CHAPTER VIII

MORALITY

"Generally speaking, the intellectualist phase [of a boy's career] is remarkably brief. Just occasionally its morals are such as to cause the swift expulsion of its leaders. More often they leave in the natural course of things, or grow weary of their pose—which has, indeed, not made them popular—and return after the holidays frankly and unaffectedly Philistine. This transient fashion is not new. What is new is the deliberate encouragement given to it by a certain type of assistant master. We do not imply that the wise master will suppress... That kind of intellectual measles will work itself out... But to leave the phase alone is one thing; deliberately to foster and give it official backing is quite another."—The Church Times.

When the morality of the public schools is being discussed, attention is usually concentrated almost exclusively on that particular branch of morality which is concerned with sex. Nor is this unnatural; for sex plays so important a part in the life of a growing boy, and the development of his character is so closely bound up with the development of his physical nature, that the determining part may be very easily confused with the whole. Yet there are many boys who are sexually virtuous, but filled with the worst type of hardness and intolerance; many, too, who are sexually vicious, yet full of love and sympathy. To imagine that the problem of public school morality is solved as soon as we have discovered the best method of making public school boys continent, is to look at the matter from an altogether too narrow angle; for the sins of the spirit, we have been told, are more unpardonable than the sins of the flesh.

Nevertheless, when we have said this, as say it we must, the fact remains that the sex question is one of overwhelming importance. For if once self-indulgence is allowed to become firmly rooted in a boy's character, in the majority of cases it will be ineradicable; and he will either be the victim throughout a great part of his life of temptations which he loathes, and which will be a constant source of unhappiness to him, or he will end by acquiescing in a manner of life which is degrading, it may be to himself alone, it may be both to himself and others. It will be urged, of course, as it has been urged against every school novel which has attempted to give a true picture of the "manners" of a school house, that we are grotesquely exaggerating the whole business; that there may be a problem in the case of this boy or that, but that in general there is no problem at all. This simply will not do. There is a problem, and a very grave one; and we had better anticipate the possibility of being misunderstood by stating very directly what it is. We believe that the number of cases in which boys have undesirable relationships with one another is not very large, but we believe also that there is a very great deal of that purely personal self-indulgence, that purely self-regarding licentiousness, which is the cause of so much unhappiness in boyhood.

But the reader will already be asking, "What is all this to do with political education?" The connection is a close one. For the prevalence of this particular form of immorality may be ascribed to two main causes. At some time during early adolescence the majority of boys automatically become acquainted with the sensation of sex, and, as part of a natural process, try to reproduce the pleasurable experience. But why do so many of these repeat and repeat the process, until the thing becomes a habit for which they can find no escape? Partly because the verbal warning which is given to them by parents and masters is made in a wrong form, and partly because there is not that constant joy and romance in their daily lives in comparison with which temptation, when it comes, will appear sordid and unworthy. In the second place, there is an atmosphere in the houses of tolerance towards these practices, accompanied by constant discussion, sometimes open, sometimes secret, which encourages and not rarely actually suggests them. This is certainly true of many houses in many schools. The house prefects, it is true, usually try to suppress as much of the unhealthiness as they can; but since, on the one hand, they are often known to have been "as bad as any one" in their day, and on the other they use the method of pretending that these are things which no decent boy could possibly be guilty of, they meet at best with a very partial success, derived only from the fear which they inspire.

The common method of dealing with the evil is a system of "talks" by masters and heads of houses. The "talks" follow a fairly stereotyped plan; they are either religious in nature, and contain references to "the temple of the body," or medical, and convey warnings of the physical consequences which will follow if excess is persisted in. Sometimes the two types of address are dovetailed into a single whole. Neither are wholly satisfactory. The medical variety sometimes terrifies a sensitive boy, who will imagine that his whole life is ruined and all his chance of future happiness wrecked. He will become somewhat morose, and not unfrequently will finally turn, in his despair, to the very thing against which he has been warned. On the other hand, and with another type of boy, it often fails equally disastrously, because, judged by the medical standards to which it appeals, it is proved by experience to be unsound. In his anxiety to create a strong impression the schoolmaster will sometimes make statements that are simply untrue. He will tell the boy that these practices will ruin his cricket or his football. No doubt it sometimes will; but it is more than likely that the boy knows several highly successful athletes who are, as the boy knows, though the master may not, complete adepts in schoolboy vice. Then there is the old threat, possibly obsolete to-day, though one hesitates to say that anything is obsolete in the conservative world with which we deal—the old threat that half the inmates of the asylums of England have been brought there by this practice. That, again, is simply untrue, and if the boy happens to know it, the effect of such an untruth upon him may be very bad. Equally unsuccessful, in the majority of cases, is the religious talk. The unspeculative, dogmatic type of school religion does not make an appeal to the ordinary boy sufficiently strong to override what he has found to be the most fascinating thing in his experience. It is too much a conventional decency imposed upon him from without, too little a force within him which he has been helped to develop, such as is alone powerful enough to contend with a desire itself arising spontaneously from within. And when the sermon is accompanied by exhortations to pray against temptation, it is sometimes not only useless, but (again in the case of the ordinary boy) positively harmful. For to get into the habit of praying against temptation means to get into the habit of thinking about it, to become self-conscious, and to succumb. Not but that there are some quite young boys who feel Christ's nearness to them as Friend and Helper so vividly that they can gain real strength from praying to Him. But we are talking of the average boy; and the average boy is not of this type.

Conversations between master and boy on the subject are, of course, quite necessary and often very helpful. Very often a boy is mystified, or it may be terrified, by what seems to him some peculiarity in his nature, and it may do him all the good in the world to unburden his soul to some one older and more experienced than himself. It is best, too, that the House master should be the man to whom such a boy naturally turns; though if the boy should prefer to turn elsewhere, the fact should be to the House master food for thought rather than for anger. Indeed, while in one way there is far too much talk on this subject, in another there is far too little. Too much may easily be made of conventional "talks" on conventional occasions. What is rather wanted is a relationship between boy and master, created by frank intercourse on other topics, such as will naturally bring the boy to the master for help in these difficulties, with the sure knowledge that the latter will not "lecture" him, but will speak as one who has been through similar difficulties in his own boyhood, and is anxious only to help and to explain.

Under the present system, when the verbal appeal fails, recourse is often had to corporal punishment. We have no room here for a discussion of the ethics of punishment; but a method more foolish could scarcely be devised, if the aim is to enable the boy to overcome temptation. And of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment is the worst. The physical side of the boy's nature is asserting itself in all its strength; and you attempt to combat it by making a physical appeal which must from the nature of the case be far less powerful and compelling. Moreover, any one with even a slight knowledge of sexual psychology (and it is curious how few schoolmasters take the trouble to acquire such knowledge) is aware that given a certain temperament on the part whether of the giver or the receiver, perils lurk in this form of punishment of the very type which it is designed to meet.

But the only sound way of combating the over-development of one side of a boy's nature is to develop the other. Make a boy's whole life one of joy and interest; let him live with a constant sense of the beauty of grass and sky, of the exultation of vital work, of the happiness of love and friendship. As the days go by, let him feel his latent powers developing, and glory in the thought that they have been given him for his own joy and that of humanity. Then when temptation comes to him, and he remembers how its indulgence has left him slack and bored, it will seem to him like a candle-flame in the sun of his happiness, a wretched little mean and unworthy thing breaking in on and threatening to ruin the peace and harmony of his life. And so he will not give it a second thought, and soon all danger will be over. This may seem preposterously difficult. It is: but it is also the only way. The master cannot do it for the boy, but he can perhaps give the boys some help towards doing it for themselves.

What we want is that every house should become a small community of boys carrying on together absorbingly interesting and romantic activities—a kind of club in which they may forgather and undertake in common the intellectual and spiritual adventure which thus become a part of their individual daily lives.

