268 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
habits and outlook that belong to it. To say this is not to mimimise 
the importance of discipline or to expel from school studies the austerity 
which the grave old word suggests. How, for instances, could it be 
said that our school mathematics represented truly the genius of real 
mathematics if we neglected the element of laborious accuracy and pre- 
cision of thought which are essential to it? What is insisted on is that 
the several forms of mental discipline are characters of concrete types 
of creative activity, practical, esthetic, inteliectual, and that they influ- 
ence the mind of the learner favourably only in so far as he pursues 
those activities as adventures of the human spirit, laborious yet joyous 
and satisfying, and pursues them after the manner of the great masters. 
In short, true discipline comes simply by trying to do fine things in the 
fine way. 
The foregoing principles, stated in a necessarily brief and crude 
manner, are open to misconceptions against which it is desirable to 
protect them. In the first place, it may seem that I am designing the 
education of the people upon a scale which may be magnificent but is 
certainly impracticable. Now I recognise the need of following the 
advice of a wise official friend who bids one always to bear in mind the 
magnitude of the educational problem—to remember the slum school 
and the remote village school as well as the happily placed schools of 
rich and progressive urban authorities. It is easy, no doubt, to form 
extravagant expectations, and by seeking to do too much to achieve 
nothing solid at all. But the argument is concerned far less with the 
standard to which school studies may be pursued than with their proper 
qualities and the spirit that should inspire them. In particular, it is 
directed against the attitude expressed recently by a public speaker who 
asked what good is poetry to a lad who will spend his days in following 
the plough and spreading manure upon the fields. Against this attitude 
it urges that a man’s education, whatever his economic destiny, should 
bring him into fruitful contact with the finer elements of the human 
tradition, those that have been and remain essential to the value and 
true dignity of civilisation. This ideal does not assume advanced 
scholarship or gifts beyond those of ordinary mortals ; it implies merely 
that the normal human sensibilities and powers should be directed along 
the right ways. 
But, it may be objected, granted the soundness of the ideal as an 
ideal, the shortness of school life still makes it impracticable. This is 
a criticism to be treated with respect. It is true that a study, to be of 
real value, must be carried far enough and followed long enough to 
make a definite and lasting impression. It is also true that some studies 
can hardly produce their proper effects at all until a certain level of 
maturity has been’ reached. For example, there is much of vital 
moment in science which evokes no response in a pupil before the age 
of adolescence. But what is to be deduced from these admissions ? 
Surely the conclusion, which the public mind is slowly accepting, that 
so long as children leave school for good at fourteen some of the best 
fruits of education will be unattainable and the security of the others 
precarious. It is not merely a question of lencth of time, but also, and 
even mainly, of psychological development. The more carefully youth 
