METHODS OF SCHOLASTIC TEACHING 321 



as a rule to innovation, with little interest in or knowledge of 

 science, and with a profound distrust of scientific methods of 

 thought. A scientific training tends to mental independence, 

 and therefore to nonconformity though, as scientific men 

 will maintain, only to nonconformity with untruth. In the 

 absence of disturbing influences, a training in classical words 

 has an opposite effect. From this cause or that, from a con- 

 scious or half- conscious recognition of the mental effect, the 

 educational methods of the Dark Ages were retained to a 

 large, but perforce diminishing extent. The result achieved 

 is similar to that which obtains in many orthodox continental 

 states. The patricians of England can hardly be termed 

 devout. They are clerical rather than catholic, at any rate 

 as regards the men. They uphold the Church as a matter of 

 tradition and party politics, but indifference to religion, or 

 even complete scepticism, is probably more prevalent amongst 

 them than amongst the lower ranks of society. 1 Gradually 



1 " The age we live in is notoriously an age of material standards and 

 low ideals. Everything is estimated with cynical frankness at its money 

 value. The getting of wealth at all costs, and the spending of it on 

 comfort and pleasure are recognized as the sufficient purpose and reward 

 of life. Art and literature are not untainted. And the millionaire, 

 instead of being regarded as a menace to civilized society, is exalted 

 into a popular hero, and even oddly haloed as a kind of saint if he 

 chooses to spend a fraction of his swollen treasure on pauperizing his 

 fellow-creatures. . . . The true end of education is not to impart 

 information useful or other, but to keep alive the spiritual side of nature, 

 to fan the divinity which informs the clay." (Rev. James H. F. Peile, 

 The Monthly Review, Jan. 1902, pp. 132-3.) Here we have an exposi- 

 tion of the aim of the clerical school-master, together with an admission 

 of complete failure. In the mouth of an orthodox cleric the phrase " to 

 keep alive the spiritual side of nature," usually means nothing more 

 than the creation of a "simple" or "steadfast" faith in the precise doc- 

 trines of the sect to which he happens to belong. Patrician society is 

 like the American people. It so influences immigrants that in a genera- 

 tion or two the characteristics of the alien disappear. Society modifies 

 the millionaires much more than the millionaires modify society. 

 Except during rare and temporary outbursts of asceticism the great 

 majority of men have always striven strenuously for wealth. The only 

 difference at the present day is that there is more wealth to be got, and 

 that more people get it. " Society " had as many and even more faults 

 during the Georgian as during the Victorian era. Its delinquencies are 

 no new thing. Very wealthy men are numerous in America, where they 

 entirely dominate society. The American millionaire is seldom held up 

 to admiration, but at least he sometimes leaves his millions for educational 

 purposes. No British peer who was not the first of his line has ever 

 done the like. This method of discarding wealth, of pauperizing fellow- 

 creatures, a very plebeian trait, is never displayed by those in whom 

 the spark of divinity has been fanned in the orthodox way. Boys do 

 not acquire their religious and ethical tones from their school-masters, 

 with whom they are rarely intimate, but from their parents and com- 



Y 