In this way there will be none of that boredom, that feeling of "having nothing on earth to do or think about," the presence of which is the chief cause impelling a boy to turn to the one thing which at least can provide him at any moment with a temporary excitement. Rather will his whole nature develop harmoniously, and sex, about which we have become too self-conscious, take its proper place as the (normally) unconscious inspirer of many of our most vital activities and happiest emotions. And once morbidity has been put away, and with it the constant preoccupation of boys and masters with this one topic, and all that suspicion and suggestiveness which we know so well, then the graver problem which has to do with the relationship of boy to boy will be found to have been solved at the same time. No one who knows a public school is likely to deny that sexual emotion is nearly always an element in the intensest schoolboy friendships; but that makes them neither the less lovely nor the less desirable. Indeed, the value of such friendships at their finest cannot be overestimated. For when a boy "falls in love," he learns for the first time something of the real splendour of living: he comes into his birthright of beauty and ecstacy, and understands how the greatest happiness is to be found in doing everything for the service of another. There is something very loathsome about the spying, and secretiveness, the jokes and unclean hintings which, in the majority of schools, make such a friendship appear a thing to be ashamed rather than proud of, and often in the end actually render it shameful. Given a clean atmosphere, an absence of suspicion on the part of masters and of morbidity on that of boys, and we believe that very rarely would physical acts result from schoolboy love.

But the reader will be asking, for the second time, "What is all this to do with political education?" And again we answer—everything. For we believe that the joy in life, and the intellectual interest of which we have spoken can be awakened from where they lie dormant in a boy's nature by political education. The subject is the boy's own destiny as a member of human society and a part of the universe (for it will be remembered that we include ethics and philosophy with history and politics under the one broad heading); and there is hardly a boy who does not find, at best in all these subjects, at worst in one of them, the inspiration to vital work and the sense of living well, which goes with it. The boys start reading, widely; a thousand topics occupy their attention; poetry, plays, novels—all these are reached from the one starting point. Then clubs and groups of various kinds are started in their houses; and the sex problem has become as much as it ever can become, a thing of the past.

Nor, we may add, are we merely theorising, and talking of hypothetical goods which might conceivably follow from the adoption of our plan. All that we have written of is within our own experience. Time after time while we were making our experiments did we come across cases of boys whose moral health had been saved by their new-found interest. One had turned to physical excitement as the only possible relief from the tedium of Latin grammar; after a year under the altered circumstances he turned to it no longer. The parents of another (a boy of about sixteen) had attempted to base his morality solely on Christian dogma, which meant nothing to him; and the result was disastrous. But a course of lectures on Plato's philosophy gave him what religion had previously failed to give him—a belief in an ideal and the distinction between right and wrong, and a determination to do always what seemed to him the absolute best.[1] But by far the most remarkable results were achieved in the house of which we have already spoken in Chapter I. During his first fortnight of office, the new head boy followed the old method; he examined all suspicious cases, discovered some that he had not suspected, and dealt out the traditional treatment. Then he followed the old method no longer; nor did he ever return to it from that day till the day when he finally left the school before his time. Instead, he set about interesting the boys in politics. We have already described the course of his experiments; how enthusiasm, kindled over newspapers, spread to plays, to poetry, to pictures, and to music. And the result? The house was transformed: it became such a place as every mother hopes the house where her own son is may be. And yet during the whole time of which we are speaking only one boy was beaten, and he for an act quite unrelated to the seventh or indeed to any other of the Ten Commandments.

NOTE.—A fortnight after the writing of the present book was projected, one of the writers was dispatched on military duty to India, and the above chapter was sent home from "Somewhere" in "Somewhere"—I believe Taranto. Close co-operation in authorship became impossible, and upon his collaborator in England devolved the responsibility of sole editorship. I leave the above chapter almost as it was written, for there is about it, as it seems to me, an indomitable optimism which was a characteristic of the writer's work and a cause of its success.

Still, in so far as it suggests that a complete solution has been found for a problem I believe to be insoluble, I must in honesty add a few words on my own account.

Our direct experience, or the more remarkable part of it, amounts to this: that a certain head of a house achieved during the course of a year, using the methods described, an uplifting of the whole tone of his house that can only be described as marvellous. Other heads elsewhere have no doubt achieved similar results by other means, though we have never come across an example equally remarkable. The goal can be reached, presumably, by the road of saintliness. It might be reached, though it is doubtful, by the road of Puritanism and "efficiency," the appeal to abstinence and "living hard." It cannot be reached, that is certain, by merely disciplinary methods and the appeal to fear, for the commonest form of schoolboy vice is such that, even allowing for the casualness of boys, it will not be detected once in a hundred cases.

Something, however, must be discounted from this result, by reason of the fact that the experiments were new. These boys had an enthusiasm bred of the fact that they rightly felt themselves to be pioneers. They felt themselves to be making history, certainly for the first, possibly for the last, time in their lives, and whether you admire them or whether you laugh at them, making history they were, so far as their own world was concerned. It seems doubtful whether the spiritual force engendered would have lasted at full strength when the thing had become normal, and it was no longer possible to start the hare of some new "stunt" (as they called it, I am sorry to say) once every two or three weeks. The experiment was cut short in its prime, and how it would have developed when the first generation of enthusiasts had passed away, one cannot say.

As for the other houses, something had been begun in two or three, but nothing of much value had been achieved. The minorities hesitated between a desire to imitate and a desire to be quite original, and the majorities looked a trifle askance upon the whole affair. And the masters came in here and put every sort of difficulty in the way, for by this time the collapse was visibly approaching.

None the less, the lines on which this strange and temporary achievement was based are the only lines along which the moral problem can be grappled with. A perfectly "pure" public school is as impossible as a perfectly satisfactory Marriage Law. A few incorrigibly bad boys there will always be—incorrigible, that is, when they have reached public school age. Hopelessly inanimate and feeble boys there will be also, doomed to become the victims of the bad. But the present moral average might be immensely raised, and the plain way to raise it is to provide other adventures for the soul. A boy once said to me, speaking of the matter in hand, "You see, it's the only thing I've ever found to do here really 'on my own.'" It was, in fact, his one adventure. No amount of class-room tasks, however well devised, no amount of organised games, however healthy, no amount of school religion, however sincere, could fill that gap. We must put the boys on the lines to organise their own adventures, and the only adventures that can compete with this absorbing adventure of misapplied sexuality, must be adventures that really lead up to the highest and best things of life. It was only when he found an empire to save that Clive ceased to be a young ruffian. Nothing lower than "politics" will suffice.



[1] Not that we believe that Plato is a greater teacher than Christ. Our opinion is the opposite; but we are also of Shelley's opinion when he said, "I would rather go to hell with Plato than to heaven with Paley." Much that is called Christian is not of Christ. Also there are no doubt minds so constituted that they will get more good in certain circumstances from the lesser teacher.



CHAPTER IX

RELIGION

"It may be a slight shock to some people to hear that 'Divinity' should grapple with Capitalism and Imperialism."—Manchester Guardian.

"Politics, in the large sense, is one of the main gateways to the understanding of fellowship, and of that which lies beyond fellowship, and leads boys to express something further-reaching than the thought of the dear city of Cecrops."—Mr. Kenneth Richmond in The New Age.

This chapter will be as short as its subject-matter is important. Indeed, the problem of religion as it presents itself in a public school is so interesting and so difficult that one might well apologise for relegating it to a late chapter in a brief book upon an apparently quite alien subject. But we have set out to recount our experience of political education; and in our experience we found that politics and religion lay not so very far apart. Without any very direct suggestion from us, several of our pupils to whom the Kingdom of Heaven had been hitherto a somewhat uninteresting abstraction found that they could not think out to their satisfaction the problems of the city of Cecrops until they had formulated their ideas upon the city of God. The history of The School Observer illustrates this well enough. That journal showed a distinct tendency to become a religious organ. At the time of its suppression the embarrassed editor was confronted with three long articles—the longest, it must be confessed, his own—all of them bearing upon the nature of the Deity, and, lest we should be misunderstood, all of them broadly Christian in character.

