PLATO'S THEORY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. 269 
pattern. It will try to make them according to the pattern 
approved and sealed by the Government of any particular time, 
according to the ideals of the moment. But if the State will 
content itself with encouraging people to educate themselves into 
being citizens, and let them lay down the lines, that will be a very 
great work, and that is what we are trying to do all over 
the country by the co-operation of the Universities and repre- 
sentatives of the people and the people’s organizations all over the 
country. Those who are doing this, you may say, are the successes 
of our present system of education. Some of them, of course, are, but 
more are failures, and they are all making themselves into citizens 
through a system of education which has little to do with technical 
education or the three R’s. It is an education in the civic 
humanities, and attempts to make the cobbler not only a cobbler, 
but a man who can use his privileges as a citizen because he realizes 
what the State is, and what it means to him. And that, after all, 
is most important from the highest moral point of view. Every 
one has, as an individual citizen, an equal power in these days ; but 
that is no good in itself: on the contrary, it is more likely to be a 
grave ill, unless the citizens know how to use their power, and it 
is a part of the duty of that great Church which stands outside all 
creeds to look to the question of the citizen’s duties, and to assist 
in that part of education, just as much as in the teaching of 
religion as religion. In fact, it seems to me to be almost more 
important, although even more difficult to effect. 
I mention the Workers’ Educational Society because it does seem 
to me to point out in a degree how we are going to get at this 
question. It is not going to be solved through the State or through 
the Church. It is going to be solved through the people, but the 
Church and the State will both be needed to work with them and 
help them as far as possible, not lowering their own standard, nor 
yet attempting to force on the people struggling upwards an iron 
rule, but always holding the highest ideal before those who are 
striving after the best that they know. 
The CHAIRMAN.—I think we must now close this interesting 
discussion by calling on Mr. Marston to reply as far as he sees it 
necessary. 
I will just reply to one point upon which Mr. Tuckwell has laid 
emphasis—the difficulty of deciding about the religious education 
