omet be sufficient to show that the renaissance of the schools

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in the 19th century which is associated with the name of at Arnold of Rugby is inspired by the same ideal. Arnold, pro according to our more clever moderns, had his limitaictions, and Mr Lytton Strachey has presented him as a type of the puzzled; but in his school he knew what he wanted to do, and he strove manfully to do it. His Sprayer for his pupils was that they when they went thforth amidst the strife of tongues and minds, might be endowed with the spirit of wisdom and of power.' His method, as he laid down again and again, was that everything should be done by the boys, and nothing for them, and that the school should be controlled by a Sixth er Form strong enough and good enough to raise the character of the whole. He told his Sixth on one occasion, and doubtless on many, 'What we must look for here, is, first, religious and moral principles, secondly, gentlemanly conduct, thirdly, intellectual ability'; and it is important to observe the order in which he ranged these qualities. Yet, though his government can be represented as aristocratic, it is often not realised that his main preoccupation was the dull boy, and his main interest the average boy, that his system was designed for the good of the many, and not for the development of the few. I am sure,' he said, 'that in the case of boys the temptations of intellect are not comparable to the temptations of dullness'; and on another occasion, 'If there is anything on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.'

The world has become more complicated since those days, but the same ideal was sought by the great men who succeeded him, by Temple in his turn, and by Percival, and many another. None of these felt that they had succeeded, but all alike felt that the schools must strive to send forth, to quote Arnold's words again, 'amid the strife of tongues and minds, men endowed with the spirit of wisdom and of power.' When Percival preached at the Jubilee of Clifton College, where he began his career, and now lies buried, he voiced the ideal of the great schools of England as eloquently as any, and it is an ideal unfulfilled.

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'I still dream of a time when from some school, under the some influence which as yet we know not, there shall go forth year by year a new generation of men, who shall be characterised not merely by some social, athletic, or literary accomplishment, some conventional varnish or culture, but by a combination of gifts and strength and moral purpose which shall stamp them as prominent workers, if not as leaders and prophets, in the next stage of our country's evolutionary progress. There is still abundant room, nothing of the crying need, for these social missionaries of a new type men in whom public spirit, public duty, and social purpose shall be practicable and guiding motives, not vague and intermittent sentiments . above all, men whose life shall be guided by a serious and humble and reverent it spirit, who may fairly be described as true Christian citizens, strong, faithful, and not afraid.'

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Our great schoolmasters have trusted to two forces, the force of discipline, and the force of love, and they have always seen their work as something primarily religious, a call to build the only city which has foundations, the City of God. The schools themselves have failed in varying degrees to fulfil the ideal, and Percival's lament is true. His vision is a vision of the future, which will never perhaps be fully realised until God's tit kingdom comes on earth. But those schools which have come nearerst to it have very notably supplied worthy servants to Church and State, men imbued with the zeal for public service: those that have failed have taught social exclusiveness, contempt for the things of the intellect, and excessive glorification of the physical. 'Corruptio optimi pessima,' but the contribution of the public schools to the national life during the last century is one which the nation, the Church, and the Empire could have ill spared.

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This old tradition of English life at its best is threatened from more than one side; it is indeed threatened by enemies within and without. It is in danger, in the first place, from all the relaxation which follows from the decline of religion in the home. is not necessary to stress this, and it is not wise to exaggerate its bad influence. The nation is not as a whole irreligious, but it is not in strong sympathy with organised religion; the teaching of orthodox Christianity,

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hot and the appeal of the Churches both to the educated
classes and to the great city populations, meet with but
hos a partial and an imperfect response. Everywhere there
or li
a is uncertainty, but everywhere there is movement, and
at it is by no means all of it away from a vital religion. In
a transitional period of thought such as the present it is
i inevitable that the schools should tend to sound a less
clear and confident note. The average boy brings
little with him to school, and the average form master
io is himself indefinite and uneasy. But this does not mean
d that faith in spiritual values is being lost; there are
many who think, not without reason, that it is stronger
than it was.
It means that there is new wine of a new
vintage, and the new bottles have to be found, and are
being found; but the schools and the Churches move
slowly.