Now, a certain type of clerical head master has often tried to impress upon his boys—he would try it on his staff also did he not know that it would be waste of time and energy—that the two hours devoted to "divinity" are the two most important school hours of the week. And he is quite right: they are the most important, or, rather, but for opportunities missed, they would be. For a liberal education without a foundation in religion is not merely defective, it is impossible. If the religious foundation offered by the teacher proves no foundation, proves a mere meaningless excrescence upon the time-table, then a religion will be sought and found elsewhere, even though it be, as is most likely, a religion such as is generally classed as no-religion, mere worship, as Ruskin called it, of Britannia Agoraia, Britannia of the Market Place, the Goddess of Getting-on. That, it is to be feared, is very much what we have at present, for the religion of the divinity lesson is usually nothing at all, and the religion of the school chapel has hardly got beyond the tribal stage, and does not suffice for the modern man in his maturity, nor for most types of thoughtful schoolboy. There are some old boys, perhaps many, who have a strong sentimental regard for "the old chapel"; but it is as a venerable symbol of the corporate life of their boyhood that they regard it, not as a place of divine worship. The religion they carry away from the school chapel has very little connection with the message of the gospel they heard there: it is a religion not of Jesus Christ, but of Alma Mater. Their attitude to it is not strictly religious at all, but romantic.

It is easy to write with a certain irony on this subject, but that is the last thing we want to do, for the problem of the public schools is here, as elsewhere, a profoundly difficult one, and many good men have devoted the best of their life's energies to it, and have achieved here and there a fine measure of success. But their success has been personal and exceptional. The rule is what we have just described. Indeed, the problem of the schools is but a single aspect of the problem of the Church and the world at large. Two years ago the National Mission came, proclaiming that the Church had been a failure, and so much has recently been written on these lines by the leaders of the Churches themselves that it is unnecessary for us to enlarge upon the well-worn theme. Nominally the schools are "Church" schools. "Chapels" are as compulsory as football, and all boys, with a very few marked and conscious exceptions, are confirmed and expected to become communicants. But in actual fact, many of them come from homes where connection with the Church is purely nominal, even if it exists at all. Thus a dangerous element of formalism and make-believe is introduced from the start. The masters again;—fifty years ago they were parsons almost without exception—stern, godly, whiskered individuals—singularly unlike, as it would seem, to our colleagues or ourselves. The masters of to-day are nearly all laymen, and laymen with as wide a variety of religious opinions as the members of the Stock Exchange; but—and this is where they differ from the members of the Stock Exchange—they will all be, during term time, formal members of the Church of England. Once again, formalism and make-believe. Yet what would you have? The schools are the schools of the nation, not of a sect; and to-day the Church of England is, within the nation, but a sect. And even supposing the schools were, or could be, genuinely Church of England schools, another problem would remain, for within the Church itself there is a wide variety of opinions, and beliefs without which Christianity is impossible to one will be mere blasphemy to another. It has been said with some truth that our religious ideas have undergone as great a revolution in the last hundred years as our knowledge of machinery, and that the sermons of 1820 are as obsolete as its stage coaches. For the author of this notion—and he is a clergyman—this may be true; but whereas none of his congregation travel in stage coaches, it is very likely that the theology of some of them is nearer to that of the sermons of 1820 than to his own.

Now, it is obvious that our experience of political education does not provide a way out of all these difficulties; but it seems to us to throw a certain glimmering of light upon them. Several of our boys who, in spite of schoolroom "divinity" and the school chapel, had more or less outgrown the religious faith of their childhood, and found nothing satisfactory to take its place, were led back towards religion by their interest in politics. In fine, they had discovered the intellectual need for a religion, and liberalism pointed the way to Christianity. As in the Middle Ages, philosophy had been the "ancilla Fidei." The suggestion is that the fault of our religious teaching in school and chapel has been that it is not sufficiently philosophical. By a philosophical religion it need hardly be said that we do not mean the obtrusion of a remote and contentious theology, but a religion based upon a real understanding of political principles and crying social needs.

"It may be a slight shock to some people to hear that 'divinity' should grapple with capitalism and imperialism," says the Manchester Guardian reviewer. It may: none the less we believe that it is with such problems that Christianity has to grapple if there is ever to be a Christian society upon earth. The last thing we wish to suggest is the off-hand conclusion that capitalism and imperialism are in all their manifestations anti-Christian. The world is not so simple a place. But we cannot go on applying one set of principles to our private lives and another set of principles to our politics and industry. Man is not so illogical a creature as that. There is bound to be, finally, either a levelling up or a levelling down towards a single uniform standard. No proverb is more dangerous than "Charity begins at home." When it begins in the place most congenial to its exercise, it is apt to end there. Lord Melbourne is said to have complained, after hearing a sermon, "Things are coming to a pretty pass, when religion claims to interfere with a man's private life." We smile at Lord Melbourne's honest indignation. Our turn come to be indignant when the sermon applies the Christian "paradoxes" to industry, commerce, and international relations.

And it is along these lines that religious teaching can be made absorbingly interesting. It all comes round to the old question, "Are we going to apply Christianity to the problems of modern society or are we not?" The case against doing so can be found every day in the press, so here, at any rate, is an issue worth facing, with a presumably infallible authority to support each side. The direction of most religious teaching hitherto has been too purely personal; the exhortation is too obvious and the appeal falls flat. Politics without religion lacks foundation; but religion without politics lacks quite half its content. Christianity is the leaven, but so also is politics the lump.

Along these lines, we believe, one might get in the middle and lower parts of the school results analogous to those we have described in the cases of some sixth form boys. The present writer used to teach Divinity to a middle form on the Modern Side, and whenever a Gospel happened to be scheduled, he found ample material to his hand. It is surprising how little, for all the sermons they have heard, most boys of sixteen have faced the ideas expressed in the most hackneyed texts. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle...." "Love your enemies." "Take no thought for the morrow." A most mischievous half-truth has got about that these sayings are not to be taken literally. Boys have told me that a "rich man" means one who has grown rich by robbery. Well, what is robbery? "La propriete, c'est le vol"? "Love your enemies" means, I have been told, "Have no enemies: lead a peaceable life; but if..." There was a case apparently not provided for. "Take no thought for the morrow." On this I once got the delightfully honest comment, "Christ must have said this to cheer the disciples when they were depressed. Taken literally it would be absurd." With such candour on the pupils' side, surely the teacher's task is not hopeless. Here at last we have the atmosphere of honest controversy, and without controversy there is no freedom of thought; without freedom of thought no conviction; without conviction, no education and no religion.



CHAPTER X

CURRICULUM

It is always difficult to define the limits of a topic. This book is concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very broad sense we here attach to the term. Our contention is that that subject is of paramount importance, and that it should provide the basis and foundation of liberal education. With that idea in view, we have given some account of our own experience; we have also considered what seemed the most reasonable and weighty objections; we have also shown how politics reacted, in our experience, upon morality and religion. And then it might seem well to make an end. But an education is, or should be, a single whole, and the entire omission of certain aspects lends itself to misunderstanding. Our previous book suggested to one reader, at least, that we regarded subjects other than those we treated of, as possessing no educational value other than a purely utilitarian one. That was not at all the impression we wished to create, and it is with a view to correcting it that we attempt a brief general survey of the non-political subjects and their place in a curriculum which took politics as its centre. But we offer these remarks with much diffidence. If this book and its predecessor have any value, it is due to the fact that they are based on direct and vivid teaching experience; and here for the most part the guidance of experience deserts us.

