the Utopian girls make excellent domestic servants, and are wellcontent to "go into service. "

[23] Some two or three years ago it was seriously proposedthat _marine navigation_ should be taught in all the elementaryschools of a certain maritime county!

[24] The parent who wrote to a schoolmaster, "Please do notteach my boy any more poetry, as he is going to be a grocer, " musthave been under the influence of this conception of usefulness. 

CHAPTER VI

SALVATION THROUGH SELF-REALISATION

In Utopia the transition from _education_ to _salvation_, both intheory and practice, is obvious and direct. The difference betweeneducation and salvation is, indeed, purely nominal: in their essencethe two processes are one. As the education given in Utopia is, inthe main, self-education, there is no reason why it should not becontinued indefinitely after the child has left school; and as itsfunction is to foster the growth of the child's many-sided nature(with its vast potentialities), there is every reason why it shouldbe continued as long as he lives. In other words, the path ofsalvation is the path of self-realisation, the most important part ofwhich is traversed in childhood; and to attain to salvation (which isin a sense unattainable) is to remain faithful to that path till itpasses beyond our thought. 

Outside Utopia there is a widely different conception of the meaningand purpose of education, and a correspondingly different conceptionof the nature of salvation and the means by which it is to beachieved. The idea of salvation, with the complementary idea ofperdition, may be regarded as the crown and completion of that schemeof external rewards and punishments which plays so prominent apart in Western education. Salvation, which is the highest of allexternal rewards, just as perdition is the severest of all externalpunishments, is not a path to be followed, but a state of happinessto be won and enjoyed. It follows that the relation between educationand salvation is, in the main, one of analogy, rather than ofidentity (as in Utopia), or even of vital connection. Or shall we saythat education is not so much the first act in the drama of salvationas the first rehearsal of the play?

There are, of course, two conceptions of salvation in the West, justas there are two worlds to be lived in, --the Supernatural world andthe world of Nature. 

In what are called religious circles, to be saved is to have gainedadmission to Heaven, and, in doing so, to have escaped the tormentand misery of Hell. There was a time when Hell was taken veryseriously; but the idea of never-ending torment and misery is found, when steadily faced, to be so intolerable that popular thought, evenin religious circles, is now turning away from it; and so loosely domen sit, in these "degenerate days, " to the old doctrine of eternalpunishment, that "to die" and "to go to heaven" are becominginterchangeable terms. But if all men are to be admitted to Heaven(or to its ante-room, Purgatory) at the end of this, their oneearth-life, it is clear that there can be no causal connectionbetween conduct and salvation. For though there may be degrees ofhappiness in Heaven to reward the varying degrees of virtue onearth, all these are dwarfed to nothing by the unimaginable abyssof difference which yawns between Heaven and Hell; and thepractical upshot of the current eschatology is that all men--theself-sacrificing equally with the self-indulgent, the kind andcompassionate equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-mindedequally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with theindifferent--are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriouslyevil liver, those who have suffered at his hands or been violentlyscandalised by his conduct may perhaps find a sombre pleasure inconsigning him to Hell, which, indeed, might otherwise have to putup its shutters. But though the doors of Heaven may be closed againsta few exceptional scoundrels, they are nowadays thrown open to allthe rest of Mankind; and the maxim, "Live anyhow, and you will besaved somehow, " seems to sum up with tolerable accuracy the popularattitude towards the twofold problem of duty and destiny. 

I do not for a moment suggest that this happy-go-lucky eschatology isformally countenanced by the Churches and Sects. They would doubtlessrepudiate it with indignation; but the fact remains that theirown teaching is largely responsible for it. For not only is theidea of _natural_ retribution wholly foreign to the genius ofsupernaturalism, but also, in the two great schools of Westerntheology, there is, and always has been, a strong tendency toundervalue conduct (in the broad, human sense of the word), and tomake the means of salvation mechanical rather than vital. At any ratethe sacramental teaching of the Catholic Church, and the Calvinisticdoctrine of salvation through faith in the finished work of Christ, readily lend themselves to such an interpretation. 

So ineffective is the current eschatology, in its bearing onconduct, that the latent energy of Man's nature--his latent desire tohave a central purpose in life--is compelling him to work out forhimself another and a more mundane conception of salvation, to setbefore himself as the end of life the winning of certain temporalprizes, and to keep this end steadily in view from day to day andfrom year to year. Such a conception of salvation has always had astrong attraction for him, though in his more orthodox days he foundit desirable to subordinate it to, or if possible harmonise it with, the conception which his religion dictated to him; and of late itsattractiveness has been increased by the fact that he is beginning tothrow his eschatology (even in its present emasculated form) to thewinds. 

So far, I have had in my mind those quarters of Western thought inwhich the belief in the reality of the soul and the kindred beliefin immortality still survive. But in point of fact both beliefsare dying before our eyes, --dying as a dumb protest against theinadequacy of the popular philosophy, against the intrinsicincredibility of its premises, against its fundamental misconceptionof the meaning of life and the nature and conditions of salvation, above all against the way in which the beliefs themselves have beenpersistently misinterpreted and travestied. And where the beliefs aredying, the latent externalism and materialism of Western thought andWestern life are able to assert themselves without let or hindrance. "To be saved, " as the phrase is now widely understood, means to geton in life, to succeed in business or in a profession, to make money, to rise in the social scale (if necessary, on the shoulders ofothers), to force one's way to the front (if necessary, by tramplingdown others), to be talked about in the daily papers, to make a"splash" in some circle or coterie, --in these and in other ways toachieve some measure of what is called "success. "

And in proportion as this mundane conception of salvation tends toestablish itself, so does the drift towards social and politicalanarchy, which is now beginning to alarm all the lovers of order and"progress, " tend to widen its range and accelerate its movement. Forthough the current idea of achieving salvation through "success" is acomfortable doctrine for the successful few, it is the reverse ofcomfortable for the unsuccessful many, among whom the idea is gainingground that as salvation is the reward, not of virtue, but of ajudicious blend of cleverness, unscrupulousness, selfishness, andgreed, there is no reason, in the moral order of things, why itshould not be wrested from those who are enjoying it, either byorganised social warfare or by open violence and crime. And even ifan anarchical outbreak should result in perdition all round insteadof salvation all round, it would at least be some consolation to the"lost" to feel that they had dragged the "saved" down into their ownbottomless pit. This would not be a lofty sentiment; yet I do notsee who is in a position to condemn it, --not the supporter of theexisting social order, which legalises a general scramble, first forthe "prizes" of life and then for the bare means of subsistence, andis well content that in that scramble the weak, the ignorant, andthe unfortunate should go to the wall, --not the exponent of theconventional theology, which has taught men to dream of a Heaven inwhich the happiness of the "elect" will be unruffled by the knowledgethat an eternity of misery is the doom of perhaps a majority of theirfellow-men. 

In the West, then, there are two conceptions of salvation, --aselfish, worldly conception which is daily becoming more effective, and a selfish other-worldly conception which is daily becoming moreineffective, and is therefore less and less able to compete with orcontrol its rival. Out of the attempts that are made to realiseboth these conceptions and to keep them on friendly terms with oneanother, there is emerging a state of chaos--political, social, moral, spiritual, --a weltering chaos of new and old ideals, new andold theories of life, new and old standards of values, new and oldcentres of authority, new and old ambitions and dreams. And in thischaos there are only two principles of order, the first (which isalso the ultimate cause of all our disorder) being the pathetic factthat nearly all the actors in the bewildering drama are still seekingfor happiness outside themselves, the second being the fundamentalgoodness of man's heart. 

I will now go back to Utopia. There a new conception of salvation isimplicit in the new theory of education which has revolutionised thelife of the school. Humble as is the sphere and small as is the scaleof Egeria's labours, her work is, I firmly believe, of world-wideimportance and lasting value, for she has provided an experimentalbasis for the idea that salvation is to be achieved by growth, andgrowth alone. 

I will now try to interpret that idea. 

The education of the child in school begins when he is four or fiveyears old, and lasts till he is thirteen or fourteen. But he entersthe path of salvation the day he is born. He comes into the world aweak, helpless baby; but, like every other seedling, he has in himall the potencies of perfection, --the perfection of his kind. To realise those potencies, so far as they can be realised withinthe limits of one earth-life, is to achieve salvation. Are thosepotencies worth realising? To this question I can but answer: "Suchas they are, they are our all. " We might ask the same question withregard to an acorn or a grain of wheat; and in each case the answerwould be the same. There are, indeed, plants and animals which arenoxious _from our point of view_. But that is not the view which theytake of themselves. Each of them regards his own potencies in thelight of a sacred trust, and strives with untiring energy to realisethem. If the potencies of our nature are not worth realising we hadbetter give up the business of living. If they are, we had betterfall into line with other living things. 

An unceasing pressure is being put upon us to do so. The perfectmanhood which is present in embryo in the new-born infant, just asthe oak-tree is present in embryo in the acorn, will struggleunceasingly to evolve itself. With the dawn of self-consciousness, weshall gradually acquire the power of either co-operating with, orthwarting, the spontaneous energies that are welling up in us andmaking for our growth. In this respect we stand, in some sort, apartfrom the rest of living things. But the power to co-operate withour own spontaneous energies is to the full as natural as are theenergies themselves. To fathom the mystery of self-consciousness isbeyond my power and beside my present purpose; but we may perhapsregard our power of interfering, for good or ill, with thespontaneous energies of our nature, as the outcome of a successfuleffort which our nature has made both to widen the sphere of its ownlife and to accelerate the process of its own growth. But justbecause we possess that power, it is essential that we, above allother living things, should believe in ourselves, should believe inthe intrinsic value of our natural potencies, with a whole-heartedfaith. For if we do not, we shall hinder instead of helping theforces that are at work in us, and we shall retard instead ofaccelerating the process of our growth. 

We have seen that education in the West has hitherto been a failurebecause, owing to the ascendency of the doctrine of original sin, ithas been based on distrust of human nature; and we have seen that inUtopia, where Egeria's faith in human nature is so profound that shehas allowed the children to go far towards educating themselves, theresults achieved have gone beyond my wildest dream of what waspracticable, at any rate within the limits of the school life ofvillage children. What is true of education is true _a fortiori_ ofsalvation. If it is impossible to construct a satisfactory scheme ofeducation on the basis of distrust of human nature, it is even moreimpossible (if there are degrees in impossibility) to construct onthe same basis a satisfactory scheme of salvation. I have alreadycontended that if education is to be reformed, the doctrine oforiginal sin must go; and I now contend that if our philosophy oflife is to be reformed, we must abandon, not that doctrine only, butthe whole dualistic philosophy which centres in the opposition ofNature to the Supernatural. For trust in human nature--themicrocosm--is impossible, so long as Nature--the macrocosm--is liableto be disparaged and discredited (in our minds) by the visionarysplendours of the Supernatural world; and to devise a harmoniousscheme of life is impossible so long as an inharmonious conceptionof the Universe dominates our thought, --a conception so inharmoniousthat it divides the Universe, the All of Being, into two hostilecamps, and in doing so introduces the "war of the worlds" into eachindividual life. 

When a fruit-grower plants a fruit-tree, he does three things for it. By choosing an appropriate soil and aspect, he brings adequatesupplies of _nourishment_ within reach of it. By manuring it at theright season, he both adds to its store of nourishment and givesit the _stimulus_ which will help it to absorb and assimilate thenourishment that is immediately available for its use. And, bypruning and training it judiciously, he gives it the _guidance_ whichwill enable it to develop itself to the best advantage from thefruit-bearing point of view (fruit-bearing being the end which hesets it). He does these three things for it, but he does no more thanthese. He realises that in all these operations he is only takingadvantage of the innate powers and tendencies of the tree, andenabling these to deploy themselves under as favourable conditionsas possible; and he is therefore well content to leave the rest tothe tree itself, feeling sure that its own spontaneous effort toachieve perfection will do all that is needed. His trust in theability and willingness of the tree to work out its salvation iscomplete. 

