350 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



view that self-sacrifice was over and done with when the last shot -was fired at 

 Mons, we are lost. We knew well enough that, whatever we may have done 

 at home, without the sacrifice of our brothers at the Front and on the eeas, 

 we should have perished. And. after that have we to learn the law of life, 

 that we in our turn must go on bearing our part? 



It is so obviously true. Look where you will, life is based on sacrifice 

 for some ideal of duty. If each of us does no more than is required for our 

 immediate necessitiee we cannot live. That is a commonplace of individual 

 life, but in large measure we seem to forget it or ignore it in a_ corporate capacity. 

 People will permit, as corporations or as a nation, inhumanities of which each 

 individual would be ashamed. The Hebrews have given us a decalogue for 

 individuals which at least satisfies the moral sense of the world. If it were 

 not given by inspiration it must have been supplied by the simplest process of 

 inductive reasoning. Without it social life is not possible. The sense of duty 

 to our higher selves and our neighbours is our only sure guide. But now we 

 want a decalogue for unions and corporations, for combines and nations. 



To satisfy this imperative want we depend upon education. And therefore, 

 by a simple generalisation, the educational corporations ought to show us the 

 ideals of the principles and practice of a new code of conduct. And that is so 

 because, at least in education and educational affairs, self-sacrifice must be 

 obvious if there is to be real educational life. No teacher can ever teach any- 

 body anything worth having who does not carry the signs of sacrifice in 

 his teaching. 



No body of teachers and no institution can really make a living education 

 unless they are animated by that spirit. The ideals of education are not 

 salaries and can never be attained by striking. I admit that when you are 

 dealing with corporations the language is difficult. I do not quite know what 

 a self-sacrificing county council would be, but I am perfectl.v certain that there 

 ean be no true social life which is based entirely upon the principle of in- 

 exorable contracts and has no room for humanity, for the give-and-take of 

 self-sacrifice. 



But all this must be, not for vanity, but for an ideal of duty that commands 

 acceptance as true. Effective self-sacrifice does not mean non-resistance at all 

 times and, in all circumstances. In a conflict of ideals, as we have learned from 

 the war, the most effective form of self-sacrifice may be to put one's self in a 

 position to kill as many of the enemy as one can. And, in so far as the ideals 

 have truth and vitality, they will evoke true loyalty. Consequently for all 

 educational institutions the most important consideration is that they should 

 manifest their ideals to be such as evoke from each the sacrifices which make 

 for ordered life. 



As one passes in review our own educational institutions one may judge of 

 their ideals by their results. Judging in that way and looking at the educa- 

 tion of our Public Schools we may fairly say that the social or ethical ideal 

 is splendid. It expresses the principle of excellence which I take to mean 

 success in fair competition. It is no doubt Hellenic rather than Christian, 

 it is based upon the literature of the ancient Greeks, and has still strength 

 enough to call forth the most devoted self-sacrifice. In the Universities also 

 the same ideal is quite easily recognised. There, if anywhere, you can see the 

 worship of success in fair competition developed into a real religion. For a 

 long time I have thought that we should be much nearer understanding our real 

 position in these things if we could persuade the classical scholars to do for 

 Greek religion what the compilers and translators of the Bible did for the 

 Hebrew. That is to collect together in the best available translation the litera- 

 ture of the Greeks which formed the basis of their guides to conduct. The 

 appiopriate contents of such a collection were sketched out by Dr. James Adam, 

 a College colleague of mine at Cambridge, whose untimely death is still 

 deplored, in his Gifford lectures on the Religion of the Greeks. With him the 

 subject was a source of unbounded enthusiasm, and his lectures are a series 

 of sermons on the testament of the Greeks. But we ordinary readers, un- 

 learned in the Greek literature, are in the position of those who are offered 

 sermons on the Old Testament instead of the Old Testament itself. If you 

 imagine where we should stand if the Old Testament were denied to us except 

 in the original Hebrew, you will understand the position the vast majority 