One very natural criticism of our thesis is that politics, though it may stimulate interest, cannot provide intellectual discipline. The criticism is natural because, so long as the English subjects are regarded as a subsidiary matter, they are and will be treated by masters and boys in an easy going manner. Other and sterner subjects are reckoned on to supply the disciplinary factor which the English subjects lack. There is, in fact, a very prevalent idea that interest and discipline vary inversely to one another; that discipline is to be found in doing what is uninteresting; and that interest is to be found in doing what is "slack." This is very bad psychology. For we aim at training willing servants, fit to become masters, not slaves fit for nothing but slavery. The only valuable discipline is self-discipline, and self-discipline will only be reached when the boy has realised for himself that the work is intrinsically worth doing, and when he has realised that he will have become interested. Again, what is interesting must be absorbing, and such work can never be "slack." The mistake seems to arise from a confusion of ideas in connection with the word "easy." It is no more "easy" to write an adequate essay on the subject of National Guilds than it is to learn the principal parts of a large number of irregular verbs: possibly it is much more difficult. But under certain conditions which we have seen produced, a boy will find it "easy" to gird himself up to the former task; indeed, he will get so absorbed that he will find it difficult to leave off. Few questions are less "easy" than those connected with a paper-money currency, but one half-holiday afternoon we found a vigorous discussion on this subject in progress between a group of cricketers whom rain had driven to the pavilion. Ordinary history teaching, if only time is allowed and certificate examinations do hot threaten, affords scope for a great variety of exercises demanding careful thought and accurate knowledge.

So much in answer to the suggestion that only through the non-political subjects can real hard work be secured.

The non-political subjects fall into three groups—languages, mathematics, and the natural sciences.

Probably no one regards the teaching of foreign languages in the public schools as at all satisfactory at present, and the chief reason is that far too much is attempted, with far too little consideration of what will be achieved. Most boys are either simultaneously learning, or have at one time simultaneously tried to learn, three foreign languages, Latin, Greek, and French, or Latin, French, and German. The burden is too heavy for them to bear. Only the minority have any real gift for foreign languages, and for the rest the aim should be one foreign language only. Little will be accomplished in any subject unless there is a real ambition to learn, and there can be no such ambition unless a definite goal is in sight. The goal here is real knowledge in a foreign language, for half or quarter-knowledge of a foreign language is a most unsatisfying accomplishment. The obvious language is French. Even so, many will not learn to write it correctly, and as for speaking it, that is an accomplishment so much more conveniently acquired elsewhere that we offer no opinion as to how far it is worth attempting at school.[1] But fluent reading of French is a thing within the reach of practically any boy, and even the stupid boy, if he concentrates upon this, to the exclusion of other and more difficult linguistic tasks, will make such unmistakable progress that his ambitions may well be roused. And the accomplishment is one that can quickly be made useful. For instance, probably the best general history of Europe is still Guizot's book, and its French is about the easiest ever written. But we would go further. We remember once a boy being birched for circulating a copy of La Vie Parisienne. Does not this suggest that every house should take a French daily newspaper, and also an illustrated weekly, other than that above mentioned?

But while advocating the single language for the ordinary boy, we are pulled up short by the claims of Latin; and here we feel a difficulty. A good deal of what is said in favour of Latin we regard as pure superstition. It is not true that boys can only learn to write their own language correctly by means of Latin prose. Nor is it true that Latin prose supplies the ideal mental discipline. That is only true for the minority of boys who reach the stage at which real Latin prose is written. Most flounder about all their time in the stage of artificial Latin prose, wherein is nothing more than the meticulous application of a set of laboriously acquired grammatical rules—a tolerable training in conscientious application, such as any subject can supply, but nothing more. Yet it may well be true—on this point we feel uncertain—that an elementary knowledge of Latin supplies such a foundation for the understanding both of English and French, that it is worth making some sacrifices to retain it. If that be so, we would start every boy on Latin as his first foreign language. Those who showed little ability would abandon it at about the time they began French.

In the case of boys with some real linguistic ability, we are happy to find ourselves thoroughly conservative. We believe firmly in the grand old fortifying classical curriculum, provided it is understood that the languages themselves are but means to an end, to the understanding of the classical civilisation. In fine, the goal of classics should be to-day, as it was for the Renaissance scholars, ultimately political. The classical student who, at the time when his schooling ends, is still doing no more than "settling Hoti's business" and "properly basing Oun," is in the position of Browning's "Grammarian," with this vital difference that he probably does not intend to employ his future life in building any superstructure upon the foundations thus laboriously laid.

In mathematics there is probably a deeper cleavage than in any other subject between the real thing, as mathematicians understand it, and the elementary knowledge within the reach of all. "The real thing" is perhaps the most remote and specialised of all branches of learning. For a few it is the best, indeed, the only natural, line of development; but these are few and easily recognised, and even they should not be allowed to specialise too narrowly—that is a point which no one who is not a mathematician will dispute. At the other end of the scale comes the third of the three R's; and about that again there is no controversy, except as to the best methods of teaching it.[2] Yet the schools do not recognise sufficiently clearly this line of cleavage, and many boys who are presumed to have reached the end of the elementary stage remain for some time battering in vain at the doors of the inner temple. These should go back once over the elements again to see if they know them, and then give it up for good. This will mean a cheerful exodus from the upper-middle mathematical divisions. We confess to sympathy with the conservative-radical head master who said, "I shall not advocate the abolition of compulsory Greek in University examinations until I can get people to agree to the abolition of compulsory Algebra."

There is perhaps a middle term between elementary and "real" mathematics; that is the mathematics that is the handmaid of physics, and leads us on to the natural sciences.

To-day the claims of natural science are very insistent, and they come from more than one quarter. From one quarter comes the claim that science alone of the subjects in the time-table "means business," and makes money, and that in these strenuous times other subjects that lead to mere elegant accomplishments must crowd into a narrow space to make room for the one subject that makes for sheer efficiency. The point is often put with a certain crudity; but we may as well ignore that, and recognise that the just claims of commercial training will have to be met by the schools more fully than heretofore. Only let us recognise commercial training for what it is, and not pretend that it can ever offer a substitute for the liberal education which must continue alongside of it. But the teacher of science will more often take quite other ground, and will claim that his subject, over and above its commercial usefulness, provides most of the ingredients of a Liberal education in itself. He will point to the training it offers in habits of conscientious accuracy, its exemplification of the laws of cause and effect, its undeviating respect for truth, and the inspiration of its endless progress, built up on the heroic researches of the great pioneers.

This claim demands careful and sympathetic scrutiny. To begin with criticism, we are quite unconvinced that science alone can train the mind to logical methods, or imbue it with a respect for truth in matters outside the scientific sphere. "Science," as the term is commonly understood, deals with material things, and, as such, it gives but little support to the mind when confronted with the problems of humanity, whether personal or political. It is only too common for the science specialist to respect cause and effect in a test-tube and despise it in a newspaper. In science no passions are evoked in favour of one solution or another. The search for truth may well be disinterested, since it is, humanly speaking, uninterested. A liberal education must train the mind to master prejudice and self-interest, and this training cannot be given in a material where prejudice and self-interest will not come into play.

As regards ordinary laboratory work, and lectures on laboratory detail, of which science teaching at present, as many science masters agree, far too exclusively consists, our view is similar to our view on mathematics. It is often instructive, both for boy and master, to get the boys to draw up an ideal time-table. The results, as a rule, are disappointingly conventional, it is true. Few boys have ever criticised their education, except in a purely destructive and cynical spirit, and when confronted with the constructive task, produce something not very far removed from the time-table they follow out every week. But as regards science, it will often be found that the form falls into two clearly marked divisions. One part cut it down to a minimum, and would, if they had the courage of their convictions, cut it out altogether; the other part give it half, or more than half, the time-table. This probably marks the fact that for many boys a very small amount of laboratory experience, just enough to give them a notion of method, is all that they will benefit by. For the rest the training has real value and interest; but these are a minority.