These are the lines on which the farmer and the fruit-grower conducttheir business, --lines, the neglect of which would involve them inearly disaster and in ultimate ruin. And these are the lines on whichhuman nature ought to be trained, in school and out of school, fromthe day of birth to the day of death. But they are lines on which itwill never be trained so long as the doctrine of the depravity ofNature in general and human nature in particular controls ourphilosophy of life. 

The doctrine of natural depravity, or original sin, is the outcome ofMan's attempt to explain to himself the glaring fact of his ownimperfection. The doctrine grew up in an age when men were ignorantof the fundamental laws of Nature, and among a people who, thoughotherwise richly gifted, had no turn for sustained thought. So longas men were ignorant of Nature's master law of evolution, it was butnatural that they should account for their own imperfection bylooking back to a Golden Age, --a state of innocence and bliss fromwhich they had somehow fallen, and to which they could not, by anyeffort or process of their corrupted nature, hope to return. Whilethis idea--half myth and half doctrine--was growing up in the mindof Israel, the counter idea of the evolution or growth of the soul, of its ascent from "weak beginnings" towards a state of spiritualperfection, was growing up among the thinkers of India, and thederivative doctrine of salvation through the natural process ofsoul-growth was being gradually elaborated. But though the philosophyof India produced some impression on the conscious thought, and afar deeper impression on the subconscious thought, of the West, itsmaster idea of spiritual evolution--_through a long sequence oflives_--was wholly foreign to the genius of Christendom, which hadborrowed its _ideas_ from the commonplace philosophy of Israel; andit was not till the nineteenth century of our era that the idea ofevolution began to make its way, from the quarter of physicalscience, into Western thought. 

The doctrine of original sin must once have had a meaning and apurpose. For one thing, it must have been generated by a sudden risein Man's moral standard; and as such it must have had a salutaryinfluence on his conduct and inward life. But it is now outstayingits welcome. The Biblical story of the Fall, in virtue of which itwas once authoritatively taught, is ceasing to be regarded as serioushistory; and the doctrine must therefore either justify itself tocritical thought or resign itself to rejection as inadequate andunsound. But there is only one line of defence which its supporterscan take. As the doctrine was the outcome of Man's premature attemptto explain the fact of his own imperfection, if it is to survive inthe world of ideas it must be able to show, first and foremost, thatthe fact in question cannot be accounted for on other grounds. Willit be able to do this, at a time when the idea of evolution isbeginning to impregnate our mental atmosphere, and in doing so ismaking us realise that we are near of kin to all other living things, and that our lives, like theirs, are dominated by the master-law of_growth_?

That there is much moral evil in the world is undeniable. Are wetherefore to predicate original depravity of man's heart and soul?But there is also much physical evil in the world, --pain, weakness, disease, decay, and death. Are we therefore to predicate originaldepravity of man's body? And this physical evil, this liability todisease, is not confined to man, but also affects all other livingthings. Are we therefore to predicate original depravity of anew-born lamb, of a new-laid egg, of an acorn, of a grain of wheat?

Let us consider certain typical forms of moral evil, and see if wecan account for them, without having recourse to the hypothesis oforiginal sin. The vicious propensities which manifest themselves inchildren and "young persons" may be divided into two main classes, _apparent_ and _actual_. [25] Of the former class the chief cause is, in a word, _immaturity_. Of the latter, _environment_. 

Analogies drawn from plant life may help us to understand how thesecauses operate. 

_Immaturity. _ If an Englishman who had never before tasted an applewere to eat one in July, he would probably come to the conclusionthat it was a hard, sour, indigestible fruit, "conceived in sin andshapen in iniquity, " and fit only to be consigned to perdition (on adustheap, or elsewhere). But if the same man were to wait tillOctober and then eat an apple from the same tree, he would form awholly different conception of its value. He would find that thesourness had ripened into wholesome and refreshing acidity; thehardness into that firmness of fibre which, besides being pleasant tothe palate, makes the apple "keep" better than any other fruit; theindigestibility into certain valuable dietetic qualities; and so on. It is the same with the growing child. _Most of his vices are virtuesin the making_. During the first year or so of his life he is amonster of selfishness; and selfishness is the most comprehensive andfar-reaching of all vicious tendencies. Does this mean that he hasbeen conceived in sin? Not in the least. It means that he is making awhole-hearted effort to guard and unfold the potencies of life--inthe first instance, of physical life--which have been entrusted tohim. It means that he has entered the path of self-realisation, andthat if he will be as faithful to that path during the rest of hislife as he has been during those early months of uncompromisingselfishness, he will be able at last to scale the loftiest heights ofself-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice. 

_Environment. _ The influences which environment exerts seem to fallunder three heads--

(1) General influences of a more or less permanent character, such ashome, neighbourhood, social grade, etc. 

(2) General influences of a more or less variable character, such aseducation, employment, friendship, etc. 

 (3) Particular influences, such as companionship (good or bad), literature (wholesome or pernicious), places of amusement (elevatingor debasing), special opportunities for self-sacrifice orself-indulgence, etc. 

Corresponding to these in plant-life we have--

 (1) Soil, situation, and climate: (2) Cultivation and weather: (3) The various insects and micro-organisms which are ready to assail or protect growing life. 

(1) If two acorns from the same tree were sown, the one in a deepclay soil and a favourable situation, the other in a light sandy soiland an unfavourable situation, the former would in time develop intoa large and shapely, the latter into a puny and misshapen oak-tree. It would be the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with two human beings whowere exposed from their earliest days to widely different permanentinfluences. 

(2) If wheat of a certain strain were sown on the same day in twoadjoining fields, one of which was well farmed and the other badlyfarmed, the resulting crops would differ widely in yield and value. It would be the same with two human beings, one of whom (to take apertinent example) attended a school of Utopian tendencies, and theother a school of a more conventional type. Of all moralising (ordemoralising) influences education is by far the most important, owing to the fact that it can do more, and is in a position to domore, than any other influence either to foster or to hinder growth. 

The influence of weather on plant-life is, of course, enormous. Inone year the fruit-crop in a given neighbourhood is a failure: inanother year it gluts the market. One explanation of this fact, which has its exact analogies in human life, will be given in thenext paragraph. 

(3) All forms of life are exposed to the attacks of enemies ofvarious kinds. Whether they shall beat off those attacks or succumbto them depends in large measure on the nature of the growth thatthey are making; and this again depends, largely if not wholly, onthe nature of the general influences to which they have been exposed. For many years I lived in a district in which hops were grown on alarge scale; and I naturally took an interest in the staple industryof my adopted county. I noticed that whenever (during the summermonths) there came a spell of cold winds from the north-east--windswhich tend to arrest plant-growth--the hop-bines were at onceassailed by blight and other pests, and the safety of the growingcrop was imperilled. And I noticed further that when the wind gotround to the south-west, and warm showers began to stimulate thegrowth of the flagging plants, the pests that had assailed themdisappeared as if by magic, and the anxieties of the growers wererelieved. As it is with plants, so it is with human beings. They toohave their enemies, --temptations of various kinds and other evilinfluences that "war against the soul. " And they too will be able tobeat off their assailants just so far as their own growth is vigorousand healthy; and will succumb to their attacks, to their own seriousdetriment, just so far as their own growth is feeble and sickly. 

The bearing of this fact on the problem of the origin of moral evilis obvious. That the evils which assail the organism, be it a plantor a human being, are not inherent in its nature, is proved by thefact that when the growth of the organism is normal and unimpeded, the assailants are always beaten off. As it is the growth of theorganism--the development of its own nature--which enables it toresist the evils that threaten it, we must assume that its nature isgood. Indeed the evils that threaten it are called evils for no otherreason than that they imperil its well-being; and it follows that incalling them evils we imply that the organism is intrinsically good. 

When we have eliminated from human nature the vicious tendencieswhich are due either to immaturity or to the numberless influencesthat come under the general head of environment, we shall find that avery small percentage remain to be accounted for. We need not haverecourse to the doctrine of original sin in order to account forthese. So far I have said nothing about heredity, partly because itsinfluence on the moral development of the individual is, I think, very small compared with that of environment, and partly because itis impossible to consider the extent and character of its influence, without going deeply into certain large and complicated problems. Forexample, it would be impossible for me to say much about the current, though gradually waning, belief in the force of heredity, withoutsaying something about its Far Eastern equivalent, the belief inre-incarnation, --in other words, without asking whether a maninherits from his parents and other ancestors, or from his formerselves. That different persona are born with widely different moraltendencies and propensities, is as certain as that some strains ofwheat are hardier and more productive than others. And it ispossible, and even probable, that there are exceptional cases ofmoral evil which point to congenital depravity, and cannot otherwisebe accounted for. But in these admissions I am making no concessionto the believer in original sin; for he regards human nature as suchas congenitally depraved, and therefore can take no cognisance ofexceptional cases of congenital depravity, cases which by breakingthe rule that the new-born child is morally and spiritually healthy, may be said to prove it. 

In fine, then, all moral evil can be accounted for on grounds whichare quite compatible with the assumption that the normal child ishealthy, on all the planes of his being, at the moment of his birth. That he carries with him into the world the capacity for beingaffected by adverse influences of various kinds, is undeniable; butso does every other living thing; and if congenital depravity is tobe predicated of him for that reason, it must also be predicated ofevery new-born animal and plant. 

But the final proof that Man is by nature a child of God, is onewhich has already been hinted at, and will presently be furtherdeveloped, --namely, that growth--the healthy, vigorous growth of thewhole human being, the harmonious development of his whole nature--isin its essence a movement towards moral and spiritual perfection. Andthe final proof that the doctrine of Man's congenital depravity isfalse is the practical one that the doctrine is ever tending tofulfil its own gloomy predictions, and to justify its own lowestimate of human nature, --in other words, that by making educationrepressive and devitalising, by introducing externalism, with itsendless train of attendant evils, into Man's daily life, and bymaking him disbelieve in and even despair of himself, it has donemore perhaps than all other influences added together to deprave hisheart and to wreck his life. 

To one who has convinced himself that human nature is fundamentallygood, in the sense that the new-born child is as a rule sound andhealthy on all the planes of his being, it must be clear that thepath of soul-growth or self-realisation is the only way of salvation. What salvation means, what the path of self-realisation will do forhim who enters it, is a theme to which I could not hope to do justicewithin the limits of this work. I will therefore content myselfwith indicating certain typical aspects of the process which Ihave called self-realisation, and saying something about each ofthese. Four aspects suggest themselves to me as worthy of specialconsideration, --the _mental_, the _moral_, the _social_, and the_religious_. [26]

_The Mental Aspect of Self-realisation. _

There are two features of the process of self-realisation, on theimportance of which I cannot insist too often or too strongly. Thefirst is that the growth which the life of self-realisation fostersis, in its essence, harmonious and many-sided. The second is thatthe life of self-realisation is, from first to last, a life ofself-expression, and that self-expression and perception are the faceand obverse of the same mental effort. 

If the life of self-realisation did not provide for the growth of theself in its totality, the self as a living whole, it would not beworthy of its name. One-sided growth, inharmonious growth, growth inwhich some faculties are hypertrophied and others atrophied, is notself-realisation. When trees are planted close together, as in thebeech-forests of the Continent, they climb to great heights in theirstruggle for air and light, but they make no lateral growth. Whentrees are pollarded, they make abundant lateral growth, but theycease to climb upward. When trees are exposed to the prevailing windsof an open sea-coast, they are blown over away from the sea, and makeall their growth, such as it is, on the landward side. When treesare on the border of a thick plantation, they make all their growthtowards the open air, and are bare and leafless on the opposite side. In each of these cases the growth made is inharmonious and one-sided:the balance between the two intersecting planes of growth, or betweenthe two opposite sides, has been lost. But when a tree is planted inthe open, and when all the other conditions of growth are favourable, it grows harmoniously in all directions, --upward, outward, and allaround. In other words, it is growing as a whole, growing, as itought to grow, through every fibre of its being, and yet maintaininga perfect symmetry of form and the harmony of true proportion amongits various parts. 

