November io, 1923] 



NA TURE 



695 



who has a laced waistcoat is too fine a man to work ; 

 but if everybody had laced waistcoats, we should have 

 people working in laced waistcoats." 



Lastly, the ironical may ask whether it is an error 

 to suppose that the education of the people should 

 furnish them with useful knowledge and abilities. Now 

 the test of utility w^hich the plain man applies to educa- 

 tion is, in principle, sound and indispensable : the only 

 point doubtful is whether the test is always based upon 

 a sufficiently broad idea of utility. The only satis- 

 factory definition of the useful is that it contributes 

 definitely and positively to fullness of life. From that 

 point of view it is useful to teach a ploughboy to love 

 poetry and not useful to teach a public schoolboy to 

 hate Greek. This is not an argument against teaching 

 a subject the disappearance of which from our education 

 would be an irreparable disaster. It means merely 

 that the literatures of the ancient world, when taught, 

 should be taught in such a way as to contribute posi- 

 tively to the quality of a modern life. But the term 

 " useful," according to the definition, certainly includes 

 utility in the narrower sense. The daily work of the 

 world must be kept going, and one of the essential tasks 

 of the schools is to fit the young to carry it on under 

 the immensely complicated conditions of present-day 

 rivilisation. The only limitation imposed by our 

 argument is that what is conservative in purpose shall 

 lie creative in its method and, being so, shall embody 

 some dignified tradition of practical, aesthetic, or 

 intellectual activity. The condition may be satisfied 

 by a technical education based upon many of the 

 great historic occupations of men and women, provided 

 that inspiration is sought from the traditions of the 

 industry or craft at their noblest. To conceive 

 ■ secondary' education for all " as meaning " the 

 rammar school curriculum for all " would be to make 

 ! most serious blunder. The only mistake more 

 irious would be to exclude adolescent boys and girls, 

 even of the humblest station, from any essential part 

 of the national inheritance of culture. But this error 

 may be avoided while full account is yet taken of the 

 far-reaching differences in the talents and ingenium 

 of individuals and the rich diversity of the valuable 

 currents, intellectual, practical, and aesthetic, in the 

 life of the community, of which any one may be made 

 the basis of a course truly liberal in quality. 



The last hundred years have greatly accentuated the 

 gravity of a problem which was discerned by the 

 poet Schiller and diagno.sed in the famous " Letters 

 on i^sthetic E!ducation " he published in 1795. In 

 ^' hiller's view the immense progre.ss of the modem 

 nations has been purchased at the expense of the 



development of the individual soul, so that, in spite of 

 the greatness of our achievements, we are, man for man, 

 inferior to the various and well-rounded Athenians of 

 the best days. It is the division of labour essential to 

 a large-scale organisation of society which has at once 

 made general progress possible and individual im- 

 poverishment inevitable, for it has cut individual men 

 off from experiences that are indispensable to the full 

 well-being of mankind. If this was true in the days of 

 the French Revolution, how much more true it is to-day, 

 and how much more gra^e the evil. We are told that 

 before the era of industrialism the great mass of our 

 people enjoyed a culture which, though simple, was 

 sincere and at least kept them in touch with the springs 

 of beauty. What truth there is in the picture I do not 

 know, but it is certain that with what is called the 

 industrial revolution the conditions that make it cred- 

 ible largely disappeared. Torn from the traditions of 

 the old rural life and domestic industry and herded into 

 towns where in the fight for mere existence they lost 

 their hold on all that gave grace to the former life, the 

 folk who now constitute the bulk of our population 

 were cut off effectually from " sweetness and light." 

 That was the situation when the task of public 

 education was taken seriously in hand, and that, 

 notwithstanding a great amelioration in details, is for 

 far too many the situation to-day. 



There are some who think that the only remedy is 

 to cry halt to the modern movement and return 

 deliberately to medievalism. That is a counsel of 

 despair ; instead of indulging idle dreams it will be 

 more profitable, assuming the unalterable conditions 

 of modern life, to consider how the rest may so be 

 modified as to place the true dignity and grace of life 

 within the reach of all who are qualified to achieve 

 them. That can be done only by a system of education 

 which brings the things of enduring and universal 

 worth to the doors of the common people. It is what 

 has been done by many an elementary school teacher, 

 sometimes with scant assistance from public opinion, 

 simply because, face to face with his helpless charges, 

 he was impelled to give them the best he had to give. 

 It will be done with increasing happy results the more 

 clearly it is seen that the proper function of the ele- 

 mentary schools is something much more than to 

 protect the State against the obvious danger of a grossly 

 ignorant populace or to " educate our masters " in the 

 rudiments of citizenship. Unless it be done, unless 

 the natural hunger of the people for knowledge and 

 beauty be wisely stimulated and widely satisfied, no 

 material prosperity can in the end save the social body 

 from irretrievalilc dcirradalion and disaster. 



New Discoveries and Paintings of Palaeolithic Date in the Department 



of the Lot (France). 



I'm-, study of palaeolithic man is many-sided. As 

 a geologist, treating the tools and objects manu- 

 fa( lured by prehistoric man as fossils, the prehistorian 

 has determined an archaeological sequence, and, li\ 

 correlating this with the geological record of the earth's 

 history, has licen able to suggest a probable chronology. 

 .\s an anatomist, the prehistorian has launched into 

 the fascinating .study of the evolution of man, and, 



NO. 2819, VOL. I r 2] 



although hampered by lack of authentic maU-rial, has 

 already been able to show that this evolution was by 

 no means a simple straightforward affair. As fresh 

 iiiaterial comes to hand it will become possible to 

 elucidate further this complex branch of the subject. 

 As an ethnologi.st, the prehistorian has attempted to 

 trace the migrations of prehistoric races, and to cornpare 

 their cultures with those of primitive folk still surviving. 