But there is another aspect of science, receiving as yet far too little attention at school, which seems to us an essential part of a liberal education. Indeed, when our own sixth form time-table was remodelled, we put in a claim for a weekly lecture on General Principles of Science, alongside with modern history and political science and economics. The general principles of natural law, evolution and heredity, the nature and cure of disease, the atomic theory of matter, general principles of astronomy—these things seem to us second only in importance to the great principles of politics themselves. Here is an extraordinary record of patient achievement, some contact with which is in itself an inspiration not merely intellectual, but moral. For it seems to us hardly fanciful to suggest that such knowledge should react—so subtle are the reactions of the boy-mind, as we have already tried to show—most favourably on the political spirit. Dr. Gregory, in his enthusiastic work in praise of his subject, "Discovery: or the Spirit and Service of Science," writes: "In the discussion of political questions, prejudice and party determine the view taken, and facts are selected and exploited not so much with the object of arriving at the truth as to confound the other side.... A politician may place party above truth, and a diplomatist will conceal it on behalf of his country, but it is the duty of the man of science to attain truth at all costs. In direct opposition to the narrowness of thought which views all subjects through the distorting mirage of party prejudice, stands the absolute freedom of mind of the man of science who stands with open arms to welcome truth...." And Dr. Gregory's moral would seem to be: Eschew politics and devote yourself to science. As if the world could exist without politics! As if the happy alternative to bad politicians were no politicians! The right moral surely is that which we have been drawing, with possibly wearisome repetition, throughout this book; that all that is best in the scientific mind, all that is best in the literary and artistic mind, all that is best in the religious mind, must be brought to bear upon the problems of our corporate life.



[1] We offer no opinion, also, on the "oral method" of teaching both modern and classical tongues, as we have no experience at all to guide us.

[2] Surely, too, the third of the three R's should include a knowledge of book-keeping, balance sheets, etc. Here we join hands heartily with the "utilitarian" school of educational reformers. We also wish that every one learnt shorthand almost as soon as he had learnt longhand.



CHAPTER XI

THE YOUNG GENERATION AND THE OLD

"There, it is to be feared, they will find the parents most in their way. The normal father may endure his son being taught poetry, but he will object to the instilling of opinion other than his own."—Outlook.

"Fancy some imp of fifteen or sixteen assailing the author of his being, a court-worn barrister or 'rattled' stockbroker, at his evening meal: 'Father, I think Lord Bryce's bill for the reform of the House of Lords radically unsound,' or suddenly asking his mother, who, good, easy woman, is revolving in her mind the merits of a coat and skirt she has seen that afternoon at Debenham's: 'Mother, what is your opinion of the Trading with the Enemy Bill?'"—Saturday Review.

"Youth is asking questions as never before—asking awkward, burning questions, which put its seniors in a flutter. The seniors, under question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never till now dreamt of the need of any. If they are wise, they will put away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer these things out, and perchance clear their own minds in the process."—Westminster Gazette.

By way of epilogue—an appeal to the parents.

What is it that the parents want from the schools? The question is all-important; for by the spiritual law of demand and supply, what they want they will get. It has been said that every nation has the government it deserves. So it is with the press, and so it is with the schools: we get what we want, and what we want is what we deserve. What do we want?

There are some parents who take the public schools quite seriously as places of professional training, places where their sons will be taught to earn their livings, and they are encouraged in this notion by the fact that several professional bodies insist on successful candidature in some pass examination in school subjects as a first step towards entrance into the profession, and thereby rivet these examinations upon the schools. The result is not altogether bad. The examinations make for a deplorable ossification of the curriculum; but they also set a certain low standard, and drive a certain type of boy and master to work, and, though the type of work is not very exalted, it is better than nothing at all. On the individual boy the effect will be various. "Look here," says the house master, "there's London Matric. at the end of next term. Hadn't you better give up all this foolery with politics and do a little real work?" The advice was taken, and perhaps we are not sufficiently impartial to offer a valuable opinion on the result. However, the boy was no fool, and the first part of the advice need never have been given. Except in the case of boys, far too numerous, who are taking examinations that ought never to have been imposed on them, "modern aiders" and the like who are mugging up "prepared books" of Virgil and Euripides, work for a pass examination ought not to mean the cessation of all other intellectual activity.

There is another much more old-fashioned type of parent who stands for everything that is traditional, who is seriously disturbed if his boy wanders far afield from the old classical curriculum, who regards all new subjects as foolish fads. It is this parent, helped by an old-fashioned type of house master, who retains in a mild torture of boredom the boys who linger wasting their time in the lower reaches of the classical side.

But anything is better than nothing, and the attitude of many more parents is purely cynical. They just leave it to the schoolmaster. "Cynical" might seem a hard word with which to repay this compliment of trust; but it is not, for there is really no compliment and no trust. The parent does not really believe in the school-master's judgment. He believes in him so little that he thinks it simply does not matter what happens in the class-room, provided the boy seems to enjoy himself—how many parents really know whether their boys do enjoy themselves at school?—and provided the house master is not actively complaining.

Now, there is only one hope, and that is that the parents should come to look at this matter of their son's education politically. School-time is a training, and we are all familiar enough with the idea of training now. Before the war, as since, schools had their O.T.C.'s. But these O.T.C.'s were wretched perfunctory affairs, boring everybody, because we hardly any of us seriously envisaged them as a training, only as an incubus. Now, we all see them as training for a part that has got to be played, and the whole spirit is different. But the country will soon be calling upon our public school boys to play another and perhaps even more difficult part, and where is the training for that? When the war is won we shall plunge into another maelstrom; and it will all be politics, politics, politics. The leaders of labour have roughly charted their course; they mean to make a new world for the masses whether we like it or not, and they mean in the main right. But what part are the public school men going to play? It is an extremely difficult position, and the difficulties crop up not only in the details, of which only mature experience can give a knowledge, but in the elementary principles regulating our outlook, our attitude. And that is where the public schools could come in with irresistible effect if only they would brace themselves to the task. "Your king and country need you," said the old recruiting poster of 1914. "Good God! have they never wanted me till now?" was the natural rejoinder. In any case they will not cease to want the public school boy when the war is over.

In this task the parents must co-operate. The normal father, we are told, will object if his son brings home opinions other than his own. But, in sober truth, if the son brings home the same opinions as the fathers have always held, we are in a poor way. It was the fathers and the grandfathers who brought the world to its present pass. It is the sons who, starting with new principles from new beginnings, have got to set it on a better road. The Saturday Review and The Westminster Gazette offer us, in the quotations at the head of this chapter two little vignettes of parentage. Which would you have?

The holidays occupy rather more than a quarter, and rather less than a third of the year. If you asked what the boys do in the holidays, you would ask a question that puzzles many boys themselves to answer. The waste of school holidays is even more striking than the waste of school terms. For education should not be, indeed, cannot be, limited to term time. The proportion of boys who require "rest" in the holidays, even for the first week or two, is small. A slack time, prolonged beyond a week or so, bores most boys consumedly and ought to bore them all. We are not thinking here of the favoured few who get their fill of fishing and field sports. Such things have their limitations, perhaps, but they offer at least a time of activity, resourcefulness, and keen enjoyment. Most boys, however, live in quiet homes in towns, far from the opportunity for such things, and how these pass the time is a mystery even to themselves, as many have confessed to us. In plain words, they kill the time, and thereby acquire a most dangerous accomplishment. Some few, it is true, make themselves endlessly useful to their parents, and nothing could be better. But only a few homes provide scope for an "odd-jobs man" of this type. For the bulk, holidays are simply times of unemployment.