This is the kind of growth which the soul makes in the life ofself-realisation; and if it falls appreciably short of this standard, if it develops itself on this side or that, to the neglect of allother sides, then we must say of it that, though it is realising thisor that faculty or group of faculties, it is not realising itself. Ihave spoken of the six great expansive instincts which indicate themain lines of the child's natural growth, and I have shown that inUtopia the cultivation of all those instincts is duly provided for. In the life of self-realisation the soul would continue to grow onthe lines which those instincts had marked out for it. I do not meanthat when the child goes out into the work-a-day world, he must giveto all six instincts the systematic training which they received, orought to have received, in school. The exigencies of the daily roundof life are such as to make that impossible, in all but the mostexceptional cases. But that is all the more reason why the expansiveinstincts should be carefully and skilfully trained in school. Forwhere they are so trained, an impetus is given to each of them whichwill keep it alive and active long after the direct influence ofthe school has ceased, and will enable it to absorb and assimilatewhatever nutriment may come in its way. If the Utopian trainingcannot be followed up, in its entirety, in the child's after-life, itcan at least initiate a movement which need never be arrested, --amovement in the direction of the triune goal of Man's being, the goaltowards which his expansive instincts are ever tending to take him, the goal of Love, Beauty, and Truth. 

The life of many-sided growth is also a life of self-expression. Thismeans that the self-expression, like the growth which it fosters, ismany-sided; and this again means that the perceptive faculties, whichunfold themselves through the medium of self-expression, are not somuch separate faculties as a general capacity for getting on termswith one's environment and gaining an insight into its laws andproperties. In a school which lays itself out to teach one or twosubjects thoroughly, to the neglect of others, a sense, or specialperceptive faculty, will gradually be evolved by the study of eachsubject, provided, of course, that the path of self-expression isfollowed, --a literary sense, a historical sense, a mathematicalsense, and so on. But while these special senses are being developed, the remaining perceptive faculties are being starved, and no attemptis being made to cultivate that general capacity of which I have justspoken. The consequent loss to the child, both in his school-life andin his after-life, is very great. For not only is his mental growthone-sided and inharmonious, but even in the subjects in which hespecialises he will lose appreciably, owing to his special perceptivefaculties not having as their background any general capacity forseeing things as they are. 

I will try to explain what I mean. In what is known as "Society"there is a valuable quality called "tact, " in virtue of which theman or woman who is endowed with it always says and does "the rightthing. " This quality is compounded partly of sympathetic insightinto the feelings, actual and possible, of others, and partly ofa keen and subtle sense for all the _nuances_ of social propriety. Like every other perceptive faculty, it is the outcome ofself-expression, --of years of self-expression on the plane of socialintercourse. That general perceptive faculty, or perceptive capacity, which is the outcome of years of self-expression on many sides ofone's being, has so much in common with the _tact_ of the man ofsociety, that the epithet _tactful_ may perhaps be applied to it. Thelarger, like the lesser, faculty is compounded, partly of sympatheticinsight into latent possibilities, and partly of a delicate sense for_nuances_ of all kinds. But even this formula does less than justiceto its complex nature. Generated as it is by a life of many-sidedself-expression, it reflects its origin in its internal constitution. Many elements of thought and feeling have woven themselves into it;and it is ready to take a colour from each new environment or evenfrom each new situation. It can become emotional, for example, whenthe matter in hand appeals, in any sort or degree, to the emotions;and there are occasions when its latent sense of humour becomes aninvaluable antidote to that over-seriousness which so often leads menastray. Above all, it is in its essence, imaginative, for it is everlearning to picture things to itself as they are or as they might be;and the higher the level and the wider the sphere of its activity, the more boldly imaginative it becomes. A faculty so subtle and sosympathetic must needs play a vitally important _rôle_, not only whenits possessor is studying "subjects" or handling concrete problems, but also, and more especially, when he is dealing with the "affairsof life"; and we can understand that when it is wholly or largelylacking, each of the special faculties which specialising is supposedto foster will suffer from not being tempered and yet vitalised byits all-penetrating influence. 

That we may the better understand this, and the better understandwhat the path of self-realisation does for the mental developmentof him who walks in it, let us ask ourselves what type of mind theconventional type of education is likely to produce. And let us studythe conventional type of education on what is supposed to be itshighest level. Let us consider the education given to the sons ofthe "upper classes. " And let us take this highest level at its ownhighest level. Let us take the case of those who go through thattri-partite course of education which begins in a high-class"Preparatory School, " is continued in one of the "Great PublicSchools, " and is completed at Oxford or Cambridge. A boy entersa Preparatory School at the age of eight or nine, and is thereprepared, in general for entrance into one of the Great PublicSchools, and in particular for one of the competitive examinations onthe results of which the entrance scholarships of the Great PublicSchools are awarded. He enters one of the Great Public Schools atthe age of thirteen or fourteen, and is there prepared, in generalfor admission to Oxford or Cambridge, and in particular for thescholarship examinations of the various Oxford and CambridgeColleges. He enters Oxford or Cambridge at the age of eighteenor nineteen, and is there prepared, directly for his degreeexamination--"Pass" or "Honours" as the case may be--and indirectlyfor the public examination which admits to the Indian and Colonial, and the higher grades of the Home, Civil Service. This course ofeducation lasts about fourteen years, and costs from £1, 500 to£4, 500. 

What will it do for the boy who goes through it? The education givenin the Preparatory School is completely dominated by the scholarshipand entrance examinations at the Great Public Schools. The lines onwhich those examinations are conducted are the lines on which thePreparatory Schoolmaster must educate his pupils. He has no choice inthe matter. The title "Preparatory" seals his doom. His business is, not to give his pupils the education that is best suited to theircapacities and their years, but to prepare them for admission to amore advanced school. The more scholarships he can win at Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, and the rest, the higher will be therepute of his school; and as the competition between school andschool is fierce and unintermittent, he cannot afford to throw away asingle chance. In other words, he cannot afford to make a singleserious experiment. The education given in the Great Public Schoolsis similarly dominated by the scholarship and entrance examinationsheld by the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. The lines on which thoseexaminations are conducted are in the main the lines on which theboys must be educated. It is possible that the Great Public Schoolsare freer to go their own ways than are the Preparatory Schools; butif they are, they make but little use of their freedom. 

So far as the rank and file of the boys are concerned, it may bedoubted if the word "educative" is applicable, in any sense ordegree, to the daily round of their work. Of the six great expansiveinstincts which are struggling to evolve themselves in every healthychild, not one can be said to find a congenial soil or a stimulatingatmosphere in the ordinary classroom either of the Preparatory or ofthe Public School. Four of the six--the _dramatic_, the _artistic_, the _musical_, and the _constructive_--are entirely or almostentirely neglected. Music and Handwork[27] are "extras" (a fatallysignificant word); the teaching of Drawing is, as a rule, quiteperfunctory; and Acting is not a recognised part of the schoolcurriculum. The truth is that marks are not given for these"subjects"--for in the eyes of the schoolmaster they are all"subjects"--in any entrance or scholarship examination, and thattherefore it does not _pay_ to teach them. There remain twoinstincts, --the _communicative_ and the _inquisitive_. The study ofthe "Humanities"--History and Literature, ancient and modern--oughtto train the former; and the study of Science ought to train thelatter. But in the case of the average boy, the study of theHumanities resolves itself, in the main, into a prolonged andunsuccessful tussle with the difficulties of the Greek and Latinlanguages, the mastering of which is regarded as an end in itselfinstead of as the gateway to the wonder-worlds of ancient life andthought; and the study of Science is, as a rule, a pure farce. [28]Not one, then, of the expansive instincts of the average boy receivesany training during the nine or ten years of his school life; and as, in his struggle for the "Pass" degree of his University, he willfollow the lines on which he has been accustomed to work in both hisschools, he will go out into the world at the age of twenty-two ortwenty-three, the victim of a course of education which has lastedfor fourteen years and cost thousands of pounds, and which has donenothing whatever to foster his mental or spiritual growth. It is truethat in all the Public Schools a certain amount of informal educationis done through the medium of Musical Societies, Natural HistorySocieties, Debating Societies, School Magazines, and the like; thatthe discipline of a Public School, with its system of School andHouse prefects, has considerable educational value; that the playingfields do something towards the formation of character; that theboys, by exchanging experiences and discussing things freely amongthemselves, help to educate one another; and that during the fourmonths of each year which the schoolboy spends away from school, heis, or may be, exposed to educative influences of various kinds. [29]But the broad fact remains that the _studies_ of the youthfulgraduate, whether in school classroom or college lecture-room, havebeen wholly unformative and therefore wholly uneducative. 

But let us consider the education given in our Public Schools andUniversities, at what is presumably the highest of all its levels. Let us see what is done for the boys who have sufficient ability towin Scholarships and read for Honours at Oxford and Cambridge. It isto the supposed interests of these brighter boys that the vitalinterests of their duller schoolfellows are perforce sacrificed. Arethe results worth the sacrifice? The brighter boys fall into two maingroups, --those who have a turn for the "Humanities, " and those whohave a turn for Mathematics and Science. Where the "Humanities" areeffectively taught, --where, for example, the scholar is allowed topass through the portals of Latin and Greek grammar and compositioninto the wonder-world that lies beyond them, --the _communicative_instinct receives a valuable training. It is, unfortunately, quitepossible for a boy, or even for a man, to be what is called a "goodscholar, " and yet to take no interest whatever in the history orliterature of Greece and Rome; and the examination system undoubtedlytends to foster this bastard type of humanism. But when, as a resultof his school and University training, a scholar has passed thelinguistic portals and found pleasure in the worlds beyond, we maysay of him that his education has fostered the growth of one of hisexpansive instincts, --perhaps the most important of all, but stillonly one. When Science is effectively taught, the growth of the_inquisitive_ instinct is similarly fostered; but the inquisitiveinstinct, though of great value, when trained in conjunction withother instincts, has but little value as a "formative" when trainedby itself. From this point of view it compares unfavourably with thecommunicative instinct, being as much less formative than the latter, as the mysteries of the material world are less significant and lessable to inspire and vitalise their interpreter than the mysteries ofhuman life; and a purely (or mainly) scientific training is thereforeworth far less as an instrument of education than a purely (ormainly) humanistic training. 

But why should the boys at our Great Public Schools and the youngmen at our Universities have to choose between a scientific and ahumanistic training? Why should these ancient and famous institutionsbe content to train one only of the six expansive instincts insteadof at least _two_? Here, as elsewhere, the scholarship system blocksthe way. Some scholarships are given for Classics, others forHistory, others for Mathematics, others for Natural Science. Nota single scholarship is given, at either University, for generalcapacity, as measured by the results of a many-sided examination. Why should this be? The answer is that under any system of formalexamination many-sidedness in education necessarily means_smattering_; and that against smattering the Universities have, veryproperly, set their faces. But, after all, there is no necessaryconnection between many-sidedness and smattering. In Utopia, wherethe concentric rings of growth are formed by the gradual evolution ofan inner life, whatever feeds that inner life is a contribution, however humble, to the growth of the whole tree; and many-sidedness, far from being a defect, is one of the first conditions of successin education. But in the Great Public Schools, where veneers ofinformation are being assiduously laid on the surface of the boy'smind with a view to his passing some impending examination, thegreater the number and variety of such veneers, the more certain theyall are to split and waste and perish. Indeed the real reason whyspecialising has to be resorted to in the case of the brighter boys, is that in no other way can provision be made for the fatal processof veneering being dispensed with, and for faculty being evolved bygrowth from within. 

