152 ' PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
education, which, combined with the wonderful social 
machinery of the English public schools and universities, 
has made the British nation what it is. By the systematic 
kind of education I mean that well-balanced, well-thought- 
out, well-carried-out system of training the young which is 
now being aimed at by all civilised nations, with, I think I 
may say, the United States of America at their head. The 
system is, so far as I know, not perfectly organised as yet 
anywhere. Its field is of course rather the primary and 
secondary schools, in England and her dependencies and 
colonies, than the great old-established public schools, gram- 
mar schools, and universities. There, war is being carried 
on briskly between the votaries of the old and the new 
kinds of education. At its best, the new system aims at 
good citizenship as its ideal result. 
I think I am right in supposing that the old haphazard 
method of education aimed, in a vague, ill-defined and in- 
stinctive way perhaps, at the development of character, and 
in education in this sense I of course include the whole of 
that ‘“‘social machinery,” as I called it, of the English public 
school and university, which, I venture to think, has been 
the most potent factor in moulding the character of the 
upper and middle-class Englishman of the past. Whereas 
the more modern system has for its object rather the culti- 
vation of intellect, the production of efficient, dutiful, and 
law-abiding citizenship, and the advancement of the physical 
and mental well-being of the State. There can, of course, 
be no question (leaving aside social influences) whether the 
first or second of these systems is ideally the better. The 
old method has, from a logical standpoint, hardly a merit; 
the new has all the merits and excellences possible. Yet 
the old method seems to have made England great, and the 
new has certainly introduced and developed to a most ver- 
nicious degree the present system (must I say inevitable or 
irreplaceable system?) of examinations. 
Let me now show what seems to me to be the bearing of 
my subject upon the conflict which I conceive to be now 
impending or actually waging between the two methods of 
education which I have endeavoured to sketch, premising 
that I have been obliged for the sake of clearness in argu- 
ment to represent them as perhaps more clearly distinct 
and more vitally in opposition to one another than they 
really are. 
I think we shall find that the old system, from the point 
of view of poetry in education, is open to very severe criti- 
cism, and that the new system, from the same point of view, 
is threatened by a great danger. I cannot think that 
