262 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
The answer is, briefly, that the same élan vital which brought the 
society to that point urges it so to train its young that they may 
maintain its tradition and ways of life. But this statement needs an 
important qualification. The consensus of a society never approves 
of all that goes on within its borders, and among the activities it treats 
as admissible sets a higher value upon some than upon others. Accord- 
ingly the biological impulse which is the mainspring of education tends 
to select for the training of the young those activities which society 
judges, consciously or instinctively, to be of most worth. It follows 
that the education a nation gives its children is, perhaps, the clearest 
expression of its ethos and the best epitome of its scheme of life. Thus 
the ideas of too many of our Georgian forefathers upon the education 
of the masses corresponded faithfully with their belief in the great 
principle of subordination about which Johnson and Boswell talked so 
often and agreed so satisfactorily. One remembers, for instance, how 
hotly Miss Hannah More denied the scandalous rumour that she was 
teaching the poor of Cheddar to write! Similarly, the liberal curri- 
culum of our elementary schools reflects the prevalence to-day of a 
widely different view of the nature and purpose of society. One is 
tempted to add that the misgivings with which that curriculum is, here 
and there, still regarded may be largely due to the ideas of the 
eighteenth century dying hard in the twentieth. 
If what children are taught is but an expression of the general 
mind of their time and nation, what guarantee is there that education 
shall be an instrument of social progress and not of retrogression? It 
must be acknowledged that there is no such guarantee. Among the 
ideas and ideals, the modes of feeling and action current in a society, 
it is possible for the general mind to approve the worse rather than the 
better, and so to give a fatally wrong turn to the training and outlook 
of whole generations. Have not some of the great tragedies of history 
thus come about? Such disasters are, in fact, avoided only where the 
predominant mind of a people has a sufficient sense of the things that 
belong to its peace. It follows that the ideal ‘ educational authority ’ 
would be neither the teacher with forty years’ experience nor the 
-brilliant exponent of educational science, but the phronimos—the per- 
fectly wise man who had grasped fully the meaning of man’s existence, 
could see to the bottom of his people’s life, appraise justly all its 
movements, and discern with sure eye its needs. Assuming that he 
could also communicate his vision to his fellow-citizens, we should do 
as well under his guidance as the imperfections of humanity would 
allow. 
Unhappily the true phronimos appears but rarely, and when he 
comes bears no unchallengeable certificate of authenticity. If he is 
not at hand or is unrecognised, we ordinary men and women must apply 
to our problems the best insight we can attain, trusting that in the 
conflict of sincere opinions the soundest will in the end prevail. For 
example, I have referred to the great change in the conception of 
popular education which has taken place in our time, and have con- 
nected it with the steadily growing belief, first, that every member of 
society has an equal title to the privileges of citizenzship; and, secondly, 
4 
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