But a heavy price has to be paid for the growth of these specialisedfaculties. If Science is to be seriously studied the student mustgive the whole of his time to it. This means that he must give up theidea of educating himself. It is only by turning his back on history, on literature, on philosophy, on music, on art, that he can hope tomeet the exacting and ever-growing demands which Science makes onthose who desire to be initiated into its mysteries. To say that whenhe has "taken his degree" he is only half-educated, is greatly toover-estimate the formative influence of his highly specialisedtraining. A sense has undoubtedly been developed in him, an instincthas been awakened, one or two of his mental faculties have beenvigorously cultivated; but his training has been the reverse ofhumanising; and as his studies and his consequent attitude towardsNature have been essentially _analytical_, he may, in the absence ofthose correctives which his compulsory specialising has withheld fromhim, have learned to regard the dead side of things as the realside, --a conception which, if it mastered him, would materialise hiswhole outlook on life. 

The case of the "humanist" is different. The subjects which hestudies appeal to many sides of his being; and if he could respondto their appeal, they might do much for his mental and spiritualdevelopment. That he should be able to respond to their appeal is ofvital importance. When he has become a decent "scholar, " a chanceis given to him, which if he neglects he will probably lose forever, --the chance of making good, in part at least, the deficienciesof his early education. Had he lived in Utopia, his life ofmany-sided self-expression would have given a general training to hisperceptive faculties, in which the twin faculties of imagination andsympathy would have had their share. But neither in his PreparatorySchool nor in the lower classes of his Public School has any seriousattempt been made during school hours to ripen either of those mightyfaculties, whereas much has been done in both schools to retard theirgrowth. He is doomed, then, to begin his study of the history andliterature of the Ancient World with a considerable knowledge ofthe Latin and Greek languages, but (in too many cases) with anunimaginative mind and an unsympathetic heart. There is, however, much in that history and that literature, --not to speak ofthe history and the literature of his own and other moderncountries, --which, if it could but have its way, would appealstrongly to his imagination and his sympathy, dormant and undevelopedas these faculties are, --appeal to them so strongly as to awaken themat last from their slumber and quicken them into active life. Butalas! the shadow of an impending examination is always falling on hishumanistic studies, nullifying the appeal that they make to him, andcompelling him to look at them from a sordidly utilitarian point ofview. For to give marks for the response that he might make to theirappeal, or even to set questions which would afford free scope forthe play of his imagination or the flow of his sympathy, is beyondthe power of any examiner. There are two things, and two only, which"pay" on the examination day, --the possession of information and thepower to make use of it; and the humanist who would win prizes at hisschool or gain high honours at his University, must therefore regardthe memorable doings and the imperishable sayings of his fellow-men, not as things to be imagined and felt, admired and loved, wondered atand pondered over, but as things to be pigeon-holed in his memory, tobe taken out and arranged under headings, to be dissected andcommented on and criticised. [30]

Of the part that memory plays in the education of our humanist, Ineed not speak. An undue burden is probably laid upon it; but that isa matter of minor importance. What is of supreme importance is thatin cultivating his critical faculty with an almost intensive culture, while they starve, or at any rate leave untended, his more vital andmore emancipative faculties of imagination and sympathy, our GreatPublic Schools and Universities are doing him a serious and lastinginjury. Let us take the case of a young man of energy and ability whohas just left Oxford or Cambridge, having won high honours in one ofthe humanistic "schools. " Let us assume that, like so many of hiskind, he has a keenly critical mind, but is deficient in imaginationand sympathy; and let us then try to forecast his future. That thefaith of his childhood, undermined by his criticism, has alreadyfallen to pieces or will shortly do so, is more than probable. Thathe will be too unimaginative to attempt to construct a new faith outof the ruins of the old, is practically certain. His lack of faith, in the broader sense of the word, will incapacitate him for highseriousness (which he will regard as "bad form"), and _a fortiori_for enthusiasm (which he will shun like the plague), and willtherefore predispose him to frivolity. Being fully persuaded, owingto his lack of imaginative sympathy, that his own outlook on life isalone compatible with mental sanity, and yet being too clear-sightedto accept that outlook as satisfactory, he will mingle with hisfrivolity a strain of bitterness and discontent, --the bitterness ofself-corroding scepticism, and the discontent which grows apacethrough its very effort to ignore its own existence. In a word, hisattitude towards life will be one of _cynicism_, --that blend ofhardness and bitterness with frivolity which exactly inverts theideal of the modern poet, when he dreams of an age in the far-offfuture, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity. [31]

And the bitterness of his cynicism will be made bitterer still bythe fact that, owing to his being (in all probability) unmusical, inartistic, and unable to amuse himself with any form of handwork, hewill have no taste or hobby to distract him from himself. For a time, indeed, the "genial sense of youth" will keep his sinister tendenciesin check; and in the middle period of life, his struggle to achieve"success"--for of course he will be an externalist to the core--willtend to keep them in the background. But in his later years, when hewill have either failed to achieve "success" or discovered--toolate--that it was not worth achieving, his cynicism will assertitself without let or hindrance, and, with his growing incapacity forfrivolity, will become harder and bitterer, till at last the darkshadow of incurable pessimism will fall on him and involve hisdeclining years in ever deepening gloom. I do not say that many ofour University humanists will conform to this type; but I do say thatthe type is easily recognisable and is becoming increasinglyfamiliar. 

Even the intellectual development of our humanist, who is nothing ifnot intellectual, will be adversely affected by the one-sidedness ofhis education. Well-informed and acutely critical he will probablybe; but he will lack the saving grace of that "tactful" faculty whichyears of many-sided self-expression can alone evolve, --a facultywhich (as we have seen) is subtly adaptive when it deals with smallmatters, boldly imaginative when it deals with great matters, anddelicately sympathetic along the whole range of its activity. This sinuous and penetrative sense is to the more logicallycritical faculty what equity is to law; and in its absence theintellectuality of our young "intellectual" will be as incomplete aswould be the legal system of a country which knew nothing of equityand tried to bring all legal problems under the direct control ofpositive law. For it will be his business, as he goes through life, to deal in and with words and phrases; and as words and phrases areever tending to change their force, and even their meaning, under ourhands, and as his use and treatment of them will be logical and"legal" rather than tactful and "equitable, " he will again and againmisinterpret and misuse them, and will so do badly the very thingwhich he is expected to do well. The man who, though endowed with anacute and vigorous intellect, can neither think imaginatively norreason tactfully, has grave intellectual defects; and the blinder heis to the existence of these defects the more pronounced will theybecome. 

The pity of it is that when these unimaginative "intellectuals" goout into the world, they will fill posts in which they will haveunrivalled opportunities for establishing and disseminating theirunwholesome influence. A section of them will go into the teachingprofession, the higher grades of which are almost entirely recruitedfrom Oxford and Cambridge. Another section will go into the legalprofession, and through it will enter Parliament in considerablenumbers, where, being trained advocates, they will exercise aninfluence out of all proportion to their numerical strength. And athird section will man the higher grades of the Home, Colonial, andIndian Civil Services. Teachers, legislators, administrators, --ifthere are any walks in life in which cynicism and a capacity formerely destructive criticism are out of place, and in whichimagination and sympathy are imperatively demanded, they are thesethree; and it is nothing short of a national calamity that thesegreat and commanding professions should be manned, in part at least, by men whose mission in life is to paralyse rather than to vitalise, to fetter rather than to set free. 

The further pity of it is that the training of these "intellectuals"might easily have taken an entirely different course. Much of thespecialising which goes on in our Great Public Schools andUniversities, and which is so destructive of mental and spiritualvitality, is wholly unnecessary. The course of education which thesons of the "upper classes" go through has this in common withelementary education, that in neither case need "utilitarian"considerations weigh with the teachers. The parents of a largeproportion of our Public School boys can afford to give their sons a_liberal_ education (in the truest and fullest sense of the word) upto the age of twenty-two or twenty-three; and in the case of theseboys, at any rate, the excessive specialisation which makes theireducation so illiberal is done, not in response to the demandsof professions (such as the medical or the engineering) whichnecessitate early specialising, but solely in response to the demandsof an examination system which we adopted before we had begun to askourselves what education meant, and which, partly from the force ofhabit and partly because it is in keeping with our general attitudetowards life, we still bow down before with a devotion as ardent andas irrational as that which inspired the cry of "Great is Diana ofthe Ephesians. "[32]

At its best, then, the education given by the Great Public Schoolsand Universities fosters the growth of one of the expansiveinstincts, --the _communicative_, a mighty instinct which opens up toimagination and sympathy the whole wide world of human life; butbecause it leaves all the other expansive instincts untended, itgives that one instinct an inadequate and unsymmetrical training, atraining which checks the growth of the very faculties--imaginationand sympathy--of which the instinct is largely compounded and for thesake of which it may almost be said to exist. At its second best, this costly education fosters the growth of the _inquisitive_instinct, --a grandly expansive instinct when trained in conjunctionwith the others, but one which is constrictive rather than expansivewhen trained by itself and for its own sake. At its ordinary level, it trains no instinct whatever, and is therefore unworthy of the nameof education. Why should this be so? Why should a course of educationwhich lasts so long and costs so much do so little for its victims, and do that little so badly or, at any rate, so inadequately? Becausefrom first to last it has looked outward instead of inward; becauseit has laboured unceasingly to produce "results, " and has never givena thought to growth. [33]

 Let us now go to the other end of the social scale. What the path ofself-realisation might do for the children of the "upper classes" ifthey were allowed to follow it, we may roughly calculate, partly bymeasuring what the alternative scheme of education has failed to dofor them, partly by reminding ourselves of what the path has done forthe village children of Utopia. The children of the "upper classes"have such an advantage over the children of Utopia in the matter ofenvironment, --to say nothing of inherited capacity, --that one wouldexpect the path to do much more for their mental development thanit has done for the mental development of the Utopians, especiallyas they could afford to remain much longer in the first and mostimportant of its stages, the stage of self-education (in the morelimited sense of the word). The gain to the whole nation if themental development of the highest social stratum could be raised asmuch above its normal level as the mental development of youthfulUtopia has been raised above the normal level of an English ruralvillage, would be incalculably great. But greater still--incalculablygreater--would be the gain to the nation if the rank and file of itschildren could be led into the path of self-realisation, and thereinrise to the high level of brightness, intelligence, andresourcefulness which has been reached in Utopia. 

Nor is this dream so wildly impracticable as some might imagine. Sofar as the natural capacity of the average child is concerned, thereis no bar to its realisation. Egeria has taught me that the mentalcapacity of the average child, even in a rustic village belonging toa county which is proverbial for the slow wits of its rustics, isvery great. It is sometimes said that of the children who have beentrained in our elementary schools, not one in twenty is fit to profitby the education given in a secondary school: and if by this ismeant that in nineteen cases out of twenty the elementary scholar, _educated as he has probably been_, is unlikely to profit by theeducation given in a secondary school, _conducted as those schoolsusually are_, I am not prepared to say offhand that the statementis untrue. But if it means that the average mental capacity of thechildren of our "lower orders" is hopelessly inferior to that ofthe children of our middle and upper classes, I can say withouthesitation that it is a slander and a lie. Whether there is anydifference, in respect of innate mental capacity, between leveland level of our social scale, may be doubted; but the Utopianexperiment has proved to demonstration that in the lowest level ofall the innate mental capacity is so great that we cannot well expectto find any considerable advance on it even in the highest level ofall. 

But where, it will be asked, are we to find Egerias to man ourelementary schools? For the moment this problem does not admit of apractical solution. But that need not discourage us. I admit that infar too many of our schools the teachers, through no fault of theirown, are what I may call machine-made, and that they are engaged inturning out machine-made scholars, some of whom in the fullness oftime will develop into machine-made teachers. But there is a way ofescape from this vicious circle, --the path of self-realisation. That path has transformed the children of a rustic village in aslow-witted county into Utopians. Why should it not transform someat least among the boys and girls who are thinking of entering theteaching profession into Egerias, or at any rate into teachersof Egeria's type? Even as it is, replicas of Egeria, --not exactreplicas, for she is too original to be easily replicated, but teachers who, like her, preach and practise the gospel ofself-education, --are beginning to spring up in various parts of thecountry; and each of their schools, besides being a centre of light, may well become a nursery for teachers who will follow in thefootsteps of those who have trained them, and will in their turn dopioneer work in other schools. The thin end of the wedge is even nowbeing driven into the close-grained mass of tradition and routine;and each successive blow that is struck by a teacher of intelligenceand initiative will widen the incipient cleft. 