Now, when a schoolmaster ventures to offer advice about the holidays, he might seem to be stepping presumptuously outside his own province; but that plea for reticence is one we cannot admit. Term and holidays alike are an education, and they interact upon one another so closely that the schoolmaster not only may, but must, form his judgment upon both. It is not for us to compile a detailed "Parent's Assistant." Heaven forbid! Every home has its own problems and its own opportunities, but surely there is no home in which the parents have not a range of activities, professional, commercial, political, or literary. So often, as it seems, from various motives, good and bad, the boy remains more or less excluded from these long after he has become capable of a certain partnership in his parents' interests. The drawback of life at a public school is that it is highly artificial. Call it as you please a barrack or a monastery, a boarding-school is something cut off from the main streams of ordinary life. In the holidays the boy renews contact with ordinary life, and that periodic renewal is an essential part of his education. But surely his holidays should bring him into contact with some more of life than its superficial frivolities.

The kind of holidays we have in mind would make some call on the time and energy of the parents; and perhaps it will be said that the time and energy simply cannot be spared. Well, there was a time, fifteen years or so before, when these same parents gave ungrudgingly any amount of time and energy to the task of watching over the development of the little child now rapidly approaching manhood. But the boy of seventeen, though much more difficult to understand, is every bit as fascinating as the child of two, and the parents' time and energy devoted to the boy will be as certainly well spent.

And it will, we believe, bring a new happiness to many parents themselves. As school-masters, our widest experience of parents—not that we pretend it is very wide—is our experience of boys' talk about their homes. Boys speak of their parents with deep affection and respect, as a rule; but so very often they leave an impression that they do not really know them. It is the commonest thing in the world for fathers and sons, without any positive estrangement, to get entirely out of touch with one another during the latter part of a boy's school-time. The boy develops rapidly, and the greater part of his development is quite concealed from the father. He returns home to find his father "just the same," and apparently quite unable to divine the new developments which the son is too proud to reveal uninvited. Or maybe he does attempt to reveal them, and, bungling his task, finds himself misunderstood, and lays the blame on the father. So often, as it seems, the father might have helped matters by playing a rather more active part, and going half, or even three-quarters, of the way to meet his son's confidences. But there is a natural shyness of fathers towards their sons at this stage, and shyness on one side begets shyness and misunderstanding on the other. More than once a boy has said to one of us, "What am I to do to get into touch with my father? Last holidays we found we'd nothing sensible to talk to each other about at all." It is difficult to advise, but the most obvious thing to say is, presumably, to remind the boy that his father is but a human being like himself; that possibly the boy is himself rather unnecessarily enigmatic, and that instead of expecting the father to make all the moves, the son might himself hold out a hand and help the father to understand the changes that had taken place within him. That is how the matter stands on the boy's side, and it may help some fathers to know it.

One of our boys, we remember, wanted to discover something at first hand of the real interests of employees in his father's firm. Whatever he discovered, it made an excellent holiday interest for him. Among other things, he attended some W.E.A. lectures, because he found that the more intelligent men were interested by them. This was a boy of rather unusual initiative; but we believe there are many boys who would find a genuine interest in such matters, if the fathers gave them the lead. Thus the wretched tradition that the holidays are for unemployment would be gradually broken down, and games would take their proper place—in holidays and term alike. Perhaps, too, the father on looking back might find that there had been some "education" in it for himself also.

The principle from which we started was that the public schools were full of glorious possibilities, to-day largely unrealised. Is not the same true of many homes?



APPENDIX

"It is quite evident that the boys have been encouraged to read periodicals such as The Nation and The English Review, and their articles read like elaborate parodies. There is no particular harm in allowing a clever boy to do monkey tricks of this type, but there is a good deal of harm in printing it instead of gently deriding the self-sufficiency of these youthful oracles."—Church Times.

"The most obvious fact about these articles is that the boys are writing what they mean, and what they want to say, and that they are able to do so because they feel sure of the community that forms their audience."—Mr. Kenneth Richmond in The New Age.



[Of the three articles that follow, the first was printed in the first issue of The School Observer; the second was written for the suppressed sixth issue; the last was written on the day after the final collapse of the whole experiment, and was, of course, never intended for the paper at all.]



I

EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE

If workmen strike, if employers oppress, if prostitution flourishes, if paper demagogues are allowed to rule, if poverty exists, if men fight, whatever evil it is, the remedy lies at the root—education. All reforms are mere palliatives until the fundamental reform of education is perfected. There are no connecting links of argument. It is a natural corollary, justified by any particular example that may be traced.

It is another question whether education or lack of it is more calculated to hasten the ultimate ideal of well-ordered anarchy, which, consciously or unconsciously, we all entertain; but for the meanwhile the affirmative assumption must be adopted. The sole remaining question, then, is, By what means is education to rectify the immediate evils?

While it is fairly generally established that the purpose of education is efficient citizenship, it is clear that, owing to the diminished proportion of the individual to the community, the purpose is being gradually lost sight of. To borrow from scientific phraseology, the tendency of the unit to remaining an "idiot" (in the Greek sense of the word!) varies directly as the magnitude of the mass. And this is a truism that public schools do not help to abolish. Although "school patriotism" is invariably quoted as a denial of this, there prevails in modern schools a definite inclination towards unsentimental cynicism in the matter. This does not necessarily denote an unhealthy spirit, but an increase of intellect that, whether with justification or not, vaguely asks for something wider or more substantial.

Perhaps our grandfathers are right when they tell us that the modern youth becomes a man sooner than his predecessors. Perhaps our grandfathers are right when they tell us it is a pity.

However that may be, the two facts remain, that there is a rather benighted tendency in the direction of intellectual activity, which the public school spirit makes no effort to assist, and that the public schools are inclined to produce gentlemen rather than citizens. Of course the former make better advertisements. Yet they ought not to. They would not in Germany. One day they will not here. The instance shows that the Chestertonian "England of Romance" is really the one that exists. The word "gentleman" is purely a romantic one, and a gentleman a purely romantic though enviable figure. A state in the future will not be able to thrive on gentlemen: it will need citizens.

It has cost me dear to write down this, for in my illogical mind (and no one, by the way, save a politician, could have a logical one!) I would choose without hesitation the gentleman. But that is probably because, if I could, I would sell my quills for brushes.

The conclusion from all this, then, is that I was not holding Germany up as a paragon just now, but leading up to an obvious improvement—a gentleman-citizen. Whoever thinks he fulfils the conditions implicated in the role may know that not only is he an uncommon and a great man, but also the embodiment of a high, practicable ideal; in the attainment of which lies the solution of the whole educational question—how, of the two component parts, to maintain the moral position of the first and create one for the second.

Except for the few, favoured with a productive imagination, the public school can as yet do nothing in this direction. It would be useless, for instance, to crowd a dull, technical science of politics on an already over-amended curriculum. One day it may not be useless. But until a new species of governess can be bred, it is. Of the species in question, I know of one example. There may be more, but not many, though of course they are, I am aware, rapidly multiplying. The only possible children's governess is the governess who attempts to teach nothing except how to learn. The ideal education is undoubtedly an a la carte one, but as this is impossible both physically and because a public school master has not the time to find out how to teach any particular boy, the difficulty is solved if the boy has found out how to learn from any particular master.

A man's life depends altogether on the first morsel of education he receives, so that a governess's responsibility is colossal. And, of course, a competent governess is a far holier thing than any parson's wife. Not only must she teach not so much what he will have to learn (which would scarcely encourage him in view of its magnitude) as how he will have to learn (which could only make him eager to put the theory to the test of practice—all the more so when he finds it succeeds), but also she must attempt to discover and develop, even at this very early stage, the seeds of mental independence and originality, which alone can make him a competent citizen. Think how much easier legislation would be in a state composed of such as these! It is the only condition that really justifies democracy. There could be no question of denying a people of this quality a voice in their own government. Representation could no longer be a game for gamblers and contortionists.