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The old tradition of our education is threatened again by the changes that are in progress within our society. The answer of a large number of our fellowcitizens who are enrolled under the banner of the Labour party would be that the education to which Arnold and Percival gave their lives is an education designed to create bosses,' and that they have no use for bosses; that it is aristocratic, and therefore self-condemned; that men are equal, and if they are not, they are to be made equal. Here perhaps the greatest danger of the present

the time comes into view, and it is one so wide that the

of

question of the schools is only a part of it. There is a great tradition of faith and culture in Europe, rooted in Catholic Christianity on the one side, and in Greek thought and Roman order on the other, which has made Europe what it is; has made possible all its achievement in art and science; has given expression to the human spirit, and dominion over nature, while throughout it has safeguarded the values which make life worth living. Now in every country there are many or few, but always some, who in their blind belief that the only real values are economic and that the only things worth fighting for are material, are ready and anxious to destroy the whole inheritance of human culture, and with it religion and civilisation. The danger in this country is not near or threatening, but it exists. The best way to avert it is to give to the nation's children an education which in

accordance with our best tradition shall put the spiritual values first as the values which supremely matter, and not suffer them to be cast away by the voting-power of ignorance. In the light of what has happened in Russia it is clear that only education can save the democracies of Western Europe from destroying, or allowing to perish, the most precious elements in their inheritance.

The tradition that it is the purpose of education to send forth men who shall seek to serve their fellow-men and the cause of the Kingdom of God, who will be ready to sacrifice themselves to a cause which they know to be greater than themselves, is threatened from within by a new psychology and a new theory of education based upon it. This makes the fundamental assumption that human nature is good, that from the earliest beginnings there must be no repressions, that under wise and sympathetic treatment instincts and desires will attach themselves to right objects, and that the whole character will unfold like a perfect flower. It teaches, moreover, that this perfect character is an end in itself, and for itself: not service, but self-development, not self-sacrifice, but self-expression, are to be the conscious aims. A very able book, 'On Education,' by Bertrand Russell has lately been published, and only differs from a good many others by being clearer in thought and more lucid in expression. It will be read by many. He sums up the four characteristics which in his opinion go to form the basis of the ideal character, and names vitality, courage, sensitiveness, and intelligence. He is obviously poles apart from the ideal of Arnold: all these are qualities of self-expression. You must be glad to be alive: you must be brave in the positive sense: you must be sensitive to the right things: you must satisfy an alert and open-minded curiosity, and become in the real sense intelligent. The Church and the tradition of education are wrong in attaching importance to virtue.

'The Church led men to think that nothing matters except virtue, and virtue consists in abstinence from a certain list of actions arbitrarily labelled "sin." So long as this attitude persists, it is impossible to make men realise that intelligence does more good than an artificial conventional "virtue.”

Or

It

espit Or one may quote another passage:

atte

'It is a bad thing for intelligence, and ultimately for character, to let instruction be influenced by moral coninsiderations. It should not be thought that some knowledge mis harmful and some ignorance is good. The knowledge which O is imparted should be imparted for an intellectual purpose, er not to prove some moral or political conclusion.'

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It is not surprising to learn that the teacher should love his pupil better than his nation, and better than his Church, and that the individual is, in fine, to be the measure of all things.

This is the new gospel, and it has elements of fine idealism in it; but it is based on a wrong psychology. Human nature is unhappily not so good as it would need to be, if this is to be a safe gospel to adopt. The old psychology of Plato and of Paul is for the moment out of fashion, but it is sounder than the new teaching. There is a lower nature in each human being which he has to master, or else it will master him: there are thoughts and devices which the healthy mind represses and suppresses. Humanity would soon find its way downwards on an education which exalts and sanctifies the individual instincts, and makes virtue a matter of opinion, and morality a convention. The door would be wide open into the sty of Epicurus. Even with the higher and the better natures it would end in a life which did not satisfy, and would wither the spirit. When the soul cried :

'I take possession of man's mind and deed,
I care not what the sects may brawl,
I sit as God holding no form of creed
But contemplating all,'

it was not long before there fell upon that soul

'Deep dread, and loathing of her solitude.'

The tradition, then, that what matters in education is moral worth and moral vigour, first and foremost, and that intellectual and physical excellence, important as they are, are definitely secondary; that the object of life is the service of one's fellow-men, is threatened by the decline of the old orthodox Christian