CHAPTEE Yin. 



TEACHER. 



699. Teaching implies knowledge of tilings to be 

 taught; and as, for various reasons, the priest comes to be 

 distinguished by his possession of knowledge, from him 

 more especially is it to be obtained. Moreover, being re 

 leased from life-sustaining activities, he has more time than 

 others for giving information and enforcing discipline. 



A deeper reason for this primitive identity of priest and 

 teacher may be recognized. Though during early years 

 each youth gathers, in miscellaneous ways, much which is 

 properly to be called knowledge, and which serves him for 

 guidance in ordinary life, yet there is a kind of knowledge, 

 or supposed knowledge, particularly precious, which does 

 not come to him through the irregular channels of daily 

 experience. Equally in savage tribes and among early civ 

 ilized peoples, ghosts and gods are believed to be everywhere 

 and always influencing men s lives for good or evil; and 

 hence of chief importance is information concerning the 

 ways in which conduct may be so regulated as to obtain their 

 favours and avoid their vengeance. Evidently the man who 

 knows most about these supernatural beings, the priest, is 

 the man from whom this information of highest value is to 

 be obtained. It results that the primitive conception of the 

 teacher is the conception of one who gives instruction in 

 sacred matters. 



Of course the knowledge thus communicated is first of all 



274 