As things are, however, the progress of the public schools (and I have been dealing exclusively with public-school classes) cannot make much headway until they have clay to mould instead of granite to chisel. It is not their fault if there is no way to teach the majority, and if the few are thrown back on their own inadequate resources. The remedy lies in some measure to ensure the right primary education. Seventy-five per cent. of the public school boys have not had brilliant, discerning governesses—or even mothers. There are not enough of either to go round. So that the seventy-five per cent., possibly more, don't know how to learn, and the mere twenty-five per cent. do. It is hard to tackle effectively so intangible a problem as the correct primary method of teaching, and the statesman, through whose instrumentality this percentage is reversed, may give up politics for gold not had brilliant, discerning governesses with a clear conscience. The first step, therefore, is to reform the education of women. "Take care of the women, the men will take care of themselves."

Nevertheless, be the solution what it may, the importance of the subject cannot be over-estimated. One more illustration. The better educated a man is, the more capable he is of soaring above the spirit of national citizenship....

And the next stage is the spirit of world citizenship ... which, in the course of many, many years, together, possibly, with the development of Esperanto, means the brotherhood of men....

Then perpetual peace....

Then advancement to a primitive condition....

Then the much-dreamed-of well-ordered anarchy....

To continue till a second Milton is called upon to write as misty history a second "Paradise Lost." ...

B.W.L.



II

"And He saw that it was good...."

Throughout the Universe which He had created He set a Great Road, and on it was Man, at first invisible, but soon an infinite multitude. And then unto Man, as to nothing else in His Universe, He gave the power to move, and to walk on the Road, which He made to pass through all the Great and Beautiful Worlds, coming at last to where He is, where all is happy because all is good, and where nothing ends because there is the End. And as He looked and beheld Man scattered out upon the great Road as it wound about through the Universe, He thought to try His people, and show by a certain proof whether they were possessed of the goodness through which alone they could comprehend all things, and become able to enter the realm of perfect goodness. And so He sent the semblance of a great Fire into the Universe, which should seem utterly to destroy all things which He had made, and to cut off the hope and possibility of a future perception and life eternal.

* * * * *

As the fire rolls on, devouring all that it meets, humanity on the Road sees its advance, and realises that in the course of a few hours the Universe will be reduced to a smouldering cinder, that its hopes for a future life, where the Road ends, is cut short and never to be realised, and that apparently its former belief, albeit a vague and ill-defined one, in a God who is all-merciful and kind, was altogether an illusion, and merely a cause for false confidence and self-righteousness. And how will it stand the test? Would the good or the bad element in human nature assert itself in the face of absolute annihilation? It is obvious that with such a position several of the possible and no doubt ordinary motives for goodness, such as the idea of doing good in order to reap benefits or escape punishment in a future existence, and of doing good for the sake of having it recognised among others, are excluded from the proposition. Even the idea of doing good because it is in accordance with a "will of God" is excluded, since the idea of destruction coming from the direction of the End is unheard of to man, and is in direct contradiction to his ideas of God. We are brought, therefore, down to the very foundation; and the question we have to answer becomes—Is one of the elements of human nature a feeling of necessity to pursue goodness for its own sake, quite apart from any motives?

In the first place, when a supreme danger such as that already described is rapidly approaching humanity, if such a thing could be, what would be the immediate result? We know that with the ordinary dangers, such as shipwreck and air-raid, the tendency among people gathered together in large numbers is to panic, to herd together and become temporarily deprived of normal reasoning powers. Would this be the result of the sight of approaching universal destruction? Surely not. Panic is the result, I believe, not of approaching danger simply, but necessarily of a danger which threatens to affect some of a number of people more than others, and which there is a possibility of avoiding. It is entirely the element of uncertainty or suspense which causes panic among numbers of people. Now this is an important point in the argument. It seems very easy to defeat it on the grounds that animals almost invariably herd together and panic in the face of danger, and that such action cannot be due to the element of uncertainty and suspense, since this necessitates the employment of calculative and reasoning faculties which animals presumably do not possess. The justification is to be found in a closer examination of the part played by the uncertainty in producing the panic which is common to men and animals. In the face of danger, as in everything else, man's first instinct is to reason and calculate, and his calculation results in finding the danger either avoidable and uncertain, which is almost always the case, or unavoidable and inevitable. If the danger is found avoidable, fear is the immediate result. Fear as we know it has come into being with reason, but at the same time, as will be seen later, it is only reason which can triumph over and destroy fear. This fear then brings about the destruction of reason, and the animal standard is reached, from which time the man behaves in the same way as the animals, to whom the danger is merely something out of the ordinary. He then comes under the domination of the instinct to panic. It will thus be seen that all the mental processes which came before the reversion to the animal standard in men, are unknown to animals, and are the outcome of the purely human faculty of reason. However, if reason can by any means retain its foothold and its entirety, there will neither be fear nor the consequent breakdown of reason and the domination of panic. Now this is the position in the other case, the case in which reason finds the danger unavoidable. In the case of a danger which is unavoidable there will be no panic. It is this fact which accounts for the bravery of numbers of people going to their death on board a sinking ship; but such a position has never—or very seldom, indeed—avoided a relapse, to a certain extent, to panic, inasmuch as there is a possibility of avoiding the danger, and a possibility that some may survive, while others are doomed to perish.

In the face of universal destruction, therefore, there will be no fear and no panic. The fact that he is facing annihilation together with the rest of humanity would have an extraordinary influence on each individual, which, of course, would be just the same if he alone was aware of the danger. I remember very well an evening at school when I was told and convinced by several boys older than myself that (I even remember the date) on June 18th the earth was going to be destroyed. It had been proved, I was told, beyond the shadow of a doubt that on that particular date some natural phenomenon would take place which would inevitably entail the destruction of everything living on the earth. This forms an interesting parallel to the present case; for at the time I was only about eight years old, and I had very scanty ideas about God and future life. To me the earth was the Universe. And, furthermore, for about an hour most of us thoroughly believed that the destruction of the earth, or the End of the World as we called it, was at hand. Of course, it might be said that there is no real parallel, since we were only children; but I believe that argument to be absolutely fallacious. In the matter of fundamental tendencies and characteristics of human nature one cannot assume such divisions. Since the present state of good and evil in human nature has taken thousands of years to become evolved, it seems unlikely that there can be caused in the individual at present any fundamental change. I therefore contend that as soon as personality and independence of character becomes evident in the individual, both the good and the evil in his nature will be present in the same way and in the same relation, although not necessarily in the same proportions or degrees, as they will be throughout the greater part of his life. This personality becomes evident without any doubt at a very early age, certainly by the age of eight; and in so far as the development of good and evil is dependent upon the development of character, it seems likely that these elements will be more clearly marked in the child of eight than in the second infancy of the man of eighty.

To return to the personal incident. I recall very vividly now the half-hour which followed my conviction of Universal destruction, and, of course, I realise my actual feelings and their probable causes more clearly now than I did at the time. The real force of my conviction only lasted for about an hour, but in that time, and aided no doubt by a rather strained imagination, I was, I feel convinced, in the same position as any one of the individuals on that great Road as they see the Fire approaching and devouring the entire Universe.

As the affair was being explained to me I remember I was terrified, but very soon, and as soon as I realised the situation, which it must be remembered the people on the Road would do almost instantaneously, this feeling entirely left me. And the next feeling, a very forcible one, was rather extraordinary, being as it was an overpowering feeling of solitude. It was evening, and twenty or thirty of us were all in a large classroom together, and for many minutes I felt more lonely than I ever had before; I felt cut off from all those around me, and I see that, as Peer Gynt would have said, "I had become myself." As has already been said, I was not frightened, and what I did in those minutes was to work. It was "prep-time," and it is an interesting fact, as bearing out what has already been said both about the establishment of individuality with consequent opportunities of concentration, and also about the maintenance of reason, that I was able to "do" in those minutes, and do better than usual, the work that generally demanded more than the allotted hour.

