THE MAN 35 



freshness and vigour of body and mind are to be 

 maintained, as they can be only by avoidance of lt the 

 educational abomination of desolation of the present 

 day— the stimulation of young people to work at high 

 pressure by incessant competitive examinations." x 



A generation has passed since these words were 

 written, and things remain as they were. Education, 

 whether in public or elementary school, is as bad 

 as it can be. It belies its name. There is no 

 " drawing-out," but only a cramming-in ; no culti- 

 vation of observation, of reasoning, or reflection ; 

 only the teaching of a crowd of facts without making 

 clear their relation, and hence no incitement to inde- 

 pendent thought. 



Technical training, the importance of which Hux- 

 ley enforced in a remarkable essay on " The Struggle 

 for Existence in Human Society," 2 he left to the 

 workshop, " as the only real school for a handicraft." 



In moral training ; since each child is 



a member of a social and political organisation of 

 great complexity, and has, in future, to fit himself 

 into that organisation, or be crushed by it, it is need- 

 ful not only that boys and girls should be made ac- 

 quainted with the elementary laws of conduct, but 

 that their affections should be trained so as to love 

 with all their hearts that conduct which tends to the 

 attainment of the highest good for themselves and 



1 lb., iii. p. 410. 2 lb., ix. pp. 223-225. 



