412 EEPOET— 1891. 



education should pay the first and highest attention. Now, a 

 master's gi'eatest power over his pupils' character lies probably 

 in his own personality. His own example, his power of making 

 them look at right and wrong with proper enthusiasm or scorn, 

 are as powerful factors in the growth of their characters as are 

 rain and sunshine to the plant. But he must have tools to 

 work the ground, and, of all tools, the best in my judgment is 

 literature. In it you are dealing with moral ideas — that is, 

 with ideas which show the motives and consequences of men's 

 actions, ideas which help to render our sympathies more tender, 

 to open our eyes to the great life-problems of the past and pre- 

 sent, and to give us examples and principles of conduct which 

 may serve as chart and compass through the troublesome seas 

 of our own life's voyage. 



I do not wish to depreciate unnecessarily the other subjects 

 which with bewildering multiplicity claim admission into our 

 schools. We are expected nowadays, while knowledge is ad- 

 vancing and accumulating its riches in a manner even more 

 marvellous than the accumulation of capital in civilised coun- 

 tries, to turn out our pupils as completely versed in the sum 

 total of human knowledge as in the days when classics were the 

 only literature, and arithmetic and Euclid the only mathe- 

 matics. Yet examinations tend more and more to give their 

 best prizes to specialists, to those who, neglecting the rudi- 

 ments of a good general education, have made themselves 

 masters in some branch of knowledge, however unfitted this 

 branch may be by itself for the full development of our moral 

 and intellectual powers. So that we have now to beware of 

 two dangers — the danger, on the one hand, of introducing too 

 many subjects, and so causiiag either superficiality or overstrain 

 from the attempt to cover too much ground ; and, on the other 

 hand, the danger of spoiling a boy's education and robbing him 

 of knowledge which no one ought to be without, in order that 

 he may, by specialising, gain some university scholarship or 

 prize. The awarding of entrance scholarships at the univer- 

 sity for proficiency in one subject only drives schools to 

 specialisation ; whereas school education should be kept as far 

 as possible general, and specialisation should begin at the 

 university. 



You cannot educate a human soul on mathematics only. 

 Their great defect, to my mind, as a predominent element in 

 education, is that they contain no moral ideas ; thej^ do not 

 touch character except indirectly by teaching perseverance and 

 exactness. Yet this is not their only shortcoming : they give 

 no vocabulary, no power of expression ; words are reduced to a 

 minimum ; the process of argument is made as mechanical as 

 possible, symbols being used for ideas ; and the whole mental 

 exercise is as free from humanising influences as is half an hour's 



