198 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
sentiment has had more to do with its development than any clear idea 
in men’s minds as to what should be meant by education. At one time 
we have talked of educational ladders, at another of broad highways ; 
but such blessed and consoling phrases, though possibly politically fruitful, 
have been certainly educationally barren. The ladders have too often - 
only enabled the pupils to climb to narrow but overcrowded platforms, 
and, though on the broad highways progress has been pleasant enough, the 
travellers along them have at last been brought face to face with the precipice 
of unemployment, or have been led from the toil that wrings the sweat 
from the brow in factory or field to the toil that curbs man’s back on the 
office-stool or by the counter-side. 
It is possible that the warp—to give it its due precedence—has been 
too complicated, it is certain that it has been too uniform. This has come 
about, as have many other evil things, from quite respectable causes, 
e.g. from the necessity of stimulating backward districts, the desire to 
restrain wayward enthusiasts, the importance of getting value for money 
expended by the State, but the results have been unfortunate. Those who 
have been enthusiastic for education, including many who are here to-day, 
have not dared to raise discordant voices for fear of providing ammunition 
for others who, on the plausible plea of public economy, employ all the 
dilatory tactics that the stingy mind can devise to save the rates and 
the taxes. 
Here, in a meeting of friends of education, a healthy scepticism may 
be indulged. Take two or three of the questions that might help us to 
clearer minds as to our purposes. 
Is the assumption that the State should develop to the full all the 
intellectual abilities of all its citizens sound? Even if this were possible, 
is it desirable? We do not endeavour to develop to the full all the 
physical powers. We know that so we might increase the number of 
‘strong men,’ or even throw the discus further. Man is so wonderfully 
made and has so many possibilities of development in mind or body that 
a wise regard for balance must ever curb the enthusiastic trainer. I have 
heard it seriously argued that the Schools of England should be passed 
through a sieve to discover which boys have an aptitude for, say, the 120 
yards hurdle race ; that these should be trained and allowed to run no other 
distance, until by dreary reiteration that muscular development might 
be made perfect and England might win at the next Olynipic Games, 
and so by some similar concentration of physical effort we might recover 
from France the Lawn Tennis Championship, from America our Golf 
renown, and perhaps even the ashes from the Colony where they now lie 
heaped. The absurdity of this is seen here at all events; but is it not 
also absurd to encourage enormous numbers of boys and girls to a 
one-sided or even to a many-sided intellectual development, when neither 
the State nor they themselves are to get any return in happiness or 
usefulness ¢ Perhaps I shall get into trouble for using these words. 
Alone they may be barren of inspiration, but methinks that in that 
mystical union that unromantic words may enjoy in the mind of men 
they gather creative power, and those who build the loom of life may well 
do worse than make sure that the warp admits of happy and serviceable 
citizenship beg woven on it. And there is great need to think of these 
two at once, for at times when standing in the great weaving-shed of life 