The dream, then, of leading the children of England--the children ofthe "masses" as well as of the "classes"--into the path ofself-realisation, is not so widely impracticable as to convict thedreamer of insanity. And if we could realise the dream, if we couldgo but a little way towards realising it, how immense would be thegain to our country! If the average level of mental development inEngland were as high as it is in Utopia, to what height would not themen and women of exceptional ability be able to rise? The mountainpeaks that spring from an upland plateau soar higher towards the skythan the peaks, of the same apparent height, that spring from alow-lying plain. And "the great mountains lift the lowlands on totheir sides. "

But this is not the only reason why the gospel of self-realisationshould be preached in all parts of the land. There is another reasonwhich is becoming more and more urgent. If the Utopian scheme ofeducation were widely adopted, an antidote would be found to a graveand growing evil which is beginning to imperil the mental health ofevery civilised community, and of this more than any other. The morecivilised (in the Western sense of the word) a country becomes, theless educative does life--the rough-and-tumble life of the work-a-dayworld--tend to become. In a thoroughly "civilised" country, where thematerial conditions of life are highly organised, and where industryis highly specialised, so much is done for the individual by thosewho organise his life and labour, that it ceases to be necessary forhim, except within narrow limits, to shift for himself. In a lesscivilised community men have to use their wits as well as their handsat every turn; and resourcefulness and versatility are therefore inconstant demand. The industrial life of a Russian peasant, who is ofnecessity a Jack-of-many-trades, is incomparably more educative thanthat of the Lancashire cotton operative, most of whose thinking andmuch of whose operating may be said to be done for him by thecomplicated machinery which he controls; who does, indeed, learn todo one thing surpassingly well, but in doing that one thing becomes, as he progresses, more and more automatic, so that the highest praisewe can give him is to say that he does his work with the sureness andaccuracy of a machine. It follows that the more civilised a countrybecomes, the more important is the part that the elementary schoolplays in the life of the nation, --and that not merely because theability to read, write, and cipher is, in the conditions which moderncivilisation imposes, almost as much a "necessary of life" as theability to walk or talk, but also and more especially because itdevolves upon the school to do for the citizen in his childhood whatlife will not do for him in his manhood, or will do for him but inscant measure, to stimulate his vital powers into healthful activity, to foster the growth of his soul. And the more the people in acivilised country are withdrawn from the soil and herded into minesand mills and offices, the more imperative is it that the schoolshould quicken rather than deaden the child's innate faculties, should bring sunshine rather than frost into his adolescent life. Insuch a country as ours the responsibilities of the teacher are onlyequalled by his opportunities; for the child is in his hands duringthe most impressionable years of life; and those years will have beenwasted, and worse than wasted, unless they have fitted the child toface the world with resourcefulness, intelligence, and vital energy, ready to wrest from his environment, by enlarging and otherwisetransforming it, those educative influences which are still to be hadfor the seeking, but are no longer automatically supplied. 

_The Moral Aspect of Self-Realisation. _

If Man, if each man in turn, is born _good_, the process of growth, or self-realisation, which is presumably taking him towards theperfection of which his nature admits, must needs make himcontinuously _better_. In other words, growth, provided that it ishealthy, harmonious, and many-sided, provided that it is growth ofthe whole being, is in itself and of inner necessity the mostmoralising of all processes. Nay, it is the only moralising process, for in no other way can what is naturally good be transformed intowhat is ideally best. 

This argument, apart from its being open to the possible objectionthat it plays on the meaning of the word "good, " is perhaps tooconclusive to be really convincing. I will therefore try to make myway to its conclusion by another line of thought. 

The desire to grow, to advance towards maturity, to realise his trueself--the self that is his in embryo from the very beginning--isstrong in every living thing, and is therefore strong in every childof man. But the desire, which necessarily takes its share in thegeneral process of growth, must needs pass through many stages on itsway to its own highest form. In infancy, it is a desire for physicallife, for the preservation and expansion of the physical self; and inthis stage it is, as I have already pointed out, uncompromisinglyselfish. The new-born baby is the incarnation of selfishness; and itis quite right that he should be so. It is his way of trying torealise himself. As the child grows older, the desire to grow becomesa desire for self-aggrandisement, --a desire to shine in various ways, to surpass others, to be admired, to be praised; and though in thisstage it may give rise to much vanity and selfishness, still, so longas it has vigorous growth behind it and is in its essence a desirefor further growth, it is in the main a healthy tendency, and to callit sinful or vicious would be a misuse of words. 

But when, in the course of time, the average, ordinary, surfaceself--the self with which we are all only too familiar--has beenfully evolved and firmly established, the day may come when, owing tovarious adverse conditions, the growth of the soul will be arrested, and the ordinary self will come to be regarded as the true self, asthe self which the man may henceforth accept and rest in, as theself in virtue of which he is what he is. Should the desire forself-aggrandisement survive that day, the door would be thrown opento selfishness of a malignant type and to general demoralisation. Andthis is what would assuredly come to pass. In the first place, thedesire for self-aggrandisement, which always has the push of Nature'sexpansive forces behind it, would certainly survive that ill-omenedday. Indeed, it were well that it should do so; for "while there islife, there is hope, " and when the soul is ceasing to grow, it isthrough the desire for self-aggrandisement that Nature makes her lasteffort to keep it alive, by compelling it to energise on one or twoat least of the many sides of its being. In the second place, thedesire would gradually cease to be resolvable into the desire forcontinued growth, and would gradually transform itself into thedesire to glorify and make much of the ordinary self, to minister toits selfish demands, to give it possessions, riches, honour, power, social rank, and whatever else might serve to feed its self-esteem, and make it think well of itself because it was well thought of by"the world. " And in the third place, in its effort to glorify andmake much of the ordinary self, the desire would, without a moment'scompunction, see other persons pushed to the wall, trampled underfoot, slighted and humiliated, robbed of what they valued most, outraged and wounded in their tenderest feelings. It is my firmconviction that at the present day three-fourths of the moral evil inthe world, or at any rate in the Western world, are the direct orindirect outcome of egoism, --egoism which, as a rule, is mean, petty, and small-minded, but is often cruel and ruthless, and can onoccasion become heroic and even titanic in its capacity for evil andin the havoc that it works, --egoism which in ninety-nine cases out ofa hundred is generated by the desire for self-aggrandisement havingoutlived its better self, the desire to grow. 

If arrested growth is the chief source of malignant egoism, there isan obvious remedy for the deadly malady. The egoist must re-enter thepath of self-realisation. His great enemy is his lower self;[34] andthe surest way to conquer this enemy is to outgrow it, to leave itfar behind. When the path of self-realisation has been re-entered, when the soul has resumed the interrupted process of its growth, thedesire for self-aggrandisement will spontaneously transform itself, first into the desire for further growth, and then into the desirefor outgrowth or escape from self, and will cease to minister to theselfish demands of the lower self; and as the lower self is all thewhile being gradually left behind by the growing soul, and istherefore ceasing to assert itself, and ceasing to clamour, like aspoilt child, for this thing and for that, --it will not be longbefore the antidote to the poison of egoism will have taken dueeffect, and the health of the soul will have been restored. 

But let me say again--for I can scarcely say it too often--that thegrowth which emancipates from self is many-sided growth, the growth, not of any one faculty, or group of faculties, but of the soul assuch. Were it not so, the life of self-realisation might easilybecome a life of glorified and therefore intensified selfishness. Itis quite possible, as we know from experience, for a high degree of"culture" to co-exist with a high degree of egoism. It is possible, for example, for the æsthetic instincts, when not kept aglow by thesympathetic, or hardened with an alloy of the scientific, to evolvea peculiar form of selfishness which leads at last to loosenessof life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for thescientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the æstheticand the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of characterwhich is self-centred and selfish owing to its positiveness and lackof imagination. But these are instances of inharmonious growth. Whengrowth is harmonious and many-sided, it leads of necessity toout-growth, to escape from self. For the expansive instincts are somany ways of escape from self which Nature opens up to the soul;--thesympathetic instincts, a way of escape into the boundless æther oflove; the æsthetic instincts, a way of escape into the wonder-worldof beauty; the scientific instincts, a way of escape into the worldof mysteries which is lighted by the "high white star of truth. " Itis only when one of the expansive instincts is allowed to aggrandiseitself at the expense of the others, that the consequent outgrowth ofselfishness in what I may call the internal economy of one's naturebegins to reflect itself in a general selfishness of character. Aninstinct may readily become egoistic in its effort to affirm orover-affirm itself, to grasp at its share or more than its share ofthe child's rising life: and if it does, it may gradually suck downinto the vortex of its egoism the whole character of the child as heripens into the man. But growth, as such, is anti-egoistic justbecause it is growth, because it is a movement towards a larger, fuller, and freer life: and it is restricted, even more thanone-sided growth, --it is the apathy, the helplessness, the deadnessof soul that overtakes, first the child and then the man, when hisexpansive instincts are systematically starved and thwarted, --whichis the chief cause of his incarceration in his petty self. 

If three-fourths of the moral evil in the world are due tomalignant egoism, the source of the remaining fourth is, in a word, _sensuality_. By sensuality I mean the undue or perverted developmentof the desires and passions of the animal self, --the desire forfood and drink, the sexual desires, the desire for physical orsemi-physical excitement, the animal passion of anger, and the rest. As an enemy of the soul, sensuality is less dangerous, because moreopen and less insidious, than egoism. The egoist, who mistakes hisordinary for his real self, may well lead a life of systematicselfishness without in the least realising that he is living amiss. But the animal self is never mistaken for the real self; and thesensualist always has an uneasy feeling in the back of his mind that, in indulging his animal desires and passions to excess, he is doingwrong. This feeling may, indeed, die out when he "grows hard" in his"viciousness"; but in the earlier stages of the sensual life it issure to "give pause"; and there are, I think, few persons who do notfeel that the sensual desires and passions are so remote from theheadquarters of human life, that in yielding to them beyond duemeasure they are acting unworthily of their higher selves. At anyrate we may regard the temptations to sensual indulgence that lie inour path as evil influences which are assailing us from withoutrather than from within; and we may therefore liken them to theblight, rust, mites, mildew, and other pests that assail hops, fruit, wheat, and other growing plants. 

And, like the pests that assail growing plants, the sensual peststhat war against the soul must be beaten off by vigorous andcontinuous growth. No other prophylactic is so sure or so effectiveas this. When I was asked whether the Utopian education was usefulor not, I adduced, as an instance of its usefulness, its power ofprotecting the young from the allurements of a pernicious literature, to which the victims of the conventional type of education, withtheir lowered vitality and their lack of interest in life, tooreadily succumb. This is a typical example of the way in which therising sap of life strengthens the soul to resist the temptations toundue sensual indulgence by which it is always liable to be assailed. The victim of a repressive, growth-arresting type of education, having few if any interests in life, not infrequently takes to themeretricious excitements of sensuality in order to relieve theintolerable monotony of his days. But the training which makes formany-sided growth, by filling the life of the "adolescent" with manyand various interests, removes temptations of this particular typefrom his path. And it does more for him than this. It generates inhim a state of health and well-being, in which the very vigour andelasticity of his spiritual fibre automatically shields him fromtemptation by refusing to allow the germs of moral disease to effecta lodgment in his soul. It would be well if our moralists couldrealise that the chief causes of weakness in the presence of sensualtemptation are, on the one hand, boredom and _ennui_, and on the otherhand flabbiness and degeneracy of spiritual fibre, and that theremedy for both these defects is to give the young the type ofeducation which will foster rather than hinder growth. 

