ADDRESS BY THEODORE REUNERT. XIX. 



England spent 8h per cent, of the total expenditure of £130,000,000 

 on elementary education alone, and that the Australian Colonies 

 and New Zealand spend frona 9 to 10 per cent., as against 5 per 

 cent, being spent in South Africa. 



In conclusion, if I have given a somewhat gloomy account of the 

 present position of education in South Africa, perhaps unconsciously 

 darkening the shadows, when there are so many bright and hopeful 

 signs to which your attention might with equal justice have been 

 directed, 1 trust 1 may be forgiven for thinking it was more pro- 

 fitable in the short time at my disposal to dwell on the defects of our 

 educational system, rather than on its manj' undoubted merits. A 

 wise old Scotsman I once knew advised me to take as my motto : 

 " Things are never as good as they look, and never as bad as 

 they look.'' Much error and discomfort may be avoided by 

 remembering that simple adage. It sums up what poets and 

 philosophers in more ambitious phrase have striven to express 

 for ages. There are two extreme ways of looking at life 

 and its affairs, characteristic of two eternally opposed atti- 

 tudes of different minds : the melancholy and the sanguine. The 

 Greek poet Hesiod, who was an eloquent exponent of the melancholy 

 view — a kind of primitive Carlyle — has left on record a famous 

 picture of what three thousand years ago he conceived to have been 

 the good old days long antecedent to the iron age into which he 

 lamented to have been born ; whereas the enviable mortals of the 

 early world had lived in what Hesiod called the Age of Gold, when 

 greed, strife and want were still unknown — that age which so many 

 poets since his time have vainly sighed to recall. Wiser, and more 

 helpful far, than all these dreamers, is the great poet whom Carlyle 

 was so fond of quoting ; two of liis sayings have been constantly 

 in my mind during the preparing of this address, and I wish I could 

 find an adequate translation for them. To those who are too easily 

 satisfied with things as they are, Goethe says : — 



" Das Wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blick, 

 Der vorwaerts sieht, wie vie! iioch iiebrig bleibt." 



(The little we have done fades into insignificance, when we look 



ahead and see how much remains to be done.) 

 Whilst to those with backward-turned faces towards the mainly 

 imaginary virtues of the past : that golden age, says Goethe, could 

 indeed be realised " were but men nobler than they are " : — 



" Mein Freund, die goldne Zeit ist wolil vorbei : 

 Allein die Giiten bringen sie zuriick" ; 



or in the words of the English poet, who best renders his meaning, 

 and whose writings are a perennial inspiration to all who are striv- 

 ing to make the best ideals of education prevail in the world — 

 Matthew Arnold : — 



" I say: Fear not I Life still 

 Leaves human effort scope, 

 But, since life teems with ill. 

 Nurse no extravagant hope; 

 Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then despair." 