Very soon, however, the feeling of solitude passed away and its place was taken by a feeling of exactly the opposite nature, a feeling of Unity, of extraordinary fellowship, followed by a wonderful sensation of happiness. All this sounds rather grotesque, and the continued use of these rather meaningless epithets is very ineffectual in expressing what they are meant to convey. But it must be remembered that the position is altogether an extraordinary one; and the feelings and sensations resulting from such a position were extraordinary at the time and still are extraordinary. The position seems quite unique; it is difficult to imagine where and how else that same mental condition could be produced: older people would not have credited the story even for the short time that we did, and younger children would not have had the independence of thought and imagination to picture and contemplate the situation. At the time it was my good fortune to experience things which I have never experienced before or since, and which I believe few ever have experienced.

However, you ask for a return to the question of whether goodness is an immanent reality in human nature; you ask perhaps, in view of the incident described, "If it had been in your power to do something at that time which was supremely pleasurable but at the same time contrary to your moral ideas, would you have done it?" The answer, which is mainly contained in or drawn from what has gone before is—No; and the direct reason is, because, in the conditions produced by the position described, nothing but what is good remains in the human nature. The bed-rock has been reached, and it is good; the causes of evil and of its continuance are removed.

Ever since man has led a corporate life it seems probable that one outstanding evil has prevailed, in greater or less degrees according to the rate and amount of progress made by any community. And this evil is the lack and suppression of individuality. It seems impossible to account for it, except by simply saying that it is, and has always been a characteristic tendency of human nature; however, this is the most encouraging answer possible, because it assumes that this evil can eventually be eradicated. No one can surely deny that there is a lack of individuality at present; its chief manifestations, of course, are to be found in hatred, and in the spirit of competition and rivalry; it produces a clash between individual opinions and actions which is so apparent that it cannot be denied, and need not be enlarged upon. But, apart from these more obvious manifestations, this failing has been responsible for the production and continuance of all that is evil in man. Human nature is the foundation of our life, of that foundation every individual is entitled to partake; and, furthermore, that foundation is good. Every individual possesses a portion of this foundation as his right; and what is the result, under these circumstances, of lack of individuality? Surely the result is that some parts of those individual sections, parts which are in some cases similar to and in other cases different from parts of other individual sections, are used as the foundation, while the remainder is left unused. For, for the most part, men either employ those parts of their portion of the foundation of goodness which are common to as many other individual sections as possible, or, like Alceste, the parts which are definitely opposed to most others. In any case where the foundation is undeveloped and unused there grows, like a poisonous growth, sin, which is made of and feeds upon the material of the good foundation, which has been put to the wrong use. Sin and evil are not separate, in the strict sense, from good. It seems inconceivable that good and evil should have had different origins, and should have existed as rival elements in human nature without the one having by this time triumphed over the other.

In matters which affect every member of a body similarly, the combined influence of all those members should be brought to bear; but where every individual can "be himself" and interpret and use his portion of the foundation of goodness in the complete way for which he was made and intended, without affecting others, he should be allowed to influence them or be influenced by them, without interference on the part of any other individual. Since this has not been the case, we have had the continuance of sin, and until it is the case, there always will be sin.

Now, in the position described, complete individuality is established and evil ceases to exist and becomes a thing of the past. With the near prospect of universal destruction, there is immediately a cessation of progress; and then, as in the incident described, there comes complete individuality—every individual becomes himself. With a common destruction inevitable and with the establishment of individuality, co-operation in its true sense prevails, and with it the surpassing and disappearance of evil; and then that wonderful happiness ... of all this I am convinced. I remember well the effect for an hour or so among a few of us that evening. The contrast between the atmosphere in the little room in which the most impressed of us gathered during that time, which was free, I know, from everything but good, and that of a day or two later when we made fun of the whole affair, is so marked that my opinion on the matter is very definite.

Goodness alone there was at the beginning, and goodness alone there will be at the end. No man is the cause of his own downfall, but he alone as an individual can be the maintainer of his foothold. Individuality in all that concerns the individual, alone can make and keep life clean and sweet. If this individuality could, by such means as education, be established, there would be constituted a uniting force through humanity which could lead it, in the course of time, in the way it should go.

* * * * *

And as He raised the semblance of the Fire from the Universe, He looked upon Man and saw that he was good.

J. A. A. J.



III

THE DREAM

How much of our life seems and is a dream! How often we feel ourselves carried off our feet and borne along on a tide of circumstances, tossed backwards and forwards on a sea of conflicting events, now hurried along by a current of opinion, now blinded with the spray of false accusation, then motionless for a moment, trying to collect our shattered thoughts before the next onslaught: but all the time out of touch, consciously, with what is going on, utterly powerless, trying to gather up the threads and recover consciousness. Any action that we take, any word that we utter, is done without thought, without knowledge, and without any result. And yet neither the cause nor the effect are, strictly speaking, physical. The position is a mental attitude, in this case mental helplessness, and this is dependent solely upon the relation of the mind to exterior circumstances. When we are fully conscious, we are ourselves each the centre of a little world, which includes all that concerns us, and the appearance of this depends entirely upon its particular meaning for us. We do not, cannot, under these circumstances, see anything exactly as it is: its appearance is influenced by its importance for us or by the degree of approval, or disapproval which we ourselves attach to it. When our life becomes a dream, our sphere is broken into and usurped by the changing of values, shapes, and appearance of things within it. The old familiar forms are transfigured and tampered with, our mistaken or incomplete idea of persons is revealed, and a host of new and inexplicable forms appear; with the result that we are literally bewildered, and instead of regarding things with reference to their influence upon us, we see things as they are in themselves—when we can see at all—and feel what they actually do to us.

There can be no one who is not aware of this experience, in a greater or a less degree. I speak of it as dreaming because that is the analogy which best represents the circumstances, all of which have been explained except one. In the same way as we are not conscious that what we have been dreaming is a dream until we awake, so in these periods of our actual life in which we are deprived of will and are borne along by exterior circumstances and forces, we are not aware of our helplessness, of our utter weakness, of the significance of what we have seen and heard, until we have regained consciousness and woken again to our freedom.

In this sense I have recently had a dream, and only since have I realised that what I dreamt was fact; and then I was able to place it all within my sphere—its ideas, its causes, and its effects have become or are becoming the familiar forms and shapes, in the midst of which I am, like a spider at the centre of its web, placed with my hands on every thread. And this is that dream.

Full of life and happiness I set out with another, one who was a friend and had lived with me for a time, sharing the same hopes, methods, and ideals. Laughing as we went, with the smiling world around us and the glad faces of those we knew, we made our way to the house of one who, older than ourselves, had inspired and befriended in us those hopes and ideals. And there we learnt from him that the authorities of the community, the institution to which we belonged, had taken offence at our methods and by suppressing them had destroyed our aims and all that was most dear to us. As we sat there in silence, my mind cast back over the time—it was little more than a year—since our outlook had been entirely changed. I saw the school a throbbing piece of mechanism with its bells, its clocks, and its governors, set down in a place of great beauty. Blind to anything of beauty, it worked with a rhythm and a precision which became a twentieth-century development (although it had been set up in 1557, and was still running on very nearly its original lines—which was the reason, so they say, of why it "worked" so "well"). I saw it at work and was myself made part of its raw material. Into its hungry mouth there went childhood at its best, full of energy, with every kind of ability, talent and promise, enterprise and ambition; through its teeth, its moulds, and its classrooms they passed, until they issued from the end a single and singular type of humanity, moulded, stamped, docketed and numbered—to take their place, or rather, and this is the saddest note of all, their very numerous and different places in the world.