We are now in a position to estimate the respective values, asmoralising influences, of the path of self-realisation and the paththat leads to "results. " Whatever tends to arrest growth tends alsoand in an equal degree to demoralise Man's life; for, on the onehand, by transforming the healthy desire for continued growth intothe unhealthy desire for mere self-aggrandisement, it generatesmalignant egoism, with its endless train of attendant evils; and, onthe other hand, by depressing the vitality of the soul and soweakening its powers of resistance, it exposes it to the attacks ofthose powers and desires which we speak of in the aggregate assensuality. If this is so, the inference is irresistible that theexternalism of "civilised" life, with the repressive and devitalisingsystem of education which it necessitates, is responsible for thegreater part of the immorality--I am using the word in its widestsense--of the present age. Contrariwise, whatever tends to fostergrowth tends also, and in an equal degree, to moralise Man'slife; for, on the one hand, by transforming the desire forself-aggrandisement into the desire, first for continued growthand then for out-growth, it gives the soul strength to eliminatethe poison of egoism from its system; and, on the other hand, byvitalising the soul and so strengthening its powers of resistance, itenables it to beat off the attacks of those enemies of its well-beingwhich serve under the banner of sensuality. If this is so, theinference is irresistible that self-realisation is the only effectiveremedy for the immorality of the present age. 

The comparison between the two schemes of life may be carried a stagefurther. If egoism and sensuality are the two primary vices, thesecondary vices will be the various ways and means by which egoismand sensuality try to compass their respective ends. Let us selectfor consideration one group of these vices, --the important groupwhich fall under the general head of _untruthfulness_. Insincerity, disingenuousness, shiftiness, trickery, duplicity, chicanery, evasion, intrigue, _suppressio veri_, _suggestio falsi_, fraud, mendacity, treachery, hypocrisy, cant, --their name is Legion. Thatexternalism, whether in school or out of school, is the foster-motherof the whole brood, is almost too obvious to need demonstration. In school the child lives in an atmosphere of unreality andmake-believe. The demand for mechanical obedience which is alwayspressing upon him is a demand that he shall be untrue to himself. Sincerity of expression, which is the fountain-head of alltruthfulness, is not merely slighted by his teacher, but issystematically proscribed. He is always (under compulsion) pretendingto be what he is not, --to know what he does not know, to see what hedoes not see, to think what he does not think, to believe what hedoes not believe. And he lives, from hour to hour, under the darkshadow of severity and distrust, --severity which is too oftenanswered by servility, and distrust which is too often answered bydeceit. When he goes out into the world, he finds that though thereare many sins for which there is forgiveness, there is one for whichthere is no forgiveness, --the sin of being found out; and he ordershis life accordingly. He finds that he must give account of himselfto public opinion, which necessarily judges according to theappearance of things, and is only too ready to be hoodwinked andgulled. He finds that to "succeed" is to achieve certain outward andvisible results, --results which are out of relation to the _vraievérité_ of things, which are in no way symbolical of merit, and forthe winning of which any means may be resorted to provided thatscandals are avoided and the letter of the law is obeyed. He findsthat the system of advertising which plays so large a part in modernlife, and without which it is so hard to "succeed, " is in the main asystem of organised mendacity. Finally, and above all, he finds thatthe examination system, with its implicit demands for trickery andshiftiness, and its almost open invitation to cram and cheat, is notconfined to the school but has its equivalent in "the world, " and isin fact the basis of civilisation as well as of education in theWest. 

This is the provision that externalism makes for the practicalinculcation of truthfulness, --a virtue which its religion andits ethics profess to honour above all others. The life ofself-realisation, on the other hand, is a life of genuineself-expression; and a life of genuine self-expression is obviouslya life of fearless sincerity. In such a life there is no place foruntruthfulness or any member of its impish brood. The one concern ofthe child, as of the man, is to be loyal to intrinsic reality, to betrue to his true self. His standard is always inward, not outward. He knows that he is what he is, not what he is reputed to be. _Quantum unusquisque est in oculis Tuis, tantum est et non amplius. _

Here, then, as elsewhere, we see that the difference between themorality of externalism and the morality of self-realisation is adifference, not of degree but of direct antagonism, --the differencebetween a poison and its antidote, between the cause of a malady andthe cure. 

While the path of self-realisation is emancipating us from egoism andsensuality, in what general direction is it leading us? Is itsethical ideal positive or merely negative? And if it is positive, what is its character, and how is it to be realised? The answer tothis question will be given in the remaining sections. 

_The Social Aspect of Self-realisation. _

He must either be richly endowed with "the good things of life" or beof an exceptionally optimistic disposition, who can view the existingsocial order with complete satisfaction. Even among those who arerichly endowed with "the good things of life" there must be many whorealise that the "Have-nots" have some cause for complaint. And evenamong those who are of an exceptionally optimistic disposition theremust be some who realise that the grounds of their optimism arepersonal to themselves, and that they cannot expect many others toshare their satisfaction with things as they are. 

The phrase "the good things of life" is significant, and explainsmuch. It means that an outward standard of reality has fullyestablished itself in the community, that money and the possessionsof various kinds which money can buy are regarded as the good thingsof life, --things which are intrinsically good, and thereforelegitimate ends of Man's ambition and endeavour, things to pursuewhich is to fulfil one's destiny and to win which is to achievesalvation. It means, in other words, that the life of the communityis a scramble for material possessions and outward and visible"results"--a scramble which on its lowest level becomes a strugglefor bare existence, and on the next level a struggle for the"necessaries of life"--and that this legalised scramble is the basisof the whole social order. In such a scramble the great prizes arenecessarily few, and the number of complete failures is alwaysconsiderable; for the wealthier a country, the higher is its standardof comfort, so that the _proportion_ of failures--the percentage ofmen who are submerged and outcast, who are in want and misery--is atleast as great in the wealthiest as in the poorest community, whilethe extremes of wealth and poverty are as a rule greatest where thepursuit of riches is carried on with the keenest vigour and the mostcomplete success. 

There are many persons, rich as well as poor, who, viewing thelegalised scramble from an entirely impersonal standpoint, are filledwith disgust and dismay, and who dream of making an end of it, bysubstituting what they call _collectivism_ for the individualismwhich they regard as the source of all our troubles. These personsare known as _Socialists_. Their ruling idea is that the "State"should become the sole owner of property, and that this radicalchange should be effected by a series of legislative measures. Withtheir social ideal, regarded as an ideal, one has of course thedeepest sympathy. Their motto is, I believe, "Each for all, and allfor each"; and if this ideal could be realised, the social millenniumwould indeed have begun. But in trying to compass their ends bylegislation, _before the standard of reality has been changed_, theyare making a disastrous mistake. For, to go no further, our schoolsare hotbeds of individualism, the spirit of "competitive selfishness"being actively and systematically fostered in all of them, with a fewexceptions; and so long as this is so, so long as our highlyindividualised society is recruited, year by year, by a largecontingent of individualists of all ranks, drawn from schools ofall grades, for so long will the Socialistic ideal remain animpracticable dream. An impracticable and a mischievous dream; forin the attempt to realise it, the community will almost inevitablybe brought to the verge of civil war. When the seeds of socialisticlegislation, or even of socialistic agitation, are sown in a soilwhich is highly charged with the poison of individualism, theresulting crop will be class hatred and social strife. 

No, we must change our standard of reality before we can hope toreform society. Where the outward standard prevails, where materialpossessions are regarded as "the good things of life, " the basis ofsociety must needs be competitive rather than communal, for therewill never be enough of those "good things" to satisfy the desires of_all_ the members of any community. And even if the socialisticdream of state-ownership could be universally realised, thechange--so long as the outward standard of reality prevailed--wouldnot necessarily be for the better, and might well be for the worse. Competition for "the good things of life" would probably go on asfiercely as ever; but it would be a scramble among nations ratherthan individuals, and it might conceivably take the form of openwarfare waged on a titanic scale. [35] Even now there are indicationsthat such a struggle, or series of struggles, if not actuallyapproaching, is at any rate not beyond the bounds of possibility. Andon the way to the realisation of the collectivist ideal, we shouldprobably have in each community a similar struggle for wealth andpower among political parties, --a struggle which would generate manysocial evils, of which civil war might not be the most malignant. 

But if we are to change our standard of reality we must change it, first and foremost, in the school. The way to do this is quitesimple. We need not give lessons on altruism. We need not teach orpreach a new philosophy of life. All that we need do is to foster thegrowth of the child's soul. When the growth of the soul is healthyand harmonious, the cultivation of all the expansive instincts havingbeen fully provided for, the _communal_ instinct will evolve itselfin its own season; and when the communal instinct has been fullyevolved, the social order will begin to reform itself. This is whathas happened in Utopia. There, where competition is unknown, whereprizes are undreamed of, where the growth of the child's naturalfaculties, and the consequent well-being of his soul, is "its ownexceeding great reward, " the communal instinct has grown with thegrowth of the child's whole nature, and has generated an ideal sociallife. 

At the end of the last section I asked myself what was the ethicalideal of the life of self-realisation, --the positive ideal asdistinguished from the more negative ideal of emancipating fromegoism and sensuality. I will now try to answer this question. Emancipation from egoism and sensuality is effected by the outgrowthof a larger and truer self. This larger and truer self, as it unfoldsitself, directs our eyes towards the ideal self--the goal of thewhole process of growth--which is to the ordinary self what thefull-grown tree, embodying in itself the perfection of oakhood, is tothe sapling oak, or what the ripe peach, embodying in itself theperfection of peachhood, is to the green unripened fruit. The idealself is, in brief, perfect Manhood. What perfect Manhood may be, weneed not pause to inquire. Whatever it may be, it is the true self ofeach of us. It follows that the nearer each of us gets to it, thenearer he is to the true self of each of his fellow-men; that themore closely he is able to identify himself with it, the more closelyhe is able to identify himself with each of his fellow-men; that inrealising it, he is realising, he is entering into, he is becomingone with, the real life of each of his fellow-men. And not of eachof his fellow-men only. He is also entering into the life of thewhole community of men--(for it is the presence of the ideal self ineach of us which makes communal life possible)--and, through this, ofeach of the lesser communities to which he may happen to belong. Inother words, he is losing himself in the lives of others, and isfinding his well-being, and therefore his happiness, in doing so. But self-loss, with joy in the loss of self, is, in a word, love. 

The path of self-realisation is, then, in its higher stages, a lifeof love. He who walks in that path must needs lead a life of love. He will love and serve his fellow-men, both as individuals and asmembers of this or that community, not because he is consciouslytrying to live up to a high ideal, but because he has reached a stagein his development beyond which he cannot develop himself except byleading a life of love, because the path of self-realisation has ledhim into the sunshine of love, and if he will not henceforth walk inthat sunshine he will cease to follow his path. He has indeed longwalked in the foreglow of the sunshine of love. The dawn of the orbof love is heralded by a gradual twilight, which lights the path ofself-realisation, even in its earlier stages. In Utopia the joy onthe faces of the children is the joy of goodwill not less than ofwell-being. Or rather it is the joy of goodwill because it is the joyof well-being, because well-being would not be well-being if it didnot ceaselessly generate goodwill. 

That love is "the fulfilling of the law, " and therefore the keystoneof every sound system of ethics, is a truth on which I need scarcelyinsist. The final proof that the ethics of self-realisation aresound to the core lies in the fact that the path of self-realisation, besides emancipating from egoism and sensuality, leads all who walkin it, first into the foreglow and then into the sunshine of love. But it is with the social rather than the ethical aspect ofself-realisation that I am now concerned. And the social aspect ofthe fact which has just been stated is obviously of vital importance. Love, which is commensurate with life, has innumerable phases. One ofthese is what I have called the communal instinct, --the sense ofbelonging to a community, of being a vital part of it, of sharingin its life, of being what one is (in part at least) because oneshares in its life. If Socialism is to realise its noble dream, thisinstinct, strongly developed and directed towards the well-being ofthe whole social order, must become part of the normal equipment ofevery citizen. And if this is to come to pass, self-realisation mustbe made the basis of education in all our schools. What it has donefor the children of Utopia, in the way of developing their communalinstinct and making their school an ideal community, it is capable ofdoing for every school in England, --I might almost say for everyschool on the face of the earth. 

