PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 523 



report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 

 things.' It should lift us above that material world, absoi-ption in which is 

 the occasion of all strife and enmity. For the material goods are at any given 

 moment limited in amount, so that the more one has the less there is for others, 

 and if all are aiming at these they are bound to be brought into conflict. 

 Education should lift us to the pursuit of the spiritual goods — lovej joy, peace, 

 loyalty, beauty, knowledge; of which it is true to say that the more one has 

 the more everyone else will have on that account. Such an education would 

 save our nation from its divisions which weaken it far more than any deficiencies 

 in technical skill, and would lift all the nations of the world that followed it 

 to that plane of being where each would rejoice in bringing its contribution to 

 the general weal, and none would seek an advantage that could only be won 

 at a loss to humanity as a whole. That is a far-off goal ; but it must be 

 towards far-off goals and on lofty ideals that we set our aspiration, if out of 

 the terrors of this time we are to win a result that shall be commensurate 

 with the suffering through which we are passing. 



Meanwhile there is in many quarters, and most conspicuously in the ranks 

 of labour, a disinterested desire for knowledge as a real emancipation of the 

 soul, which all who care for education should watch and help to the utmost of 

 their power. It must be from the aspiration of the common people that the 

 salvation of the people comes. Nothing that is really good can be imposed 

 npon people by well-wishing superiors. In education, as in everything that 

 concerns the spirit, freedom is the one condition of progress. It is for freedom 

 that we are fighting in the war; it is for freedom that those who care for 

 education are struggling at home; for there is nothing that so much hinders 

 the effective freedom of our people as the fact that they are left without 

 facilities for the whole development of their faculties. In the name of those 

 who have died for the freedom of Europe, let us go forward to claim for this 

 land of ours that spread of true education which shall be the chief guarantee of 

 freedom to our children for ever. 



The following Paper was then read : — 



The P.lace of Handicraft in Schools. By J. G. Legge. 



A few notes on the early history of manual instruction. — Importance of even 

 a brief survey. — Impetus given to the movement towards handwork by Rousseau, 

 Pestalozzi, and Basedow in latter part of eighteenth century. — The nineteenth 

 century. — First administrative steps in England in the early 'eighties of last 

 century. — The part played by the British Association, and Sir Philip Magnus's 

 paper in 1886. — The fourfold argument in favour of handicraft, including 

 domestic work in scTiools, (a) physiological, (6) psychological, (r) moral, and 

 (f?) social. — Increased importance which manual instruction will derive from 

 experience of war. — Effect of continued education up to age of eighteen. — Danger 

 of making this too much a period of text-book cram. — Association of physical 

 exercise and drill with manual work. — Intimate connection of manual instruction 

 and the teaching of science at early stages. — Supposed conflict between science 

 and the Humanities. — Between the school workshop and the class-room. — These 

 fears due to a misapprehension of terms, and of the distinction between principles 

 and the application of principles, as in mathematics pure and applied. — Coming 

 demand for trade schools, or pre-apprenticeship schools, or manual training 

 high-schools.— Where are the instructors to be found ? Probable dearth of men 

 teachers in the next few years. — Necessity for men in boys' schools. — The possi- 

 bility of finding new sources of supply. — Training of wounded soldiers, a fine 

 type of men to introduce into our schools to act as instructors. — A suggested 

 scheme for student-teachers, worked in connection with new trade schools, &c. — 

 Danger of destruction of local initiative, local responsibility, by central bureau- 

 cracy bent not only on laying down general lines of policy, and supervising 

 policy, but on administering every detail of that policy.— The' hope of the future, 

 the working out of our own salvation under control of an unambitious, un.senti- 

 mental central authority, with some sense of humour, whose aim is guidance, 



