404 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



where young men enter with greater zeal into physical com- 

 petitions with each other. From north to south, winter and 

 summer alike, the country rings with the doings of some local 

 or interprovincial team of footballers or cricketers, or with the 

 prowess shown by some member of a bicycle club. And why 

 is this display of energy so great in the case of the physical 

 aspect of life and so dead as regards the mental ? The 

 difference is simply one of organization and reward. Physical 

 development comes home directly to the individual. On 

 every hand there are clubs for the emulation of young men in 

 feats of endurance, skill, or prowess of some kind, and, what 

 is of more moment, opportunities are provided whereby young 

 men from the smallest districts are able to compete against 

 the best talent in the country. There is no need to go to any 

 special centre for training or professional advice, as every 

 town and township is made a training-school for the develop- 

 ment of physical endurance and skill, whilst the public Press 

 and the athletic associations constitute a professional court 

 second to none for the recognition of excellence of a special 

 kind. The desire for honourable distinction is strong in 

 human kind, and it is ever active in the minds of those whose 

 energies are being exercised under healthy surroundings. 



But w 7 hy is there so much energy shown in the physical 

 side of human nature and so little in the mental, more par- 

 ticularly with respect to higher education ? Let the methods 

 adopted by the Government and by the responsible educa- 

 tional authorities for the higher training and culture of the 

 people be compared with those employed for the physical de- 

 velopment and training of young men, and the causes of 

 educational indifference and deadness will soon become 

 manifest. On the one hand there are organization, emula- 

 tion, and opportunity to excel, and on the other there is 

 conventionalism, a holding-fast to the past, and a mistrust of 

 change. It was a saying of the late Matthew Arnold that the 

 great need of the primary school in England was to simplify 

 the work. The same thing is badly wanted in our country 

 just now. Isolated governing bodies are in possession of the 

 educational field. They control all the pathways to the 

 higher pasture lands of learning, and none can enter except 

 by the payment of a heavy toll. Co-ordination of studies is 

 absent, and nothing is done to induce young people to 

 pursue their studies in the higher pathways of knowledge. 

 People living in towns where university colleges are already 

 established receive certain benefits, but even these are small 

 compared with what is possible under a system so co- 

 ordinated that the whole colony might be interested as much 

 in the pursuit of learning as it is in the pursuit of pleasure. 

 Education, if it is to flourish, must be as available to all as 