There are faddists who advocate the teaching of _patriotism_ in ourelementary schools. There are Local Education Committees which insiston _citizenship_ being taught in the schools under their control. Byteaching patriotism, and citizenship is meant treating them as"subjects, " finding places for them on the "time-table, " and givingformal lessons on them. Where this is done, the time of theteachers and the children is wasted. The teaching of patriotismand citizenship, if it is to produce any effect, must be entirelyinformal and indirect. Let the child be so educated that he willdevelop himself freely on all the sides of his being, and hiscommunal instinct will, as I have said, evolve itself in its ownseason. Until it has evolved itself, patriotism and citizenship willbe mere names to him, and what he is taught about them will make noimpression on him. When it has evolved itself, he will be a patriotand a good citizen in _posse_, and will be ready on occasion to provehis patriotism and his good citizenship by his deeds, or, betterstill, by his life. [36]

While the communal instinct is evolving itself, first in the schooland then in the community at large, the standard of reality will, bya parallel or perhaps identical process, be transforming itself inall the grades of society. The inward will be taking the place of theoutward standard; and men will be learning to form a differentconception of "the good things of life" from that which now dominatesour social life. The Socialist will then have his opportunity. That any member of the community should be in physical want orirremediable misery, will begin to be felt, partly as a personalgrief, partly as a reflection on himself, by each member of thecommunity in turn; and steps will begin to be taken--what steps Icannot pretend to forecast--to make physical want and irremediablemisery impossible. Meanwhile, with the gradual substitution of theinward for the outward standard of reality, the mad scramble forwealth and possessions and distinctions will gradually cease, theconception of what constitutes "comfort" and of what are the real"necessaries of life" will be correspondingly changed, and men willbegin to realise that of the genuine "good things of life"--the goodthings which the children of Utopia carry with them into the world, and which make them exceedingly rich in spite of their apparentpoverty--there are enough and more than enough "to go round. "

_The Religious Aspect of Self-realisation. _

The oak-tree is present in embryo in the acorn. What is it that ispresent in embryo in the new-born child? To achieve salvation is torealise one's true self. But what is one's true self? The "perfectionof manhood" is an obvious answer to this question; but it explains solittle that we cannot accept it as final. We may, however, accept itas a resting-place in our search for the final answer. 

It is on the religious aspect of self-realisation that I now proposeto dwell. The function of Religion is to bring a central aim intoman's life, to direct his eyes towards the true end of his beingand to help him to reach it. The true end of Man's being is theperfection of his nature; and the way to this end is the processwhich we call growth. When I speak of Man's nature I am thinking ofhis universal nature, of the nature which is common to all men, thenature of Man as Man. Each of us has his own particular nature, hisindividuality, as it is sometimes called. The nature of Man as Man isno mere common measure of these particular natures, but is ratherwhat I may call their organised totality, the many-sided nature whichincludes, explains, and even justifies them all. 

What perfection may mean when we predicate the term of our commonnature, we cannot even imagine. The potentialities of our nature seemto be infinite, and our knowledge of them is limited and shallow. When we compare an untutored savage or a brutal, ignorant Europeanwith a Christ or a Buddha, or again with a Shakespeare or a Goethe, we realise how vast is the range--the lineal even more than thelateral range--of Man's nature, and we find it easy to believe thatin any ordinary man there are whole tracts, whole aspects of humannature, in which his consciousness has not yet been awakened, andwhich therefore seem to be nonexistent in him, though in reality theyare only dormant or inert. These, however, are matters with which weneed not at present concern ourselves. Let the potentialities of ourcommon nature be what they may. Our business is to realise them as, little by little, they present themselves to us for realisation. Letthe end of the process of growth be what it may. Our business is togrow. 

In the effort to grow we are not left without guidance. The stimulusto grow, the forces and the tendencies that make for growth, all comefrom within ourselves. Yet it is only to a limited extent that theycome under our direct control. So, too, the goal of growth, theideal perfection of our nature, is our own; and yet on the way to itwe must needs outgrow ourselves. What part do we play in this mightydrama? The mystery of selfhood is unfathomable. The word _self_changes its meaning the moment we begin to think about it. So doesthe word _nature_. The range of meaning is in each case unlimited. Yet there are limits beyond which we cannot use either word withoutsome risk of being misunderstood. When we are meditating on ourorigin and our destiny, some other word seems to be needed to enableus to complete the span of our thoughts. 

Is not that word _God_? The source of our life, the ideal end of ourbeing, --how shall we think about these if we may not speak of them as_divine_? And in using the word "divine, " do we not set ourselvesfree to stretch the respective meanings of the words "self" and"nature" beyond what would otherwise have been the breaking point ofeach? The true self is worthier of the name of "self" than theapparent self. The true nature is worthier of the name of "nature"than the lower nature. But the true self is the Divine Self; and thehighest nature is the Nature of God. If this is so, we serve God bestand obey God best by trying to perfect our nature in response to astimulus, a pressure, and a guidance which is at once natural anddivine. 

In other words, we serve God best by following the path ofself-realisation. And the better we serve God, the more truly andfully do we learn to know him. If to know him, and to live up to ourknowledge of him, is to be truly religious, then the life ofself-realisation is, in the truest and deepest sense of the word, a_religious_ life. Or rather it is the only religious life, for in noother way can knowledge of God be won. 

Let me try to make good this statement. Knowledge of God is theoutcome, not of definite dogmatic instruction in theology, but ofspiritual growth. Knowledge, whatever may be its object, is alwaysthe outcome of growth. Even knowledge of _number_ is the outcome, notof definite dogmatic instruction in the arithmetical rules andtables, but of the growth of the arithmetical sense. It is the samewith literature, the same with history, the same with chemistry, thesame with "business, " the same with navigation, the same with thedriving of vehicles in crowded streets, the same with every art, craft, sport, game, and pursuit. In evolving a special sense, thesoul is growing in one particular direction, a direction which ismarked out for it by the environment in which it finds it needful ordesirable to energise. The soul has, as we have seen, a general powerof adapting itself to its environment, of permeating it, of feelingits way through it, of getting to understand it, of dealing with itat last with skill and success. As is the particular environment, sois the subtle, tactful, adaptive, directly perceptive, subconsciouslycognitive faculty, --the "sense, " as I have called it--by means ofwhich the soul acquires the particular knowledge that it needs. Themore highly specialised (whether by subdivision or by abstraction)the environment, the more highly specialised the sense. The largerand more comprehensive the environment, the larger and more "massive"the sense. The acquired aptitude which enables an omnibus driver tosteer his bulky vehicle through the traffic of London is a highlyspecialised sense. At the other end of the scale we have the"massive" spiritual faculties which deal with whole aspects of lifeor Nature, such as the sense of beauty or of moral worth. 

But there is a sense which is larger and more "massive" even thanthese. When the environment is all-embracing, when it covers thewhole circle of which the soul is or can be the centre, the growthmade in response to it is the growth of the soul as such, and theknowledge which rewards that growth is the knowledge of supremereality, or, in the language of religion, the knowledge of God. Thehighest of all senses is the religious sense, the sense which givesus knowledge of God. But the religious sense is not, as we are aptto imagine, one of many senses. No one individual sense, however"massive" or subtle it might be, could enable its possessor to geton terms, so to speak, with the totality of things, with theall-vitalising Life, with the all-embracing Whole. _The religioussense is the well-being of the soul. _ For the soul as such grows inand through the growth of its various senses, --its own growth beingreinforced by the growth of each of these when Nature's balance iskept, and retarded by the growth of one or more of them when Nature'sbalance is lost, --and in proportion as its own vital, central growthis vigorous and healthy, its power of apprehending reality unfoldsitself little by little. That power is of its inmost essence. Whenreality, in the full sense of the word, is its object, it sees withthe whole of its being; it is itself, when it is at the centre ofits universe, its own supreme perceptive faculty, its own religioussense. 

If this is so, if the soul in its totality, the soul acting throughits whole "apperceptive mass, " is its own religious sense, it isabundantly clear that the path of self-realisation is the only pathwhich leads to knowledge of God, and through knowledge of God tosalvation. For self-realisation is the only scheme of life whichprovides for the growth of the soul in its totality, for theharmonious, many-sided development of the soul as such. I have oftendwelt on this point. If we have never before realised its importancewe must surely do so now. A one-sided training, even when itsone-sidedness takes the form of specialising in theology, is anon-religious, and may well become an irreligious training, for itdoes not lead to, and may well lead away from, knowledge of God. 

And if we have never before realised how great are the opportunitiesand responsibilities of the teacher, we must surely do so now. For acertain number of years--the number varies with the social standingof the child, and the financial resources of his parents--the teachercan afford to disregard utilitarian considerations and think only ofwhat is best for the child. What use will he make of those years?Will he lead the child into the path of self-realisation, and so givea lifelong impetus to the growth of his soul? Or will he, in histhirst for "results, " lead him into the path of mechanical obedience, or, at best, of one-sided development, and so blight his buddingfaculties and arrest the growth of his soul? On the practical answerthat he gives to this question will depend the fate of the child. For to the child the difference between the two paths will be thedifference between fulfilling and missing his destiny, betweenknowledge and ignorance of God. 

If any of my readers have imagined that I am an advocate of what iscalled "secular education, " they will, I hope, now realise that theyhave misread this book. Far from wishing to secularise education, Ihold that it cannot be too religious. And, far from wishing to limitits religious activities to the first forty minutes of the morningsessions, I hold that it should be actively religious through everyminute of every school session, that whatever it does it should do tothe glory of God. 

But how does knowledge of God show itself? Knowledge, so far as it isreal, always shows itself in right bearing, and (if action is calledfor) in right action. Knowledge of arithmetic and of other more orless abstract subjects, shows itself in the successful working of thecorresponding problems, theoretical or practical as the case may be. Knowledge of the laws of physical nature shows itself in practicalmastery of the forces and resources of physical nature. Knowledge ofhistory and geography, in a right attitude towards the problems andsub-problems of these complex and comprehensive subjects, an attitudewhich may on occasion translate itself into right action. And so on. Knowledge of God, being a state or attitude of the soul as such, mustshow itself in the right bearing and the right action of the soul assuch, in other words, of Man as Man, --not as mathematician, not asfinancier, not as sculptor, not as cricketer, but simply as Man. NowMan as Man has to bear himself aright towards the world in which hefinds himself, and in particular towards the world which touches himmost closely and envelops him most completely, --the world of humanlife. Therefore knowledge of God will show itself, principally andchiefly, though by no means wholly, in dealing aright with one'sfellow-men, in being rightly disposed towards them, and in doing theright things to them. I have found it convenient to disconnect themoral from the religious aspect of self-realisation. We can now seethat in the last resort the two aspects are one. 

From every point of view, then, and above all from that of Religion, the path of self-realisation is seen to be the path of salvation. For it is the only scheme of life which enables him who follows itto attain to knowledge of God; and knowledge of God has, as itsnecessary counterpart, a right attitude, in general towards the worldwhich surrounds him, and in particular towards his fellow-men. 

But is it possible, within the limits of one earth-life, to followthe path of self-realisation to its appointed goal? And if not, willthe path be continued beyond that abrupt turn in it which we calldeath? The respective attitudes of the two great schools of popularthought towards the problem of the grave, are in brief as follows. The Materialists (or Naturalists, as they miscall themselves) believethat death is the end of life. The Supernaturalists believe that oneearth-life (or even a few years or months) of mechanical obedience tosupernatural direction will be rewarded by an eternity of happinessin "Heaven. " But those who walk in the path of self-realisation, andwhose unswerving loyalty to Nature is rewarded by some measure ofinsight into her deeper laws, know that the goal of the path isinfinitely far away, and in their heart of hearts they laugh both thecurrent eschatologies to scorn. And the higher they ascend, as theyfollow the path, the more vividly do they realise how unimaginablyhigh above them is the summit of the mountain which the path isascending in spiral coils. 

The Utopian experiment, humble as it is, can, I think, throw somelight on these mighty problems. The relations between the type andthe various sub-types, between the type and the individual, betweenthe sub-type and the individual--whether in plant or beast orman--are matters which could not be handled within the limits of thisbook, and which I have therefore as far as possible ignored. Nor haveI attempted to deal with the difficult problems that are presented bythe existence of races, such as the Negro, which seem to be far belowthe normal level of human development. There is, however, in the vastregion of thought which these and kindred problems open out to us, one by-way which I must be allowed to follow for a while. 

The wild _bullace_ is, I believe, the ancestor of many of our yellow_plums_. In other words, bullacehood can develop into plumhood, andeven into the perfection of plumhood. Similarly human nature candevelop into something so high above the normal level of human naturethat it might almost seem to belong to another _genus_. But there isa difference between the two cases. The bullace ideal is in theindividual bullace tree. So, in a sense, is the plum ideal. But thelatter cannot be realised, or even approached, by the individualbullace tree. It cannot be realised, or even approached, by thebullace species except through a long course of culture and breeding. Is it the same with Man? Let us take English rusticity as aparticular type of human nature, --the equivalent of bullacehood forthe purpose of argument. This is a distinct type, and may be saidto have its own ideal. [37] Emerging from this, and graduallytransforming it, is the ideal of human nature, the ideal for Man asMan. As the bullace ideal is to the plum ideal, so is the ideal ofEnglish rusticity to the ideal of human nature. But whereas the plumideal cannot be realised in any appreciable degree by the individualbullace, the human ideal can be realised in a quite appreciabledegree by the individual English rustic. There have always been andwill always be isolated cases to prove that this is so, --cases of menof quite humble origin who have attained to high degrees of mentaland spiritual development. These have hitherto been regarded asexceptional cases. But Egeria has convinced me that under favourableconditions the _average_ child can become the rare exception, andattain to what is usually regarded as a remarkably high degree ofmental and spiritual development. Innocent joy, self-forgetfulness, communal devotion, heartfelt goodwill, gracious manners--to speak ofspiritual development only--are characteristics of _every_ Utopianchild. What are we to infer from this? The bullace ideal isrealisable (under favourable conditions) by each individual bullacetree, --but the plum ideal is not. The English rustic ideal isrealisable by each individual rustic child. _But so is the humanideal in Utopia. _

But what of the children who do not belong to Utopia? What would havehappened to the Utopian children if there had been no Egeria to leadthem into the path of self-realisation? They would have lived anddied ordinary English rustics, --healthy bullaces, but in no respector degree plums. Egeria has convinced me that the average child, besides being born mentally and spiritually healthy, has immensecapacity on every side of his being. The plum ideal is the truenature of the plum, but is not the true nature of the bullace. ButEgeria has convinced me that the human ideal--the divine self--is thetrue nature of each of us, even of the average rustic child; and shehas also convinced me that each of us can go a long way towardsrealising that ideal. Had there been no Egeria in Utopia, theUtopians would have lived and died undeveloped, having arrived at amaturity of a kind, the maturity of the bullace as distinguished fromthat of the plum, but having failed to realise in any appreciabledegree what the Utopian experiment has proved to be their truenature. What then? Is this the end of the average man? Will Natureadmit final defeat? The curve of a man's life, as it sweeps roundfrom birth to death, passes through the point of apparent maturity;but the real nature of the man has never ripened, and when hedescends into the grave he is still the embryo of his true self. Will the true self never be realised? Never, if death is indeed theend of life. But in that case the man will have failed to fulfil thecentral purpose of Nature, and, alone among her children, will haveescaped from the control of her all-pervading law of growth. 

It is in their desire to keep Man in line with the rest of Nature'schildren that so many thinkers and scientists in the West forbid himto look beyond the horizon of the grave. But in truth it is only bybeing allowed to look beyond that horizon that Man can be kept inline with the rest of Nature's children; for if death meansextinction to him, as it means (or seems to mean) to the beetle orthe fly, he will have lived to no purpose, having failed to realisein any appreciable degree what every other living thing realiseswithin its appointed limits, --the central tendencies of his being. That a living thing, an average specimen of its kind, should withinthe limits of a normal life fail completely to realise thosepotentialities which are distinctive of its real nature, --fail socompletely that the very existence of those potentialities might, butfor an occasional and quite exceptional revelation, have remainedunsuspected, --is entirely at variance with what we know of the waysand works of Nature. Yet failure to realise his true manhood is, outside the confines of Utopia, the apparent lot of nine men out often. An entire range of qualities, spiritual and mental, whichblossom freely in the stimulating atmosphere of Utopia, and whichmust therefore exist in embryo in every normal child, fail togerminate (or at best only just begin to germinate) within thelifetime of the average non-Utopian. [38] The inference to be drawnfrom these significant facts is that the apparent limits of Man'slife are not the real limits; that the one earth-life of which eachof us is conscious, far from being the whole of one's life, is but atiny fragment of it, --one term of its ascending "series, " one day inits cycle of years. In other words, the spiritual fertility of theaverage Utopian child, taken in conjunction with the spiritualsterility of the average non-Utopian child (and man), points to theconclusion which the thinkers of the Far East reached thousands ofyears ago, --that for the full development of human nature a pluralityof lives is needed, which will do for the individual soul whatgenerations of scientific breeding and culture will do for thebullace that is to be transformed into a plum. 

This is one lesson which Utopia has taught me. There is another whichhad also been anticipated by the thinkers of the Far East. If underexceptionally favourable conditions certain spiritual and mentalqualities are able to blossom freely in the space of a few years, which under normal conditions would remain undeveloped during alifetime of seventy or eighty years, may we not infer that there is adirecter path to spiritual maturity than that which is ordinarilyfollowed? May we not infer that there are ways of living, ways intowhich parents and teachers can lead the young, which, if faithfullyfollowed, will allow the potencies of Man's higher nature to evolvethemselves with what we, with our limited experience, must regard asabnormal celerity, and which will therefore shorten appreciably Man'sjourney to his goal?[39] And if there is a directer path to spiritualmaturity than that which is ordinarily followed, is not the name forit _Self-realisation_?

I will not pursue these speculations further. But, speaking formyself, I will say that the vista which the idea of self-realisationopens up to me goes far beyond the limits of any one earth-life orsequence of earth-lives, and far, immeasurably far, beyond the limitsof the sham eternity of the conventional Heaven and Hell. 

But even if there is the fullest provision in Nature (whether by aspiral ascent through a long chain of lives, or by some directerpath) for the final development in each individual man of thepotencies of perfect manhood, for the final realisation of the divineor true self, --what then? What does it all mean? Why are we to followthe path of self-realisation? What is the purpose of the cycle ofexistence? There is an answer to this obstinate question, --an answerwhich explains nothing, and yet is final, in that it leaves nothingto be explained. The expansive energies and desires, to yield towhich is our wisdom and our happiness, are ever transformingthemselves, as we yield to them, into the might and the ardour ofLove. And for love there is no final resting-place but the sea ofDivine Love from which it came. "_Amor ex Deo natus est, nec potestnisi in Deo requiescere. _"

FOOTNOTES:

[25] There is of course an intermediate class of vicioustendencies, which may be described as apparent rather than actual, and which are caused partly by immaturity, partly by environment. Many of the "naughtinesses" of school children belong to this class. 

[26] The _physical_ aspect is, of course, of incalculableimportance. My only reason for ignoring it is that I am not competentto deal with it. The _æsthetic_ aspect is also of incalculableimportance; but I know so little about music or art, that I mustlimit my treatment of this aspect to pointing out that until themusical and artistic instincts of the masses are systematicallytrained in our elementary schools, through the medium of freeself-expression on the part of the children, we shall have neither anational music nor a national art. 

[27] Workshops, for the use of the engineering classes, are, I believe, attached to the "Modern Side" of some of our Great PublicSchools; but I doubt if there is one among the Great Public Schools, or even among the Preparatory Schools which lead up to them, in which"hand-work" is part of the _normal_ curriculum. 

[28] I know a youth who recently attended Science lecturesfor two years at one of the most famous of our Great Public Schools, and at the end of that time had not the faintest idea what branch ofScience he had been studying. Science is, I believe, seriously taughtin the Great Public Schools to those who wish to take it seriously;but, if taught at all, it is certainly not taught seriously to therank and file of the boys who belong to the "Classical side" of theirrespective schools. 

[29] See also footnote 2 to page 270. 

[30] When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, there was one atleast of my friends who took a genuine delight in the literarymasterpieces of Greece and Rome, --the delight, not of a fastidiousscholar but of a born lover of good literature. He got a "Third" inClassical "Mods, " and was "gulfed" in "Greats. " "Serve him right, "his "dons" must have said, for I am afraid he cut their lectures. [Greek: hôs apoloito kai allos hotis toiauta ge rhezoi. ]

[31] _Stanzas on the Grande Chartreuse_, by Matthew Arnold. 

[32] When I apply the epithet "irrational" to the outcry atEphesus, I am thinking of the mob, not of the silversmiths. Thelatter knew what they were about. 

[33] Having said so much in disparagement of the mentaltraining given in the great Public Schools and the olderUniversities, let me now try to make my peace with my old school andmy University by expressing my conviction that those who are studyingthe "Humanities, " whether at school or college, _and finding pleasurein their studies_, are receiving the best education that is atpresent procurable in England. An old Oxonian may perhaps be allowedto make public profession of his faith in the special efficacy ofthat course of study which is known familiarly as "Greats, " theexamination in which is, of all examinations, the most difficult tocram for and the most profitable to read for. 

It is scarcely necessary for me to add that in the olderUniversities, as in the great Public Schools, many valuable educativeinfluences are at work outside the lecture-room. For one thing, theundergraduates, who come from all parts of the world, are alwayseducating one another. For another thing, the "atmosphere" of Oxfordand Cambridge does much for the mental and spiritual development ofthose who are able to respond to its stimulus. Even the _genius loci_is educative, in its own quiet, subtle way. But it would be animpertinence on my part to labour this point. It is because Oxfordand Cambridge educate their _alumni_ in a thousand ways, the worth ofwhich no formal examination can test or measure, that they standapart from all other Universities. 

[34] I mean by the "lower self, " not the animal base ofone's existence, but the ordinary self _claiming to be the trueself_, and so rising in rebellion against its lawful lord. 

[35] In other words, it might conceivably take the form of_clan_ warfare, highly organised and waged on a world-wide field; andwe learn from the history of the Highlands of Scotland and of OldJapan that of all forms of warfare the most cruel and relentless, with the exception of that which is waged in the name of religion, isthe warfare between clan and clan. 

[36] There is such a thing as communal egoism, when a manregards the community or society to which he belongs as a kind of"possession, " to be paraded and bragged about, just as in personallove there is such a thing as egoism _à deux_. But the communalinstinct which is generated by self-realisation readily purges itselfof every egoistic taint. 

[37] I mean by the "ideal" the true nature of the givenspecies and the true self of each individual specimen. 

[38] When I compare the average Utopian with the averagenon-Utopian, I am of course thinking of the "masses, " not of the"classes. " If the comparison is to have any value, the conditions inthe two cases must be fairly equal. Mentally, the "classes" are, onthe whole, more highly developed (thanks to their more favourableenvironment) than the "masses. " Spiritually and morally, they areperhaps on a par with them. 

[39] This was the idea which inspired the Founder ofBuddhism, and led him to formulate a scheme of life, in virtueof which he takes rank (as it seems to me) as the greatesteducationalist, as well as the greatest moralist, that the worldhas ever known. 

THE END